Twin-Screen Vista Laptops

An anonymous reader writes ""Asus has shown off a prototype of the first dual-screen laptop, the W5Fe. These laptops, bearing the Intel codename 'Newport' have a standard screen on the inside plus a smaller, additional colour display on the outside of the lid. The second display is capable of showing video, flight departure information, movie show times, alerts, games, movies, images and MP3s, all while the laptop is switched off. According to CNET, the battery requirement for such a screen is minimal — with standard laptop batteries providing hundreds of hours of use."

Comments

All this while switched off?

[Yvan256]

The second display is capable of showing video, flight departure information, movie show times, alerts, games, movies, images and MP3s, all while the laptop is switched off.

Unless that second display is driven by a second motherboard, I don't see how it can do all that while the laptop is "switched off".

Unless the author thinks that "closed lid = computer is turned off".

Re:All this while switched off?

[CaymanIslandCarpedie]

Unless that second display is driven by a second motherboard

If I remember correctly when these were first discussed years ago, that is in fact exactly the case. If memory serves its almost like an onboard PDA included with the laptop. When the laptop is on data is synched between the harddrive and the "pda" boards solidstate memory. I think there are some shared components like networking, etc but for the most part the PC is completely off and the "PDA" type functionalty runs almost completely seperately. Its been awhile so I could be remembering this incorrectly, but thats the basics of what I recall.

Re:All this while switched off?

[Panaflex]

Think iPod - because it's about the exact same chip. It probably hooks up through USB internally even.

More info here on the politics of this chip:
http://www.eetimes.com/news/semi/showArticle.jhtml ?articleID=186100394

Re:All this while switched off?

[Yvan256]

If that Portal Player chip is part of the laptop, isn't it false advertising to say "it runs even when powered off"? If it's off, then all of the laptop is off.

Can't wait to hear about people boarding airplaines with these laptops...

Business suit: "But miss, my laptop IS turned off!"
Hostess: "Then why is that external screen still working?"
Business suit: "Beats me!"
Hostess: "Security! We have a suicide bomber with a laptop countdown bomb!"

Or something...

Re:All this while switched off?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why a few hours? You can get around 8 hours of time out of a Nintendo DS with it's dual screens while playing games. I would imagine that a laptop battery is considerably more powerful than the DS battery.

Re:All this while switched off?

[suv4x4]

But that's my point. If there's a second motherboard (no matter the size) and a 2nd battery for it, it's still part of "the laptop". If the laptop is off, it means all its components should be off.

Oh sorry I didn't know you're after a bitchfest, I would've brought my heavy dictionary so we can be pedantic together on what "turned off laptop" means.

Re:All this while switched off?

[The MAZZTer]

A DS is specialized for playing games in a handheld form. As such it was designed to draw as little power as possible so the battery life could be prolonged.

On the other hand, you have laptops with USB ports, hard disks, GBs of memory, large screens (these are the real power drainers I hear), disc drives, etc etc etc all which need power. And being PC compatible they can't really be too optimized to perform specific functions because they are general-purpose PCs. And when selecting a battery (plus the above components) they have to concern themselves about weight and price and heat and umm... chance of explosions... umm... so battery life is just another variable to balance in this equation, and unfortunately to keep some variables down or up others have to be lowered.

Please god make sure its

[LiquidCoooled]

Not using Sony batteries.
Hundreds of hours of smoking hot performance.

Abuse

[Daemonstar]

Great, now when you go to a website, it will infect the laptop so that it shows ads or porn on the screen. :P

Re:Abuse

[debilo]

Great, now when you go to a website, it will infect the laptop so that it shows ads or porn on the screen. :P

You call it abuse, I call it service!

Better Eat Your Wheaties!

[garcia]

And the best part: it can run for "hundreds of hours without draining your notebook battery," according to the PortalPlayer site.

I'd like to see some real world numbers for this. Watching video and using wifi (to access the flight schedule information) would certainly drain the battery a bit faster than "100s of hours" before delving into your notebook battery.

Mmmm, marketingspeak.

Re:Better Eat Your Wheaties!

[gEvil (beta)]

I believe they're saying that the small screen uses the notebook battery, but that the notebook battery is such a ridiculously overpowered power source for such a tiny device/screen that you can use it for hundreds of hours without making much of a dent to the battery's overall charge.

Showing what now?

[Monokeros]

The second display is capable of showing MP3s? That's handy.
I like watching audio; cuts down on noise pollution.

Re:Technically dual screen.

[truthsearch]

Yeah, then two people could play a game of Battleship with only one laptop!

Comments you'll get

[wonkavader]

"We can't wait for this to hit the streets (probably some time after Vista's release) -- not necessarily because we want to use any of the functions, we're just complete posers. Imagine the looks you'd get on the train! -RR"

Comments like: "That's the biggest damn PDA I've ever seen." or "Shit, guy, you should buy a video Ipod."

We need dual screens on the inside.

[VidEdit]

The second, cell-phone-style screen on the outside is cute, but what would be really useful would be one or two additional laptop screens that would swing out like a two fold restaurant menu. While a triptych screen laptop might be a little heavier and need strong hinges, it would be great for video editing and such...

