Noate

Noate is concept devices, made specifically to perform only one task, replace the long used copy & paper everywhere.

On first look, Noate will look much like a Tablet PC but it’s not. A Tablet PC can do various tasks, it can even play music & video however a Noate, can only take text input via a Stylus. It is is not supposed to play music or video, it’s not supposed to connect to the Internet, for that there are other devices & Noate is made not to compete with them, but to accompany them.

Noate is just half inch thick, & 10 X 8 inch long tablet, much like a paper or conventional notebook we have in school, or offices. It consists of a non reflective, scratch resistant, OLED screen, which acts as the display & the input area, on which the user writes with a light Pen, similar to the method of text input in Tablet PC or PDA for input, Noate, supports 16.7 millions colors so you can also read PDF with images. The key feature is simplicity, just a notebook, that’s all.  

Noate has 1 GB of inbuilt flash memory on which everything is stored, additional memory can be added via USB pen drives, & Memory cards, it supports normal MMC cards. Connectivity is possible by a USB port, as well as Bluetooth 2.0  

Noate is not supposed to be standalone; it assumes that you have a PC or Mac at your home, where you can copy all the data & process further. Suppose you are in a college & you took notes for whole day, when you reach home, simply copy the notes to your computer & do whatever you want to it.  

By default, Noate disables handwriting recognition, because it makes the writing process slow, you simply write on it & it will save it as such as, without any processing, the handwriting recognition is performed later by the application bundled with Noate which is available for all major operating systems. By default, Noate saves the files in PDF Format, because that’s how you can save your scribbling easily, it can be converted to ODF format & if the MS office is installed it can even convert to MS Onenote format, with the help of the Noate application. You can also convert your MS office documents or images as PDF with the bundled Noate application installed in your PC. 

The battery in Noate lasts for 20 hrs. It’s a simple battery used in mobile phones etc, & you can even replace with 3 AAA batteries, if required. Since the power usage of Noate is very low, the battery is quite small in size & dimension, adding to the overall weight of Noate which is only 150 grams, much of which is possible due to the OLED screen, instead or LCD panel. You can turn off Noate or put in sleep, by pressing the buttons on the side.  

Noate has no operating system, instead it has a firmware, which is very simple, to make & manage. The CPU of Noate which also acts as the GPU, is custom made, which is sufficient to draw everything on the screen even when scrolling through the pages quickly.  

The interface of Noate is also very simple, just a few icons on top, for New, Open etc, & two arrows at the bottom for forward & backward page. When you write on Noate & one page is filled you simply click on the forward arrow which switches to the next page & you can continue to write. No matter what you write, one page or multiple pages, it’s saved as PDF, you can either write your own name for the file, in which case the input text is on the fly converted to ASCII text, because scribbling cannot be used as file name, or you can set to automatically, name the file, according to the Time & date stamp. Remember, Noate assumes that you will further process the file on your computer  

Since Noate is a simple device, it’s cheap to produce, which results in very low cost.

GSX Concept PC

I always wanted to make my own designer PC which can be used anywhere & can be complimented for being thin, small & efficient. Presenting GSX Concept PC.

The GSX has an optical drive in front panel, one shut down & one restart button, & the big black bar below the shutdown & restart button is the infrared port for Windows Media center remote that this PC will be running. It will have customized laptop component, such as…..

Core 2 Duo CPU, Radeon HD 3650 graphics card with 512 MB DDR3 RAM with HDMI, 4 GB DDR2 800 MHz RAM, 320 GB SATA 2 2.5″ Hard disk, onboard gigabit LAN, 5.1 Channel HD Audio, inbuilt Bluetooth & 802.11 a/b/g/n, USB 2.0 Ports, Fire wire ports & 1 fire wire mini port & the other usual stuff we expect in a all in one Computer.

Due to using laptop components, the GSX can reduce its CPU & Graphics card clock speed on the fly, & also disable the non-used sections of peripherals which will further reduce the power consumption.  The monitor is HDMI based 19″ LCD, the GSX is made to be a lifestyle PC, it can’t be a serious gaming PC, but still it has something like a Radeon HD 3650 DirectX10 graphics card which is good enough for gaming & supports full decoding of HD Videos. The monitor cord goes from inside the pivot. There is also a front OLED screen on the CPU below the Optical drive; this is used to see system info such as temperature, music being played in Windows Media Player. It’s based on Windows Sideshow so even if the Computer is in sleep mode, consuming really low power, you can still get some info such as schedule etc.

The PC is completely detachable; you can simply unscrew the thumbscrews, which will detach the LCD from the Pivot, & also the pivot from the CPU body, then you can take them all easily anywhere. Since the CPU uses laptop components, you can simply remove the top panel, as they are screwed by 6 bolts & upgrade a few things such as hard disk, RAM & graphics card.

The GSX takes air from the right side, there is a 80mm fan intake fan, circulates & the other fan on the left side which acts as exhaust pushes it outside the chassis. There are 2 USB, 1 Fire wire, 1 fire wire mini & Audio Jacks on the right side of the chassis, with 6 More USB ports at the rear along with one Gigabit Ethernet port & another fire wire port. There are no legacy ports such as Parallel, Serial & PS/2 ports. The power supply is inside the GSX itself, it’s a 400W power supply. However, GSX also provides you option to use another external power supply in case you need more, that comes in the form of an external power brick.

GSX Provides you option to upgrade components yourself, customize it, there is nothing in front of it, and it’s all clean. It is recommended to use a Bluetooth or Wireless keyboard & mouse with GSX to reduce the wire clutter even further. The recommended OS for GSX PC is Windows Vista, as it provides features which I had in mind when designing GSX PC.

Below are a few more renders in White & green color, resembling the color scheme of XBOX 360. All the models & renders are made in 3Ds Max 9 & Photoshop CS2.