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Early Look At Acer's Iconia Dual Touchscreen Device
iONiUM sends in news of an early glimpse at Acer's upcoming Iconia laptop, on which they've replaced the keyboard area with a second 14" display that accepts multi-touch input. "The upright display acts as the primary display, while the display that remains parallel with the surface generally serves as a navigation panel, alternatively displaying a roomy on-screen keyboard, a touch-wheel and other on-screen touch controls, or even an extension of what's displayed on the primary display. The latter option effectively provides a dual-monitor mobile device for presentations or studying complex spreadsheets across both monitors, or viewing one document in one monitor, and another on the second monitor. The two monitors make the Iconia a hefty device — at 6.1 pounds it's unlikely to be the device you throw in your bag for your commute." Engadget has some pictures and a video of the device.
Are you kidding? I think this thing looks awesome. I started out on an IBM keyboard with the 90dB click, requiring 20lbs of force to depress the keys. But something changed, and I found that I really like low-feedback keyboards. This is the ultimate low-feedback keyboard. But that's just the keyboard!
As others have no doubt pointed out, this is gonna make an awesome book reader -- but the size of a magazine! Ok, if your girly arms can't take the weight, that's a valid complaint. But I'm a rock climber, and I don't mind carrying a laptop in my backpack wherever I go.
Moreover, the interface options are through the roof with this. As a programmer / mathematician, I'd love the extra real-estate for reference materials.
Granted, there still isn't good multi-touch support in Linux, so I probably won't buy one. But I'm excited nonetheless.
6.1 pounds is 17" - 18" desktop replacement territory.
14" screens are not all that great to work with. They're SMALL, in comparison to 17" or greater. A 17.4" display has more than 50% more screen area than a 14.1". That's screen area that isn't broken up by a hinge and two bezels.
Buy a single 17" or 18" instead. For less money, you can get one with 1920x1080, 8 gigs of ram (instead of 4), 1 tb of storage (instead of 64o gigs), and an i7 (instead of an i5).
And if you STILL need more screen space, plug up to two external monitors.