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Flip-Pad Voyager: Dual-screen Laptop
deitrahs writes "I came across this, and wept with joy. It's an Athlon-based, dual-head laptop. Yes, that's right - dual-head LAPTOP. Dual 13.3" displays. And it folds up like an old-school Transformer. Now I just need to find a buyer for this spare kidney so I can afford it - $5 thousand - but the expressions on people's faces at LAN parties will be OH so worth it."
Now you can run your batteries down twice as fast
Two little screens are really not anywhere near as good as one big one. Especially on that thing. Sure it folds up and fits into your wallet or whatever. This is some seriously wacked out stuff.
He who knows not and knows he knows not is a wise man. He who knows not and knows not he knows not is a fool.
I want a laptop with a 21" screen. A portable portfolio sized laptop. full sized keyboard dual processor multi drive. (and about 2 minutes of battery life ) That's where i'll spend my 5 grand.
cheers
First mobile Matrox Parhelia based laptop with two extra fold out screens for 3 head surround video!
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
It's an Athlon-based, dual-head laptop. Yes, that's right - dual-head LAPTOP.
Uhh, at 6kg (13.23 lbs), I think I might come up with better term to describe it.
-Sean
"...but the expressions on people's faces at LAN parties will be OH so worth it."
I have a dual monitor setup at home, and I play Quake a lot with it, but I haven't been able to make much use of the second screen in that game. (I do like being able to see what time it is, though.. heh.)
Does anybody know of any 'dual-head' mods for either Quake or any other FPS game that uses the second screen for anything? I'd *LOVE* if the left screen was the front view and the right screen was the rear view!! Or maybe stats? I dunno...
Just curious if anybody using dual-head has done anything interesting with it in relation to lan-party style games.
"Derp de derp."
Seriously, why? Looks like the page orientation is a throw-back to the old Radius monitors, but too small to be of much good for graphic design. Also, laptops tend to have the very low-end of graphic card support, so I wouldn't expect it's much good for LAN parties, unless you're still playing NSNIPES.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Seems to Be /.ed 4 FTLkC: www.xentex.com/+&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
Google Cache Link
http://216.239.33.100/search?q=cache:v1jL4n
Not as Impressive as I thought. it still seems to be pretty close to standard monitors
Wow... imagine a beowulf clus.... naaah.
-- -=innocent ramblings from the mind of an insomniatic programmer=-
I guess I'll check it out tomorrow.
:)
There should be a less popular service that just posts yesterday's slashdot articles, so as to get around the slashdot effect. I don't mind reading stories one day late
---
"To know recursion, you must first know recursion."
Cool, now I can watch a full screen movie and pretend to do actual work while on a plane... Bet the guy in the next seat will be impressed, and in the end isnt that all the matters?
You mean like the Star Trek reruns?
/. was discussing ternary computing, and how since binary digits are bits, ternary digits should be called ...
I like Star Trek too, but c'mon, that's a lame name.
Let's see... the feature of this laptop is that it has two monitors, monitors are something we're always looking at...
What's a good name for two of something we're always looking at? I'm reminded of when
And who on Voyager had the best set of tits? Seven of nine!
And what's seven minus nine?
I think I make my point.
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
The lead scientist for this project was the same guy who created monkies with two asses?
OTOH:
- Total screen resolution is 1536x1024, my Dell Inspiron 8000 is 1600x1200 (albeit probably nicer on a larger canvas I suppose)
- That second screen looks a little fragile to me.
- The whole thing seems *BULKY* to me (my Dell is as big as I would want to get).
- No 3D chipset support at all, 8MB VGA (a little tight there!)
- That price tag.
- All new drivers that Linux won't support for a while
Novel idea, but with some serious drawbacks and a high pricetag, I think I'll be sticking with my current Linux laptop for a while longer...Why anyone would call a computer a laptop when its battery most likely won't last more than an hour, weights 20lbs and has a 17" screen on it is beyond me.
/.ed allready.
Oh and another thing, the site is pretty much
Does anyone else thing that a cacheing system similar to google's google cache would be a good idea? I certainly do.
He who knows not and knows he knows not is a wise man. He who knows not and knows not he knows not is a fool.
the second asshole my wife will tear me if I buy this thing.
damn
I noticed that the mouse touch pad is on the right side. That's gonna be a PITA for south paws unless they have a left-handed version.
/*drunk.. fix later*/
EnkiduEOT
There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself
-Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye
You need to get out more. And becareful, you see that hot, bright yellow disk in the sky? We call it the sun. Don't look at it and don't stay out in it too long.
When the mainstream manufacturers start making these - THEN get ready for a drop in price, until then...
