Is This Twice the Netbook?

By  |  Wednesday, October 7, 2009 at 9:30 am

Engadget’s Ross Miller is attending CEATAC in Tokyo–it’s the Consumer Electronics Show of Japan, only far weirder–and among the gizmos he’s encountered is a prototype of a netbook with two screens (photo borrowed from Engadget):

Two-Screen Netbook

My instinctive response to dual-screen laptops of all sorts (which I wrote about here) is that they take the best thing about portable computers–the fact that they’re easy to quickly and efficiently use almost anywhere–and mess it up. If you want more pixels than an ordinary netbook provides, wouldn’t it be more practical to buy a larger, higher-resolution single-screen notebook? Wouldn’t this machine intrude on your seatmate’s real estate if you tried to use it on an airplane? And I like to take laptops literally and use them on my lap…a scenario in which double-screen models seem particularly unwieldy.

Every time I look at a two-screener, including this one, it seems to say “We’re doing this because it’s technically feasible, not because real people would want to use this in the real world.”

Then again, you could argue that real people have never gotten the chance to give two-screen notebooks a yay or a nay–yery few of the dualies that have been invented have ever made it to market. Do you think it’s an idea that’ll ever catch on?

 
3 Comments


Read more: ,

3 Comments For This Post

  1. tom b Says:

    I’m waiting for the netbook with NO screen– just glasses that project the image right into my retina. Oh, and I want it to be a tablet….

  2. Alex Says:

    If you could occasionally use only one of the screens, like fold is behind or slide it behind how ever it is done, then you could choose more pixels if you had all the space in the world or choose to go one screen if you’re on an overbooked airplane in coach.

  3. Bouke Timbermont Says:

    I can’t imagine this has a decent battery life… And even if it has, I don’t think it’ll catch on with consumers unless the middle bezel goes away… Making it essentially one big, kinda foldable screen.