Fall in Love With.. Plastic Logic:

 PaperTab -> Plastic Touchscreen Tablet

Kicking Off: Techie Things Thursday is a reinvention of a failed attempt at a tech featured segment here on MamaNYC, which I published only ONE post for in October 2011 discussing  iPhone and iPad Apps For Moms. The segment was called ‘Tuesday Tech Talk’. Anyone that has bumped into me on a street corner knows I am a huge geek (not like that’s where I hangout or anything….). I LOVED the idea of talking about geeky stuff on my blog. 

Thinking back to where technology was just a decade ago, I can’t believe the current capabilities and advancements. However, I didn’t create this featured segment on MamaNYC so that we could talk about beepers and MySpace. No, no. I want to talk about whats going on today and tomorrow. This is only about the future of technology. I won’t lie; never say never! One day in the near or very far future it is quite possible that I’ll want to talk about Tamagotchi. Who knows.

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While browsing my CNN iPhone app a few months ago, which is something I do every morning (thank you very much), I learned about Plastic Logic’s  PaperTab. I read the article with my jaw [literally] dropped and felt like we were about to reach that next plateau for tech eras. Yep. 

WHAT:

Plastic Logic recently teamed up with Intel® and Queen’s University to bring us Papertab, which is a flexible, plastic touchscreen tablet. Powered by a second generation Intel Core i5 processor, the tablet is only 10.7" and looks just like a sheet of paper with its flexible touchscreen feature.

You just HAVE to watch the video before we go ANY further… 

Amazing, right? Wait.. there’s more.

Papertab’s tablet sheets are designed so that each ‘sheet’ displays an app that is in use. This will allow interaction with other paper tabs through wireless communication.

“Using several PaperTabs makes it much easier to work with multiple documents…Within five to ten years, most computers, from ultra-notebooks to tablets, will look and feel just like these sheets of printed color paper.” — Roel Vertegaal, Director of Queen’s University’s Human Media Lab.

 Five to ten years? That’s… TOMORROW in mommy land! 

Watching the Papertab in action is quite astounding and definitely gets geeks to go ga-gah! Bend the top corner of the tab and you can send an email – simple, easy, and oh-so-effortless! I think I like the idea of just giving a light twitch of the thumb to send an email.

The tabs can be linked up to each other in order to enlarge the display area just by placing them side-by-side. They will have the ability to keep tabs on their location relative to each other. Plastic Logic says this enables a “seamless experience across all apps, as if they were physical computer windows.”

I know you are all wondering exactly HOW MUCH is it going to cost. That’s probably the key factor for your decision process, especially if it could mean a different between $50.00 per PaperTab sheet and $300.00 a sheet. Since they work with one another and can be lined up to create a larger "screen" modeling multiple applications from screen to screen, I might want to buy 3, 6, or more! However, I can’t tell you how much they’ll cost… There’ no word on when they will be released, or how much they will cost.

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Honestly {and obviously} my initial reaction was a jaw-dropping response to how ingenious this extreme advancement to technology is and what Papertab’s introduction to the tech market would mean. What’s next? We’ve already gone from the 1983 Lisa/Macintosh XL computer, upgraded ourselves into the Gateway 2000 desktop model, transformed our lives with MacBook Pro’s, and completely revolutionized technology with the recent evolution of tablets, such as the iPad. If Papertab’s are the next big thing in the evolving world of tech – where do we go from there?

Once that initial reaction and excitement wore off, I started to think practically. When Apple introduced the iPad, I tried to find a purpose for it in my life. If I was going to justify a fairly large expense, I had to picture myself using it. Eventually, I did get my hands on an iPad (birthday gift in 2011; thank you, husband!). I was too geeky to pass it up. However, I did have reason and it does serve a purpose.

Now I am doing the same thought process for the Papertab. Would it replace my MacBook Pro? Could I toss out the idea of having my iPad and instead use the Papertab in those instances when I am traveling on blog business? Is it going to withstand the extreme abuse that my two children can do to a flexible piece of plastic paper?