RonB
It is human nature to take shortcuts in thinking.
...or was anyone else expecting to see a laptop that had two *FULL*-sized displays that folded out of it? This is really disapointing.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Matrox used Quake 3 based games to show off their Parhelia 3 display feature. Something about the POV option, which causes the display to be spread out over multiple screens (increasing you're range of vision, not stretching the image). If I wasn't at work I'd look it up for you... might want to check Google and Matrox's site. :)
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
Well, I'll tell you what it looks like. It looks like all you have to do is put a piece of electrical tape down the middle and BAM - dual head. Not was I was hopping for.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Slashdot in effect y'all.
Being completely ignorant and all, I'll post some questions.
$5000? What's the justification for that? I know laptop screens ain't cheap, but are the mechanics behind it so complicated that it has to be double the normal price?
How sturdy does this thing look, I wouldn't want one if it's going to fall apart in a month. Also how easy is it to open and close, a second screen is a wonderful feature (everyone should work on a two-monitor setup just once, you won't want to give it up) but it might not be worth extra weight, shorter battery life, more moving parts, and tedious open and close procedure. One of the great things about a laptop is, you can generally shut it off and stick it in your bookbag (or whatever) in about 10 seconds.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
Yep It is too small. the specs say
Resolution: 1024 pixel(H) x 768 pixel(V)
Color16 Bits.
So each panel is 512(H) x 768(V)
I can see it in some cases, but other wise ....
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
The major advantage of this design which they illustrate quite nicely in their photos is that it's ideal for presentations. No longer do you have to deal with trying to navigate a presentation while not being able to look at it.
Other than that, however, it's not thatgreat. You've got two smaller panels rather than one big one which means you actually end up with less physical screen space. Furthermore, your natural tendancy is to look to the middle of the screen which, in the case of a two-panel display, means you are looking at the joint between the two displays.
What I'd love to see is a design where it was three panels that folded out. It would make for a very bulky laptop though, so you probably would want to use it as a portable so much as be able to take it from desktop to desktop.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Personally I don't want a laptop, I want a computer that I can take from place to place without having to unplug 50 things, only like 3, mouse, power and network ( and have the option for wireless network ). If you are constantly moving around or like to put your computer on your lap then this is probably not a good computer for you, but if you want a computer that you can take to a place and sit it down for like a week straight then this is a good buy.
My only concern with it is the durability, it doesn't look too sturdy. I'd want to see it in person before buying one.
I love running multiple screens on my desktop machine, though. I had 3-20" Trins on my G3 for a long time. Great for flight sims.
Reminds me of a great trick I played on one of my coworkers... we were required to run a wintel machine on our desks just to access company email--something I could have done with VPC, but nobody would listen to me that I didn't want this ugly hunk of crap in my office, and could do without it.
So one late night, I hooked the PC screen up to my G4, transferred all the files over to VPC, and made sure the network connection was happy. Then, of course, all I had to do was set up VPC so it was running on the PC monitor.
To all appearances, both machines were now hooked up and running normally. (though it was somewhat quieter than before!)
Several days pass. No one notices that I'm only using one keyboard and mouse rather than two. Eventually, a Mac-curious coworker stops by for a chat. He asks how hard it is to move files over from PC to Mac and vice versa. Without skipping a beat, I grab a few files from the Mac desktop, and drag them over to the VPC screen. They copy flawlessly (of course). I showed him how you can move the mouse from one screen to another. His jaw dropped.
I said I had wireless networking between the two machines.
m-
You catch enchiladas by picking them up behind the head and holding them underwater until they don't kick anymore -VeGas
I know a musician who has made a portable studio out of a bleeding fast laptop an highend external soundcard and a mic with a little tube amplifier, he takes this set anywhere he goes. Usually he goes to the artists that want him to compose the music, because they don't have time to go this his studio.
I know from experience that running virtual studio on a computer forces you to use multiple displays, I use 3 displays for displaying my cubase sx stuff, which rocks, only thing is they all have different sizes so that's not really handy sometimes.
Before I read the specs on this laptop it seemed like a great machine to use for music purposes, but then I saw that it used the ali magic chipset, which sucks - at least for desktop computers - if you want to use a lowlatency soundcard.
I might want to buy it if it had the newer xp processors and an other chipset, but I think I rather buy 3 nice 18.1" lcd screens instead.
Spec page here:
http://www.xentex.com/voyager/techspecs.html
note the resolution specs
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
If somebody can show me a laptop with two 15" screens where one unfolds out and sits beside the other, I might be interested. As it is, this thing looks more like a gimic than a useful tool. Wake me up when there's something worth looking at.
