LED Indicators on Input and Output Ports, in Laptops

Speaking of laptops, we've seen thousands of innovations going into their making, every other day. Almost all of the innovations are pretty good, I should say. Some of the noteworthy innovations are; reduction in the overall weight, varying screen sizes, customizable colors, rotatable screen, tablet-cum-keyboard design, back-lit keypad, touch enabled multimedia keys, HD screen with LED back-light, HDMI out, and a countless list of other neat value additions. Thanks to Apple, Sony, Lenovo, Dell, HP and Toshiba, for consistently competing with each other without which, such innovations wouldn't have been delivered to mankind in a reasonable amount of time.

Speaking of innovation in laptops, here's an idea that spiked through my mind last night, while I was watching the hollywood flick, The Expendables. My son woke up with a start, when Jason started firing at the South American goons, from the tip of a fighter plane. It then took an hour for me to put him back to sleep. Before I resumed watching, I decided to grab my Bose headphones. Hunting down my headphones in the darkness wasn't as big a challenge as plugging it's pin into my Asus laptop's headphone jack. I didn't turn the lights on, as I didn't want to wake my son up again. After several failed attempts in finding the headphone jack, I finally reached out to my Nokia E71x, and used it's flashlight to complete my mission! Thanks to Nokia's OVI Store, I was able to download the flashlight app, last week. However, I wonder why Nokia (and others) doesn't embed a flashlight in all of it's cell phones - doesn't it qualify to be a default feature? How expensive is it to plug in an LED at the top?

Apologies for digressing from the main topic. Here's the actual idea that occured to me last night: Why not have an LED-backlight on the input/output ports of a laptop, such as the headphone and microphone jacks, USB/HDMI ports? Most of the laptops do have colorful, mini LEDs right next to the network ports and CD/DVD drives. Though these LEDs are not intended for helping the users locate the ports when it's dark, they do guide the users to a certain extent. My idea is something very similar to this - incorporate color-coded LEDs right next to the input/output ports in a laptop. For instance, a dark red LED next to a microphone jack, would help users to plug in the mic pin into the appropriate port. Likewise, a dark green LED for the headphones port, and say, an orange LED for the USB port. All of these should glow steadily, so they're easily distinguishable from a blinking green or an orange light, which  normally indicates the status of a network port or a CD/DVD drive.

Infact, having a steady back-lit LED on the ports itself (taking the shape of the ports), would be a perfect innovation. What do you think? 

Imaginatively Yours, 
G U R U



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2 Response to LED Indicators on Input and Output Ports, in Laptops

November 29, 2010 at 1:17 AM

your concern is very nice and i also sometime think about it but one think what make me re think about this topic is that when there is multi color in in put output side the user who is watching any like film feel uncomfortable with this type of lighting . just like watching two different source and it may lead less concentration what he is watching.

November 29, 2010 at 4:15 PM

@rammalla: Personally, I feel it wouldn't be that much of a distraction, since the ports/LEDs are on the sides. Well, that makes me think of another innovation - why not have a control switch on the laptop for those lights? We'll really turn them on, when required. Otherwise (when watching movies), they can remain off. What do you think?

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