Microsoft predicts the future - without laptops (photos)
Summary: Microsoft has predicted the future of computing lies with smart devices in connected rooms that will change their settings according to the person using them.
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In the future, business people will not need to carry a laptop around with them to get their work done, Microsoft believes.
Instead, smart devices in connected rooms will change their settings according to the person using them, it has predicted.
In a video released on Tuesday, the company presented its vision for what productivity will look like in the next five to 10 years. It's the sort of world where you can walk into a hotel room and the television immediately displays your favourite channel; the alarm clock sets itself to your preferred time to wake up; the coffee machine works out whether you prefer black or white coffee and begins making you a cup; and the nearest tablet becomes your own personal computer, complete with all your files.
Much of the video is based on the idea that powerful computers will be embedded in the world around us. These will be imbued with software-based intelligence to respond to the user's needs, according to Microsoft. In this scenario, a business traveller's glasses translate the audio announcements in a foreign airport to help them find the taxi rank and get a car sent for them.
Screenshot: Jack Clark
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Talkback
RE: Microsoft predicts the future - without laptops (photos)
M$ predicts the future - without laptops and Loverock Davidson
RE: Microsoft predicts the future - without laptops (photos)
indeed..
"We are only here to help".
"You have nowhere to go".
- robot police in George Lucas' 70's movie "THX1138"
At minimum, this thing better have an 'adult' filter on what's shown on the wall for certain people going into certain hotels!
This stuff is fantastic and its do-able but this is high cost stuff and I just do not see it becoming commonplace among the masses unless the service lifetime of appliances becomes 20-30 years again, and they are repairable for that long, like it was in the 'old days' of the USA.
To make this kind of thing really possible, a major shift in manufacturing is needed to stop the short-lifespan we have in consumer goods now. This is not a complaint against manufacturers who want planned obsolescence, but it is a statement supporting the ideas like the "universal cellphone charger" that keeps those little bricks out of the landfill. But it is not an ecology-nut statement either.
In the context of this article and these pictures, I'm trying to be thoughtful and suggest that manufacturers of appliances develop common "modules" that are of the same dimension and with same power connections etc., and that these dimensions (electrical and physical and BTU-wise dimensions, etc are well thought out and the dimensions are kept for decades) 10 different models of product could use 3 or 4 'sizes' of module(s).
It's not so that when the fridge is broken a Samsung cooling unit can be slid out and exchanged during a repair for a GE one, but so that the 20 year old Samsung fridge can be repaired by exchanging a new/rebuilt Samsung common cooling module and the old module taken back to be rebuilt (haha yes in the USA or whatever local country, or state) or if necessary scrapped. This sort of progressive design thinking needs to be stepped up and implemented because it will benefit everyone including the manufacturer and also the citizenry. In some ways, this is already done in commercial gear. Consider the machine outside the convenience store that has bags of ice in it. The little box on the top, the "condensing unit", is -almost- a universally replaceable module, and there are about 20 varieties, and that practice has been going on for decades. You order a "13500 BTU F-22 condenser" and slide it into the little enclosure and sweat the tubing in.
I hope I have not gone too far astray from the topic and I apologize for focusing on refrigeration, but my goal here is to suggest that changes to the way things are made, towards a goal of making them to be serviced and last as long as the house, etc, will ultimately help the technology shown here to become truly universal and widespread. The sooner the better.
RE: Microsoft predicts the future - without laptops (photos)
If the worldwide economic recession goes on we'll fight over the water and gasoline, not on PCs.
RE: Microsoft predicts the future - without laptops (photos)
RE: Microsoft predicts the future - without laptops (photos)
RE: Microsoft predicts the future - without laptops (photos)
True
I think they left out something from the slides - -voice commands?
RE: Microsoft predicts the future - without laptops (photos)
But the ideas are only a straight-line extension of existing technology. In other words, the video illustrates "thinking inside the box."
A company like Microsoft has to be thinking much more creatively than they would like us, and the competition, to realize. for example:
1) Using screens and images will become passe. 3D holographic interfaces will replace the need for "things" that we need to hold in our hands.
