Slashdot Mirror
Dual-headed Laptops
Baloo Ursidae writes "ABC News is reporting that some little upstart in PA is making dual headed laptops. Orient it like a book, you have two portrait-oriented touch sensitive monitors. Orient it like a laptop, and one of the monitors becomes a soft keyboard. Not cheap, however, they start at $4,000." That is absolutely nuts. More power to 'em!
Repost
Dinivin
and your keyboard freezes, how do you press CTRL-ALT-DEL?
philcrissman.com.
Well, despite the negative comments at the head of the Slashdot article, I think that this is actually a good thing. Let more tablet PC alternatives enter the market so we can really test the usability factor of !!!OMG!!! different ways in which we use computers.
I don't think there are many ./'ers who don't agree that market forces are how we weed out what is really good and what really stinks. If the company manufacturing these happens to stumble onto a new idea that changes the way in which we compute, they'll succeed fiscally, and hopefully shift (for the better) the way we use laptops and mobile computers. If, on the other hand, this turns out to be another lead-balloon idea based on the notion that "a fool and his money are soon parted" that will play out as well.
I, for one, am excited to see different form factors for mobile platforms. I admit I'm a compute gadget fan, but that's the only way we can improve the status quo.
The surest sign of intelligent life in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us. -- Calvin & Hobbes
One of the two screens are going to get very dirty after being used as a keyboard for a while.
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Here is the requisite link to the company making these: Estari.
I would have liked to see a lot more info on their site. Not much for documentation of other pictures.
comment directly in my journal
There are two uses for this thing. Only one isn't boring.
a) office apps
b) PORN!!!!
Yup, two pornos at once. Make watching porn like reading one of those crappy books on Harry Potter!
Actually, I wish I hadn't just associated Harry Potter with porn, the mental image will make me kill people some day. (runs into forest to plot murders, then comes back after reading this and realising (if the floon is right) planets will do it for him).
I don't know why I just said all that. Neh.
If you're happy and you know it read my blog
We're proud to report that A bunch of geeks are running a website with dual-posted stories. Not cheap, however, subscriptions start at $5 for 1000 pages. Coincidentally, this has also been reported as "absolutely nuts", but we've received no reports of anyone wishing more power to the editors of this site.
All we need now is for the cellphone companies to catch on. Replacing the keyboard on the phone with a touchscreen would allow for better input (where the "keyboard" would change depending on what the application needs). And if designed into one of those clamshell phones, the risk of damaging it would be minimal.
;-) )
So, instead of adding an extra display on the outside, place it on the inside (hey, maybe we even can have three screens? Scaaary
Man, I could go for some dual head, on my laptop! (mod me down, that was lame, but i couldnt resist)
Wow! A keyboard with all of the feel of the famous Atari 400 keyboard!
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
if you are after screen area, why waste a lot of it displaying a virtual keyboard? This laptop might be a good candidate for those projection keyboards. I bet you could set up the keyboard so that it's repositionable (or use mirrors) so that you can use it while in "dual-portrait" or "dual-landscape" And (not sure if this is feasible) if you are wanting to eliminate the whole touch-screen concept how about a projection mouse pad as well?
BTM
That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
- open window
- throw
- close window
Should solve any problem...It seems like this would also reduce your batter life by 2x! Two backlights is much more taxing than one. Perhaps this one'll be the first large roll out of OLEDS also:)
My Cerberus laptop has three!
Repeal the DMCA!
Handwriting recognition is still slower and requires more QA editing than keyboard typing.
Touchscreen keyboards are marginal at best.
Not all applications are or can be made "pen aware" just because the PC itself is. If you need an example, try chnging your iPaq or Jornada to Landscape mode and watch how certain functions become lost and irrecoverable off the screen.
This solution certainly provides a different and interesting way of getting information OUT of the laptop, but it does so at a sacrifice to the means and ease of getting it IN.
Until there are new and functional means of accessing the user interface such as effective and accurate speech recognition or 3D gesturing ala "Minority Report", these gizmos just don't offer enough outside of a very few niche applications to qualify as revolutionary.
I do think this is a novel concept. Several of the posts/replies to this article are mentioning they would miss the mechanical keyboard. I believe this would be best suited for an external USB keyboard and "onscreen touch keyboard" when necessary or travelling.
I think this would be a boom for audio & photo/video professionals. Toolbars on one screen, preview/waveforms on the other, plus onscreen tracing/editting/erasing. If you are a photo/ad pro then you you haven't had value until have tried a Cintiq from Wacom. They are VERY expensive but VERY worth it!
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny