Slashdot Mirror
A Dual-Screen 10.1" Laptop In Time For the Holidays
JoshuaInNippon writes "Japanese computer manufacture Kohjinsha has announced that it will begin selling a 10.1" dual-screen laptop on Dec. 11 — in Japan only. While it is not the first dual-screen laptop, a title claimed by the monstrous 17" Lenovo Thinkpad W700ds series, the Kohjinsha sure looks much more portable and stylish. The Thinkpad's extra screen pulls out slightly from one side for about a 40% increase on its display, whereas on the Kohjinsha's two full separate screens spread out symmetrically from the center. While specs are admittedly lower than the Thinkpad, the DZ series certainly wins on cost. The starting price will be ¥79,800, about $900, in Japan (exporters will likely mark that price up slightly), compared with the Thinkpad at well over $2,000. Kohjinsha says the laptop is great for working on 'large business documents' (e.g. excessively wide spreadsheets), or watching videos while surfing the Web, which is likely what most users will be doing with it. The timing and the price certainly make the Kohjinsha DZ series a tempting toy idea for holiday giving — perhaps to oneself."
Specs are 1.6ghz AMD, 1gb ram, 160gb hd, ATI 3200, so it's barely more than a Acer Aspire One with a second 10" screen, so why the $700 price difference? I imagine we'll see these going for ~$300 to $400 by spring.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
I want the dual screens to be back to back. So someone on the other side of me can see what I'm doing, except in reverse!
While I obviously understand not every product is tailored to my needs, I can't really see much of a need for this. The netbook level tech specs likely mean doing more than one thing at once would be painful. Plus, if you actually need a lot of screen real estate, you could likely get a larger laptop with more pixels (and more power under the hood) for around the same money.
Anyone around here think they would want one? Actually curious to hear about the appeal.
I can remember when IBM first tried this trick, but with the keyboard instead of the screen.
"I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
Sorry for the mildly off-topic post, but wow! I wonder what kind of battery life that beast gets? Does it have a portable nuclear reactor on board or is the battery reduced to being useful only for trips across the room to switch outlets?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Ah, another slashvertisement.
It might look good on paper, but maybe not in actual usage. There is probable a depth difference between the two screens due to screen thickness, unless one folds back and/or the other one forward. I can't tell from the picture. Another more obviously issue is the black edge right in the middle of your view. Am I supposed to use my perifial vision or turn my head constantly?
I only find that dual screens are useful in two situations:
1) When you have an app that needs a whole screen to work. A video editor would be an example. They often wish to use a dedicated screen as a preview screen. As such you want a second monitor to dedicate to that, regardless of size of your first one.
2) When you need more screen real estate than you can get in a single monitor, or for a cheaper price than large single monitors. This is by far the most common. You want more room, but a 30" screen is too much money so you get 2 22" or 24" screens instead. The whole reason is more room.
Ya well, in this case a larger laptop, or external screen (or both) would seem to be the way to go. I'm not seeing the second monitor as useful.
There's also the fact that the divide is right down the center. In dual monitor setups I've encountered (including mine at work) one monitor is directly in front of the user and is the primary screen, the other is off to the side and contains the less important stuff. I've never seen one where both monitors were in front and the split was centered. That would be very noticeable and very annoying.
To me, this looks like nothing more than a gimmick.
The screens are still limited to 600 pixels vertically. Use the ones from the 11.6" version, at 1366x768 each, and I'll be buying one.
I stopped carrying around a 14" notebook because it was just too much to carry around everywhere. A 9" netbook fits the need much better. After playing with someone else's 11.6", I was struck by how much more useful the 1366x768 screen is over a 1024x600 screen (the full-size keyboard doesn't hurt either). If I could have two such screens, which fold up for convenient carrying, I would be all over this.
I have to imagine this will be thicker than a typical netbook, but I could deal with that if the other dimensions do not change.
Mal-2
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
With one of these you can watch p0rn while watching more p0rn!
No comment has yet cited this blog post citing several sources. Basically you can assume that an extra display pays itself back in productivity.
The mentioned uses in the article of the summary ("very wide spreadsheets" and "watching video while surfing the web") are laughable though. That's pretty narrow. Think about ANY copy/paste routine, keeping documentation open, keeping an e-mail app open etc, THESE are the productivity increases.
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
of the basic notebook design, why connect the screen to the keyboard with a hinge at all? It's not a very good ergonomic design.
Why not have three pieces connected by cables like a desktop, but each part designed to pack for travel? You'd have the CPU and battery in a brick, a keyboard/pointing device, and a separate monitor (or monitors) with its own stand. Then you could leave behind one of the monitors if you wanted to save weight; your could face them in different directions to do demos. You could upgrade each piece independently.
It'd have to be easier and cheaper to do it that way than to build a mechanically elaborate chassis like that.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Remember the Thinkpad 701 with the folding, "Butterfly Keyboard?" Combine that screen with this keyboard and you'd have quite the portable "transformer." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dj-5OI2tPlY
All Lenovo laptops are made in China, and the Kohjinsha laptop is made in Japan. How can a Japanese product be cheaper than a Chinese product, given that the cost of labor in Japan is much higher than the cost of labor in China?