2) Use of the binary system of computing is archaic. We started using each bit or byte to represent 1s and 0s in the 1940s. Quantum computing will change the essence of what computers can accomplish
etc. etc.
The future is both invigorating and scary. Microsoft realizes this. And so do the folks sitting in their garages working 20-hour days.
Welcome it's Halloween
Think it's time for United states starting to collaborate with the rest of the world instead of just show how BIG they are all the time. These suggested things has a quite hugh value when it comes to collecting statistic data and knowledge in what happens. A kind of spy we don't want believe into just because we bought it from the beginning.
USA the master of the world:P
Sounds like the German Reich or third reich, as before it's about power and status and rule the world.
Come on Americans, don't you think we know what you trying to achieve and accomplish, please don't be so naive.
RE: Microsoft predicts the future - without laptops (photos)
RE: Microsoft predicts the future - without laptops (photos)
Forgot to take your pills today?
Please.
"Come on Americans, don't you think we know what you trying to achieve and accomplish"
A very odd comment to say the least. First off, this article is not dealing with politics or political leaders or political ambitions. Its dealing with technology. Its dealing with business. By the nature of this article what one can determine in so far as what America is "trying to do" is very similar to what most countries in the world are trying to do. And that is businesses in America are trying to find new ways to make money. Fortunately making lots of money seldom, if ever is able to go hand in hand very long with soldiers goose stepping down the streets beside parades of tank convoys.
Depending on how one looks at it, fortunately or unfortunately, companies looking to make profits these days are not very nationalistic in their profit seeking. In fact they are only political in so far as one politicians policies may help them make more profits over the policies of another. And it pretty much ends for most companies after that. Some will point out that there are some big companies that make arms and munitions and have a strong profiteering motive to see armed aggression take place so their products get used up and the are called on to make more, but unfortunately even the U.S. cannot afford enough arms and munitions to rule the world, and wars of any decent size just screw up too much other profiteering for all the other companies so in the long run...it doesn't work for long.
Every country in the world is trying to make money. That is the businesses and people that work and run them are trying to make money. An yes, there are quite a number of American companies that are quite good at it. But again, they no longer simply stop at the shoreline. Nor does any company of any size around the world.
"it's time for United states starting to collaborate with the rest of the world"
They do. They have for years. Remember, this article is about business, and businesses have collaborated across boarders for ages.
You can always point at a country like the U.S. and say plenty of negative things, but the clear unabashed truth is when it comes to America, what they really want t do is really only one thing. Make lots of money. And they know they cant do that in a world where war runs rampant or terrorism is creating chaos and instability.
They also know its incredibly hard to do it in a world where too many countries are broke and cannot afford their goods. The long and short of it is that the real goal of the U.S. is to see a world where there is no war or terrorism and all countries have a sizable G.N.P. spread with some evenness through each countries population so that American companies can sell everyone truck loads of their products and Americans can make lots of profits.
While on one hand, it may sound a little greedy, there are a vast number of wonderful things that run hand in hand with that kind of policy and in the end its a hell of a lot better than what some countries around the world seem to feel is a better goal.
Unfortunately creating a world without significant human strife in order to maximize profits isn't an easy task. Right now, it doesn't even seem like a possible task.
But claiming the U.S. is trying to take over the world is simply an inaccuracy of monstrous proportions. They are just trying to find a way for you to start making enough money so you can purchase a bunch of their $hit.
Didn't Pixar make a movie about this.
RE: Microsoft predicts the future - without laptops (photos)
RE: Microsoft predicts the future - without laptops (photos)
<b>"Dude.. get a life and get real.. wow"</b>
Sure but that includes U.S letting nations living on their own privileges without U.S influences, don't look that way.
@paul2011
<b>"Forgot to take your pills today?"</b>
psychiatrists & tablets, don't need it for the moment Buddy
RE: Microsoft predicts the future - without laptops (photos)
Granted, all that is moot if Google gets their car working in the large scale.