Sailing news from Finland!

The other day, I received some photographs on my e-mail, which made me conclude that Planar’s 12” marine monitors have found a permanent home in Finland. In the picture above you see LX1201PTI integrated on to the sailboat steering pedestal.

Our Finnish marine monitor distributor Navigreen is working in close co-operation with yacht builder Finngulf Yachts. They have just completed a project to create a 43 feet Performance Cruiser yacht, this being hull #3 of the project Finngulf 43. The good news for us is, that the yacht’s hi-tec equipment include two LX1200s.

The yacht, pictured on the right, is called Isadora 2.0, which to me sounds like a well-suited name for the era of Web 2.0 with all of its modern equipment. The official launch was on 1st May 2009. The yacht has been designed for competing as well as for leisure sailing. The picture below shows one of the first times Isadora 2.0 ever took sail on the Baltic Sea in April 2009. Steering on the starboard side is the designer’s son, Jaripekka Salminen, and on the port side Jaripekka´s brother Jarkko Salminen.

The original order for the yacht was made by Pekka Salminen and everything in the yacht, inside and out, is tailor-made design for it. The designer of the yacht’s interior is also Pekka Salminen of PES-Architects. Their references include winning an international invitation competition for new opera house in China in summer 2008 and they specialise in airport design (projects e.g. in Helsinki and Moscow).

There is a Planar LX monitor integrated on both starboard and port pedestals, which can be seen in the picture with Jarkko and Jaripekka. These are additional to the standard display inside the cabin. The designers and builders of the yacht have already complemented the monitors: Navigreen took a risk and convinced the designers about Planar as a new supplier of marine monitors and lucky for Navigreen: their client’s expectations for the performance of these monitors have been exceeded! Sami Toivonen of Navigreen says: ”They keep telling me: ’The monitors really are as great as you told us!’ and I am not just saying that, they are really pleased with the LXs!” Navigreen also supplied the Nobeltech navigation system for Isadora 2.0. Isadora 2.0 is also mentioned as one of the 2008 highlights in Offshore Spars 2008-2009 Newsletter.

Similar yacht with more standard interior and equipment will be delivered to Chicago in June this year, though that one doesn’t have the LXs integrated... at least not yet...

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If it is durable enough for OLPC is it rugged enough for Planar?

Pixel Qi, is on a quest to lower the cost of an LCD. The originating work was done while Mary Lou Jepsen was at the One Laptop Per Child project. Wired gives a report on the current state of Pixel Qi.

I think everyone would like a lower cost LCD, but as with lower cost PC's there will probably be compromises. What do you suppose those will be in the LCD world? Viewing angle? Temperature range? Response time? Size?

Could this technology be interesting to Planar's quest for ruggedized displays?

We'll stay tuned...