It seems like every few years there’s a new gadget to add to your collection. The problem is that a smartphone doesn’t replace a laptop, and a tablet doesn’t replace either — and now you’ve got three gadgets which need to be able to talk to one another (or the web) if you want to keep your music, email, and other data synchronized.

Designer Prashat Chandra has put together an attractive concept for a module system that would let your gadgets work together so that you don’t need to synchronize your data — because it’s all actually on one or two of your devices anyway.

He calls it the Lifebook 2013, and basically it’s a laptop shell which would use a removable tablet as a keyboard (and possibly the storage or even CPU) for the laptop. A removable MP3 player would work similarly.

Lifebook 2013 concept

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen this type of concept. It looks a lot like René Woo-Ram Lee Bento PC concept, or even the Asus Padfone — which the company actually plans to bring to market this year.

I really like the idea of a modular PC — but I don’t really like the idea of a touchscreen-only keyboard. While on-screen keyboards work reasonably well for tablets and smartphones, I’ve tried a couple of laptops with touchscreens for keyboards and they never feel as fast or accurate as physical keyboards.

Then again, Chandra’s Lifebook 2013 isn’t really much more than a drawing at this point, and it’s even tougher to type on anon-existent keyboard.

via Gizmodo, Treehuger, and Yanko Design

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4 replies on “Lifebook 2013 modular PC is a laptop, tablet, MP3 player”

  1. Problem would be software. Maybe they’re targeting Windows8? Metro or whatever it’s called seems to want to scale between tablet and regular screens, at least that’s the impression I got. Also explains why there’s an mp3 player instead of a smartphone there (since Win8 isn’t marketed as a smartphone OS) Android isn’t quite capable as a full desktop OS yet.

    I think they’d do better with something less complicated. Perhaps a phone/tablet hybrid like a Galaxy Note which just “plugs into” a laptop form factor.

  2. Just attach an mp3 player to an asus transformer – better keyboard and it does all that – the problem is software. Can I sync an mp3 player to an android tablet? or even an ipod to an ipad? (locally)

  4. I had thought of that but with a phone as a big touchpad and a regular keyboard. why have the space and thickness for a full keyboard and not use it?

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