The Kohjinsha product is the 2nd instance of such unusual pricing.
In 2008, a quick scan at Frys (the local electronics store) shows that all Fujitsu laptops are made in Japan. Most Sony laptops are made in China. (Only Sony laptops costing more than $2200 are made in Japan). What is interesting is that the made-in-Japan Fujitsu laptops have prices and features that are similar to the prices and the features of the made-in-China Sony laptops.
What is happening here? How can certain Japanese manufacturers (like Kohjinsha and Fujitsu) possibly price their products so low, keep their high-value manufacturing in Japan, yet still be profitable? What is the secret formula?
Holy crap! Imagine playing Pong on this thing!
A manufacture process than uses robots instead of children (than need to sleep 5 hours a day and eat every once in a while) for repetitive tasks, I'm guessing.
I would so get one, if only there wasn't a massive bevel between the screens.
Having two screens if useful, but having two that can combine into one, would be brilliant.
How hard is to make the split not stand out so much.
All then need to do is make the inside edges of the screen bevel really thin and then have the two halves lock in to place with some latch at the back of the screens. If you get them lined up enough, It would make the split a lot less noticeable.
They could even go all the way and have no bevel on the inside.
I guess the LCD manufacturers have finally figured out how to dump all of the outdated crap 10.1" LCD screens that manufacturers have warehouses full of and still get people to pay top dollar for them - and sell 2 at a time.
Dumb public, they'll buy anything.
>> The price for the laptop made by Kohjinsha (based in Japan) is $900. The price for a laptop having similar features and made by Lenovo (based in China) is $2000. This pricing is quite surprising.
Similar features? Where?
Kohjinsha:
==========
two thin 10.1 inch widescreen LCD screens with 1024x600 (WSVGA) display
AMD Athlon Neo MV-40 ( 1.6GHz ) processor 1GB of memory (with a max of 4GB)
a 160GB 2.5 inch SATA hard drive
an ATI Radeon HD 3200 internal graphics accelerator
a wireless LAN + Bluetooth
a 1.3 megapixel webcam
Windows 7 Home Premium 32-bit.
Lenovo (basic, with nothing extra)
============
Intel Core 2 Duo processor T9600 (2.8GHz 1066MHz 6MBL2)
Genuine Windows 7 Professional 64
17" WUXGA 400NIT TFT + 10.6"WXGA+ TFT
NVIDIA Quadro FX 2700M 48-core CUDA parallel computing processor 512MB (dedicated)
2 GB PC3-8500 DDR3 SDRAM 1067MHz SODIMM Memory (1 DIMM)
Ultranav + Fingerprint Reader
Non-RAID HDD, 160 GB Hard Disk Drive, 7200rpm
Integrated Bluetooth PAN
Intel WiFi Link 5300 (AGN) with My WiFi Technology
Obviously it was meant as a workaround to Microsoft's limitation on screen size for Windows 7 and above!
What's next, 8000x50 pixel desktop displays? Give me some height already.
The only similar features between the W700ds and this is that they're both laptops and both have two screens. The W700 easily has more than 4 times the performance that this laptop has.
You thought you had trouble finding room for your elbows, now imagine trying to encroach half a foot to the left and right.
I'd say a 17" laptop is almost too big in those cases. 15" seems to be about the right compromise unless you absolutely need maximum space.
I know I'd have a problem with someone hanging half their display over my lap when I'm trying to read a magazine or my Kindle.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
1. Why did they have to use 15:9 displays? I think 4:3 displays would be better for this sort of use.
2. I'd rather they start selling portable LCD monitors, with stands that fold flat so the monitor will fit in your laptop bag. I could set up the second monitor in a hotel room, but not have to deal with it when I'm going portable.
Awesome. The SECONDARY display on the Thinkpad has more pixels than both of the Kohjinsha's displays combined.
WSVGA (1024x600) is a step back into the last decade...
I do like the idea of having a dual display netbook like that. Importing one from Japan would cost though, and I already have a perfectly good netbook. I guess I'll just have to hope the idea catches on with other manufacturers who offer products here by the time I'm due for a replacement.
Much better than the Thinkpad in terms of design and way better than the Intel prototype "dual" monitor laptop.
Kojinsha labels the unit as a netbook, it is small and smaller numbers (1GB RAM) also reflect that. They are not trying to compete with Lenovo.
Kohjinsha is actually a subsidiary of Inventec based out of Taiwan. Inventec designs and manufactures Kohjinsha products.
If you need use two screens on a laptop, wait until you get back to your desk and plug in an external screen. Hell - I've got three external screens connected to my MBP 15" and it works great.
This is just engineering out of control - if they sell 10,000 of these I'll be shocked.
Someone call the pointy-haired boss and have Dilbert-san clean out his desk. . .
Ask Me About... The 80's!
It would be somewhat acceptable if the displays stacked vertically, giving us 1024x1200. 2048x600 is absurd.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)