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Comments: 104 +- Mobile: A Dual-Screen 10.1" Laptop In Time For the Holidays on Saturday November 28, @04:14PM
Posted
by
kdawson
on Saturday November 28, @04:14PM
from the netbook-with-a-two-page-spread dept.
from the netbook-with-a-two-page-spread dept.
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technology
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."
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More than a gimmick? (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:More than a gimmick? (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
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Re:More than a gimmick? (Score:4, Insightful)
Good lord... 1.6Ghz CPU and a gig of RAM will make "doing more than one thing at once ... painful"?? You must have a very low threshold for pain.
I'd love something like that just to have documentation on one screen while I code on the other. Or to have email/IRC/whatever open on one screen while I browse on the other.
Parent
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Perhaps I didn't phrase that properly. For tasks that I would actually want multiple monitors for, the specs are rather low, though for things I typically use my own netbook for (mostly web browsing) it's fine. Basically, to me, 2 screens on a netbook is overkill or low powered hardware in a dual screen laptop is not good enough.
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You would actually want to code on a 10" netbook form factor keyboard?
Sure, why not? The keyboard would be a tad cramped, granted, but how much screen real-estate do you need for a screen session with Vim running in it? It'd probably make a decent little device for hacking a bit of code while hanging out at the local coffee shop.
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IMHO, anything benefits from 2 screens. One for the "focus" stuff (internet, word...), one for the "always there" stuff (IM, media, social net...). I'm not a coder and I can barely live with only one screen :-p
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Myself, I actually used a 10.1" Aspire One as my main machine for about a month, until I could get a replacement motherboard for my main machine.
My main machine is a 15" ThinkPad T60p with a 2.0 GHz Core Duo, 2.5 gigs of RAM, an ATI FireGL V5200 (now V5250, the replacement motherboard was an unexpected graphics upgrade,) and a 2048x1536 display.
The Aspire One wasn't pretty when it came to multiple Flash apps running at once, but for everything else, it was more than acceptable. Except for the screen real es
Ya I fail to see the point (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Parent
Re:Ya I fail to see the point (Score:4, Insightful)
By having the two screens split down the middle you can never look at the objects directly in front of the keyboard. You're always forced to look slightly left or slightly right of the divide. This isn't exactly the most ergonomic position for your head. If the secondary screen is off to the side, with the primary screen dead center, then most of the time you will be looking straight ahead (which is a good ergonomic position) and occasionally looking off to the side (say to preview a video).
Parent
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Well, it's not like you have to turn your head 45 or anything, and these are fairly small monitors, it's a lot worse when you've got typical large "desktop monitors" in the 24-30" range, and even then it's not really that bad as long as you don't have to position the monitors in a weird way to fit them on your desk.
Of course, personally I prefer three monitors with two flanking monitors but I think that would be way too unwieldy for a netbook or laptop...
/Mikael
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Three monitors actually would work better on a laptop... you'd open up the lid and then fold out the left and right sections. The laptop while being quite wide, would still be balanced.
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I'd buy a device that is only 600 pixels tall only if it were handheld and a good price. For a laptop, no way. That's not a usable screen height.
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Yeah, the 2048x600 resolution seems a bit limiting. Looking at the photo, good for side-by-side spreadsheets?
Rotating these screens to portrait, you'd get dual 600x1024 = 1200x1024. There's your vertical pixels back! Can't someone manufacture a laptop these days that isn't widescreen?
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Agreed. For my new PC I went with a large (26") screen instead of 2x22" for the same price, and I regret my choice.
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I use tabs for that, it's a little cheaper :)
Butterfly Keyboard (Score:3, Informative)
I can remember when IBM first tried this trick, but with the keyboard instead of the screen [wikipedia.org].
that lenovo looks like a beast (Score:3, Interesting)
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?
looks good on paper (Score:2)
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?
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from what i can tell, the top screen angles its inner edge backwards while the bottom screen angles its outer edge forwards, so that the result is two screens thats set up as a very shallow caret when viewed from above...
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Do it in the 11.6" factor and I'll buy (Score:5, Insightful)
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
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1280x1024 = 5:4 = never happening.
However, there are off-the-shelf 1366x768 10.1" panels they could've shoved in there.
That said, my main machine is a ThinkPad T60p 15.0" with a 2048x1536 panel retrofitted.
Pays itself back in productivity (Score:2)
No comment has yet cited this blog post citing several sources [dubroy.com]. 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.
Once you dispense with the simplicity (Score:2)
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 u
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It's possible to make the packing/interconnecting process a lot more convenient than you are imagining. The whole thing could snap together into a carrying case without disconnecting any cables. You already pack your brick; so why couldn't the brick contain your computer? Why couldn't the keyboard lift out of the base of the monitor and connect wirelessly?
By the time you are twenty years older, years of typing on notebook computers is going to do a number on your back.
Get it a Butterfly Keyboard FOR THE WIN! (Score:2)
Pong! (Score:3, Funny)
Holy crap! Imagine playing Pong on this thing!
Missing the Point (Score:2)
Narrow slit screens (Score:2)
What's next, 8000x50 pixel desktop displays? Give me some height already.
just try using that on a plane (Score:2)
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.
Two notes: (Score:2)
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.
Re:It's a Acer Aspire One with 2 screens (Score:5, Insightful)
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
I have a Gateway LT3103u and an Acer Aspire One D250-1165 and the Gateway beats the pants off the Aspire... with a 1.2 GHz Athlon 64 L110. Now we're talking about an even-more-capable K8 core at an even-higher clock rate and you want to compare it on a clock-for-clock basis with an Atom processor? I thought we were done with that nonsense some time ago.
Parent
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The Athlon is a bit more power-hungry, but it's hard to say just how much because this machine also has a bigger screen with the brightest backlight I've seen yet. The battery in this unit is much larger, etc etc. I get the feeling that the Atom-based system is 10-20% better in that department. Short form, if you want the longest runtime, get the Atom... especially if you plan to run anything other than Windows, the only place you're going to get full power management support at this point. (I would guess t
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read reviews before commenting [cnet.com]. Like I said, "it's barely more than a Acer Aspire One"
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The 1.2 GHz K8 is already substantially faster than the 1.6 GHz Atom. The 1.6 GHz K8 will widen the gap even more substantially.
Made in Japan: Cheaper Alternative? (Score:2, Interesting)
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 qui
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Re:Made in Japan: Cheaper Alternative? (Score:5, Informative)
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
Parent
Re:Made in Japan: Cheaper Alternative? (Score:4, Informative)
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...
Parent
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1- the Atom really is much, much MUCH less powerful than any other CPU currently on the market, bar VIA's.
2- you're not paying for CPU power, you're paying for screens and design. Not only in money, but in battery life too.
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**citation needed
They still shoved a basic low-power processor in the laptop. Shame they didn't throw at least a core 2 duo in there and charge an even grand, at least with a c2d we wouldn't be making netbook references.
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http://xtreview.com/addcomment-id-4801-view-Intel-atom-1.6-Ghz-benchmark.html [xtreview.com]
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Don't tell Xzibit.