Dual Screen/Display Laptop

DrFishstik writes "A friend of mine sent me a link to his uncle's startup, featuring dual screen laptops. Literally, two LCDs! It is a really interesting design, and in (as far as I know) the late beta stages. Could be a real boon for video developers or web designers on the go down the road..."

Cool

[Kajakske]

Now they can actually bring out electronic books which you can read in your bed. You even have the same lay-out (2 pages at once) ...

However, you'd have to hold it. For some uses this is better, but for others, the conventional positioning is much easier.

We'll see what it gives, I guess.

Re:Here's one already available

[SirSlud]

Dude, putting that thing away is origami!

There's an important distinction here. This dual LCD puppy (its very cool, maybe somebody else has made one before) is the closest thing, interface wise, to an electronic book as I've seen.

Uncle Estari?

[eingram]

An interesting feature would be turn it sideways (so it looks like a traditional laptop) and one screen displays an on-screen keyboard so you could at least type somewhat normal.

You could almost pull it off with Windows 2000/XP on-screen keyboard, but it's too small and doesn't rotate 90 degrees.

Re:Keyboards no longer come as standard?

[nounderscores]

I guess that if you rotate the device 90 degrees, so one screen is lying flat on the table, you could have the "onscreen" keyboard be where you would expect a normal laptop keyboard to be.

Or if you were an artist, you could have a colour picker where you would expect an oil pallet to be.

Imagine being able to switch from querty to devorak at a software toggle, *and have all the little letters on the keyboard change automatically!* yay

or not. maybe the best use of rotating the thing 90 degrees would be to pop up custom arcade controllers on demand, or startrek style "follow my finger" sliding bar controls.

It runs the "other" Phoenix web browser

[yerricde]

According to this press release [dualscreen.com], the dual-screen computer uses Phoenix FirstBIOS, which includes a web browser that competes against a web browser based on the Mozilla code [mozilla.org].

College textbooks

[genkael]

Imagine having one of these for your college textbooks. Download the book from the university, make no trips to the bookstore, and only have to carry 1 thing to class. Heck, you could even network these in class and submit tests electronically. Ah, to go back to college...

Re:Keyboards no longer come as standard?

[Urchlay]

Yeah, all that sounds 1337 and all, but have you ever actually tried to use such things to do more than casual websurfing or similar?

Even if you make the bottom screen touch-sensitive so you can `type' on it, it would be a pain in the ass (and the fingers) to type even so much as this short /. post on.

Besides, as other posters point out, what's the point in having dual displays, if one of them is just going to be used to display a fake keyboard or arcade controls or whatever?

(BTW, speaking as one who plays emulated arcade games on a PC, I need buttons I can bang on when playing Galaga or Gyruss, just like in the arcade. What sort of LCD panel could take that abuse?)

This thing looks like a misguided attempt to impose a familiar metaphor (2 pages side-by-side like a regular paper book) on a new medium, where it doesn't fit at all. I can't see any benefit at all in using this even as a book reader that displays 2 pages.

On the other hand, having 2 displays *and* a keyboard can be amazingly useful. I bet if you were willing to learn to use a Twiddler (one-handed chording keyboard) this thing would be usable. Unfortunately, the Twiddler only comes in one size, and some of us have big hands...