Show HN: Check out the 23" Android 'tablet' I made for $600
Maybe it's just that I'm damaged too much by resistive touchscreen terminals (rural startup flashbacks…), but I wonder whether this really will be the future. Someone at the BUILD conference mentioned that we'll be looking back in wonder that there was a time when monitors didn't have touch input. On the other hand, didn't we try stuff like that quite a few years ago? If not touchscreen, then lightpen input… "Gorilla arm syndrome" comes to mind.But just like the recent wave of 3D movies, I'm not sure whether it's a case of "the technology caught up" or "those who don't know history…". Zeus, I sound positively luddite here. Don't get me wrong, I really like my ipad, but the applications, the form factor -- the whole use case is quite different. Well, let's see… Wonder if I'm repeating the words of command line geeks after they first saw a Macintosh in '84…Didn't want to digress from the post that much. It is a cool project, martythemaniak.
With cheap enough screen and support hardware, we'll probably see a lot more terminals in the wild. A bit of sheet metal and plastic, a portrait '23 inch screen and some custom Android-based firmware and you could make some great info and tourism terminals. And if no one's working with them, you'd have a reasonably large area to show ads.Or VESA mount it, and you'd have a great info panel similar to the Panic Status Board[1], with some direct interaction possibilities.[1]: http://www.panic.com/blog/2010/03/the-panic-status-board/