Re:We need dual screens on the inside.

[DarthTaco]

The second, cell-phone-style screen on the outside is cute, but what would be really useful would be one or two additional laptop screens that would swing out like a two fold restaurant menu. While a triptych screen laptop might be a little heavier and need strong hinges, it would be great for video editing and such...

I think a good head mounted display would be the better option. They aren't there yet, but I expect they will be before long. Something like the glastron with higher resolution and some minimal motion tracking.

Computing on a plane would be easier with the options provided by this method. Battery powered macmini, split keyboard, i-glasses or glastron or whatever.

This would be a nice option for PDAs. Not for their typical use, but for portable computing.

this is not new...

[chasingporsches]

this is just an implementation of the windows sideshow technology shown atleast over a year ago by microsoft. more info here: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/features/for everyone/sideshow.mspx

Re:this is not new...

[QRDeNameland]

I've heard it comes complete with a suite called Sideshow Bob.

Pimp my Laptop

[iSwitched]

Yo dog, we took your boring laptop and added a 7" monitor!

Dual-screen?

[ThinkWeak]

When I talk about dual-screens, I typically refer to the ability to utilize two screens at the same time to accomplish tasks. Having a screen on top of my laptop would just one more thing to replace when someone slams their overpacked suitcase up against my laptop case in the overhead.

Now show me a laptop that folds open to have two 19" screens side-by-side and you have yourself a deal.

Re:Dual-screen?

[Kesch]

Au contraire, I consider myself to be accomplishing two tasks when I read Slashdot on the main screen and subject everyone else to goatse on the mini screen.

Oh No!!!

[mahesh_gharat]

Now my boss will expect twice the amount of work from me.

Yes, they are off

[hacksoncode]

Wow, I shouldn't be surprised to see Slashdot blithering on about something it knows nothing about, but every time I see it I still am... almost makes me think I might be an optimist.

Try reading the fine manual on Sideshow.

Anyway, yes, the laptop is off when this thing is running (at least in the most classic implementation). They have their own ARM9 processor and memory. They work a bit like a PDA stuck to your laptop that syncs with the laptop when it's on and then can show information when it's off.

Re:it's not "twin"

[jank1887]

think DeVito and Schwarzenegger

ph33r my mutant powers

[Travoltus]

That laptop was designed by Professor-X for those of us X-Men who can see sound.

Wrong

[suv4x4]

This is not a "twin screen" laptop your title-inventing fact-bending fact-manglers!

This is an "aux" display which is part of the native Vista featureset, and FAR from being the first laptop manifactures with this facility.

There you go

And those that said it can't work with your laptop off: that's the whole point. Or you think I'm gonna spin my laptop all the time to see both displays?

Yes, the aux display has standalone electronics, it wastes very little power, and it can sync with Vista and work with the laptop off. Only when you need to access the HDD (like, listen to mp3-s) the laptop powers up when you use the aux display.

What kinda geeks are you, waiting for my sorry ass to explain all of this to you!

ObGhostbusters

[Rob T Firefly]

"Listen! ....You smell something?"

Re:I think it's neat

[bunions]

> It's a PDA.

Well, no, because it can access the laptops hardware, at least when the laptop isn't actually powered down.

http://www.portalplayer.com/preface/whitepaper.pdf

Reading is FUN-damental!

twin screens... psh

[awrz]

Honestly. Why not have the keyboard be it's own full resolution touch screen. That'd be hot beans. Have it display a digital keyboard... with neat GUI overlays. It' be like the Matrix! :)

Just stupid

[Sylver Dragon]

Am I the only person that hates the little screens put on the outside of the shells of flip cell phones?
The reason I buy a flip phone is because I want to protect the screen when it is in my pocket. Now, insted of a nice protective plastic cover, I have another LCD screen which can get broken. Now they want to do this to my laptop? No! The last thing my laptop needs is a screen that will get destroyed the firt time I accidentally hit a table with my laptop bag.
The clamshell top has a purpose, to protect the screen, it is not just wasted space which could use another fragile part.

Re:Fragile ?

[Dog-Cow]

"Because, y'know, usually they put the screen on the *inside* part of the laptop to actually *protect* it."

That's funny. I thought the screen faced that way so you could, you know, see it while using the laptop.

Re:Technically dual screen.

[Country_hacker]

Dang it, I've been thinking about this for the last week or so, and now here it shows up on /.

Mainly brought about because my wife and I have only one laptop to share, I considered putting a second LCD display on the back of my laptop's "lid", cutting away the cover so both LCD's could share the same light source. (Okay, so I'm not even sure the light is two-sided, but this is mostly theoretical anyway, I don't have the guts to start performing major surgery on my computer)

The only other question I had was the operating system, are there any variants out there that allow multiple keyboard/mouse/display combinations on the same CPU? Linux is supposed to be multi-user, but I'm talking about plugging in another USB kb/mouse and going from there. Anybody know of anything like that out there, or am I just dreaming?