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!"

Comments

Is see it already.....

[curtisk]

when you see someone holding this laptop sideways it means one thing......

they're on Playboy dot com, checking out the centerfold, the way they were meant to be checked out!

:)

Cool device though.....

oh puhleaze

[gnudutch]

>The 2-VU operates in the Microsoft Windows 2000 and XP® environments and features the Adobe Acrobat Reader®. This strategy avoids the problems of a propriety, closed environment while maintaining the file integrity offered through these state-of-the-art digital rights management platforms.

Win2k and Acrobat. Could this thing be any MORE proprietary and closed???

Re:oh puhleaze

[lblack]

Nope.

The general public has caught on to all this brouhaha about how proprietary, closed environments are bad for business. They can even see how that might be so. Unfortuately, they still have no idea what it means.

In the last six months, there's been a definite upswing in the inclusion of sentences like the one you quoted in marketing literature. Most of the time, it's a complete misnomer.

"Our new workstation comes pre-loaded with Windows XP, Microsoft Office and the Adobe Suite, allowing you to create documents in industry-standard formats and avoid being locked into a proprietary model." Uh, what?

It's sort of like when "portability" was a big thing, and you saw references to it in the literature for virtually every product, even those that were designed to run on very specific hardware/software setups.

This is what happens when capitalism takes it up the ass from marketing. It stops being a battle of the better products and becomes a battle of the better brands.

And there is so much market-space that nobody can really claim to be an authority on everything they will buy. You and I might know something about computers, but I know virtually nothing about refrigerators (I recently bought one and was amazed at the amount of research I had to do!). Sometimes, people just don't have the time or inclination to research a purpose. The marketers target those people with nebulous claims that fall roughly in line with what they've been reading in the Business and IT sections of their newspapers (always the most whorish sections, of course).

Bleh.

l

The dark side of the eBook

[groupthink]

This is why eBooks coupled with insane legislation like the DMCA are such a threat. Once a digital book is comfortably readable, the textbook industry will move to eBooks, keeping the students, who are required to purchase them, from exercising the rights we have become used to.

The concept of no longer owning the book, is introduced. For a price, you get access to the text for a period of time. Still want access to it after a year? Gotta pay.

Such concepts as selling the book back to the bookstore when you're finished with the class, or selling it to another student, will become things of the past.

Sure this is a great device, but with the textbook industry drooling over the students as a captive audience, the ramifications of such a device are worth considering.

Unenforcable patent

[MouseR]

This thing has already been dreamed up by Apple more than 10 years ago.

See their Knowlege Navigator QuickTime movie.

Power and simplicity?

[PhilHibbs]

From www.dualscreen.com:

the 2-VU combines the power of a computer with the simplicity of a book

So it doesn't need batteries, then, and boots instantly? Cool!

Here's a potential market:

[jc42]

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.