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Multi-head Meets the Laptop
PARENA writes: "Estari comes with a Dual-Screen Laptop! "A what?!" Yes: Dual-Screen. In fact, they are 2 15" TOUCH screens. According to TwoMobile: 'Unlike electronic tablets, the 2-VU(TM) allows users to view two full-page files or documents simultaneously. Users can page through two books at once, or take handwritten notes in a notebook on one screen while paging through a book on the other screen.' Sounds pretty cool!"
Laptops were there to be carted around because you need a computer on the move? You chose something that was small, light and just powerful enough to do what you needed.
That's the reason I still use my Thinkpad 760xl. It's tiny by modern standards, but it's rugged as h3ll and has survived two 4 foot drops.
Then we have the sort of laptop that execs use to show off with.... 17" screens, more memory than you can shake a stick at and all that jazz... They weigh a ton, last about 30 minutes on battery and spent all their life in the docking station. What's the point?
It's the same with this new laptop. How the hell are you going to find the space on a plane to use both screens? Or on a train. Yes, it's toy. Yes, it's shiny (and shiny is good) but it's got very little practical use as far as I am concerned.
Teamwork is essential. It gives the enemy someone else to shoot at
Watch out for the cheap rip-off with a similiar design released soon (before this one is???).
That's a pretty cool idea but when I look at that picture, I can't help but wonder why they're trying to emulate a pad of paper. For about $1, you could get yourself a nice real pad of paper and a real pencil.
I didn't read the whole article, bit I bet this thing is gonna cost some serious bucks. Why not make it look like something sleek and techno-sexy, instead of a cheap little paper binder.
Why try to emulate pencil and paper when we already have real pencil and real paper for much less money, that work much better than any fancy laptop. Why not exploit all the technology that goes into things like this and make them truly useful. Let the pencil and paper be it's own pencil and paper. These two simple items have a use.
"A terrorist is someone who has a bomb but doesn't have an air force." -William Blum
I've been involved with people doing music online. This is "music" in the sense of something that you put on a music stand and read, not "music" as in something that you put in a player and listen to.
One major barrier to use is getting the screen sitting on the music stand. Your typical big screen is hardly portable. Your typical laptop opens up in a way that just doesn't physically work on a music stand. This device opens sideways and lies flat, giving it a lot of potential.
Remaining questions: Can I get it with wireless IP access? If not, forget it. Setting up an Internet connection for N of them at a gig would typically take far longer than the gig itself takes. And if wireless access is via the usual phone-company route with per-minute connection charges, forget it. The cost of N phone connections would typically be more than you make at the gig. Unless it's a true "always on" IP setup, it's not usable.
Also, what happens when someone bumps the music stand and the gadget hits the floor? Do I buy a new one?
Also, forget Windows. If you want quality sheet music on a screen, you want a Mac or linux. Windows only supports commercial music packages with proprietary file formats. If I can't exchange the music files with other musicians, I won't even look at it.
There have in fact been experiments with using computers to display sheet music. One of the things that kills the idea is when the musicians discover that they can't write on the music. This is a total showstopper. In particular, no orchestra or band musician would consider using music if they couldn't write their own notes and comments on it. The article implies some sort of handwritten input ability. How good is it? Can I write on the displayed text itself? If not, forget it.
So we still have a way to go before it's usable. But this gadget shows some slight promise to solving some of the physical problems of current hardware.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
See above. The codex form is basically a way of using both sides of a sheet of paper conveniently, while also keeping the "book" convenient to hold. Using both sides is an economic thing. You don't have that problem with an electronic display. And so the comprimise between size and economy is out of balance: a two-monitor computer-book is actually more expensive, as well as being harder to use, than a single-monitor book. This reminds me of the incunabula, many of which were typeset to look like real (handwritten) manuscripts: you see, people thought of printed books as cheap and hard to read . . .
The black and white solution was superior in quality. You have to remember that this is meant for READING.. in this area, resolution is far more important than colour, and so a black and white screen with the same pixel density as colour will provide 3-4 times (depending on pixel geometry) the resolution. This is an INSANE advantage over this thing.
J