What is your Slash Rating?
The only advantage with the two-head design is that you can flip around one of the two screens to give a presentation...
Based on what I've read, that "presentation screen" is a 13.3" screen with an even smaller visible area. That sounds like a pretty small presentation surface. It doesn't sound like it would really be all that useful.
So I have to ask anyone out there who can actually see the thing: what makes this "flip around" screen more useful for a presentation than hooking up a $2500 laptop to a $1500 LCD projector and doing the presentation that way, at a $1000 savings?
It can't be to prevent needing to lug the projector around, can it? From what I've read, it's probably about as heavy as a projector + laptop combo (although I'm not sure - recent LCD projectors are fairly small, but older ones can be heavy). Then again, you can't lose the weight of the projector if you want to use just the laptop to work on while traveling.
This sounds like it's a solution to a problem that doesn't exist, based on the comments I've read. If anyone has any pictures of the thing, I'd love to see them - I can't access the main site due to the Slashdot effect.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
That barely meets the definition of dual head.
Now, give me a laptop that is 3 inches thick and you open the lid and then flip out 2 wings that reveal 3 14.5 inch TFT lcd screens? (oh and add a set of REAL video controllers not this crap we keep getting in laptops) I'll thunk down 10K in a heartbeat.
and it would be very easy/possible with today's tech.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
If the links to images on their page are absolute URLs, then you are waiting on it to pull the images from their server still. Google only caches the web page there.
What?
Nobody is going to be drooling over an 8mb video card at a LAN party, especially not some unknown card manufacturer.
And 13 pounds? No thanks.
I put up a couple of images from the site here:
Small animated GIF of how it moves
Big pic of the unit unfolded
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Alright, $5000 for a 20" LCD on a 1.4GHz Athlon.
Now, let's see if I can do better (I know I can't beat 13lb).
Apple Titanium: 6 pounds, 1280x854 15" screen 667MHz *and* DVI out. $2500
Apple 22" LCD: 25 pounds, 1600x1024 22" screen, DVI in. $2500
So yeah, you'll have to lug around 31 pounds to lan parties, but that's still lighter than a 17" monitor, and you get 6" of additional screen, cost you the same, get you less processor power, but more battery life, and nearly 3x the number of pixels.
GPL Deconstructed
*spooge*
,my k,eb0rd *is screw3ed~~!
crap[ nowq
1536x1024 total is not exactly miraculous- and since pretty much every Powerbook since 98 has had the ability to do "dual head"="extended desktop" or whatever you want to call it, I don't think this counts as ground-breaking. Since there are already machines with 1600x1200 on a single LCD and there are already machines driving a second desktop (which could of course be an LCD) I don't see the novelty. Why, my puny 3-year-old Powerbook G3 drives its 1024 x 768 and an external monitor at 1600x1200 (maybe even higher with a bigger screen, not sure...)
It's psychosomatic. You need a lobotomy. I'll get a saw.
From what I could see the usual benefits of multi-head aren't there or intended. The intent is to have a larger screen yet fold into something the size of a small laptop. You cannot change the swivel of each display while in use, so acheiving the surround effect won't be happening. Each display on it's own is pretty small, so having multiple desktops would not be very useful. In fact, I'm not so sure that the video card would report these two displays as separate monitors, they may be transparently represented as one to the graphics card, an LCD which just happens to have a clean split down the middle.
What we have here is something that aims to have very small folded profile while having a large unfolded profile. The weight and power consumption (and price) make it a bad choice for an everyday portable. The end result is just a display with an ugly separation in the middle, not a flexible multi-head system.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
With wheels....
check out www.anthro.com
Just bolt everything onto that, along with a big ass UPS, and you won't loose downtime moving it around.
I just wanted to thank everybody who posted. I got lotsa info to look through. It's appreciated! :)
"Derp de derp."
Two little screens are really not anywhere near as good as one big one.
Note, however, that after the thing is opened up one of them can be spun around to face the opposite way. Slave the two together and run a powerpoint presentation on it and you don't need a projector to hold a small meeting.
Salesmen will LOVE this.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Or instead, get them a 15" TFT for £300 (or $400, whatever). Plug into VGA out on laptop. Problem solved, without forking out $5000.
You miss the point.
It's worth an extra two grand (5 grand fancy laptop - (2 grand non-fancy laptop with 1 grand spare display)) to have it in one pretty package and impress the customer with how slick you are. Not to mention the attract-the-nerds value. Helps them control the discussion and lead the customer's mind into saying yes.
You make it back in the first sale, with interest, then keep making it back over and over.
Read _Winning Through Intimidation_ for more.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way