Twin-Screen Vista Laptops 176
An anonymous reader writes ""Asus has shown off a prototype of the first
dual-screen laptop, the W5Fe. These laptops, bearing the Intel codename 'Newport' have a standard screen on the inside plus a smaller, additional colour display on the outside of the lid. The second display is capable of showing video, flight departure information, movie show times, alerts, games, movies, images and MP3s, all while the laptop is switched off. According to CNET, the battery requirement for such a screen is minimal — with standard laptop batteries providing hundreds of hours of use."
All this while switched off? (Score:5, Informative)
Unless the author thinks that "closed lid = computer is turned off".
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I'm a little concerned with the hundreds of hours of display time. The display is one of the leading power suckers in laptops (the cpu is ususally the prime culprit). Unless it's a reflective lcd display (think calculator type where there is no backlight) it should drain the batter in a few hours.
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A DS is specialized for playing games in a handheld form. As such it was designed to draw as little power as possible so the battery life could be prolonged.
On the other hand, you have laptops with USB ports, hard disks, GBs of memory, large screens (these are the real power drainers I hear), disc drives, etc etc etc all which need power. And being PC compatible they can't really be too optimized to perform specific functions because they are general-purpose PCs. And when selecting a battery (plus the
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Re:All this while switched off? (Score:5, Interesting)
If I remember correctly when these were first discussed years ago, that is in fact exactly the case. If memory serves its almost like an onboard PDA included with the laptop. When the laptop is on data is synched between the harddrive and the "pda" boards solidstate memory. I think there are some shared components like networking, etc but for the most part the PC is completely off and the "PDA" type functionalty runs almost completely seperately. Its been awhile so I could be remembering this incorrectly, but thats the basics of what I recall.
Re:All this while switched off? (Score:4, Informative)
More info here on the politics of this chip:
http://www.eetimes.com/news/semi/showArticle.jhtm
Re:All this while switched off? (Score:5, Funny)
Can't wait to hear about people boarding airplaines with these laptops...
Business suit: "But miss, my laptop IS turned off!"
Hostess: "Then why is that external screen still working?"
Business suit: "Beats me!"
Hostess: "Security! We have a suicide bomber with a laptop countdown bomb!"
Or something...
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Granted I don't know how "rugged" this second screen is.
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Unless the author thinks that "closed lid = computer is turned off".
Way to go brainiac. But it does in fact have a (very little) second board that is powered independently indeed.
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Re:All this while switched off? (Score:5, Funny)
Oh sorry I didn't know you're after a bitchfest, I would've brought my heavy dictionary so we can be pedantic together on what "turned off laptop" means.
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Let's just wait until we see something in a newspaper about a passenger who had to miss his flight because he couldn't "turn his laptop off" and was taken for questioning by airport security.
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part of laptop == anything inside or permenantly attatched to the laptop case.
turned off == all power utilising items fitting the above are receiving no power
therefore, if the laptop were turned off, the second screen could not display anything. So, the laptop does not have a display whilst turned off.
What we have here is a clash of the marketting buzzwords, and some severely twisted logic.
The laptop is not off while the second display is running and the case is closed, it is opera
On vs. off is not so black and white (Score:2)
Even the real-time clock? Do you want your laptop to lose the time of day every time you shut it down? What about the circuitry that recognizes when the user has pressed the switch to turn the power on? Fact is, "on" vs. "off" in personal computers since the 1990s is not so black and white.
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yes of course, it's not moving along, but it is active
"Even the real-time clock?"
well, if that's on then the laptop is powered isn't it, it's not off....
You're totally right, for a laptop to be called "turned off", there shouldn't be a *single* electron moving inside it...
kind of my point really.
A laptop is never 'off' while there is some item in it receiving power. It's in a lower power mode, it's not 'off'
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Doesn't that violate physics? The electrons are sort of always moving in matter. Does that mean a rock is "Turned On" because it contains moving electrons?
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Or do you mean violate a *law* of physics?
And having no electron moving wouldn't violate any physical laws that I'm aware of (even though the quote in question was someone elses, I was responding, but forgot the quotes). It would just mean a very low temperature.
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Wow.
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Consuming power == on.
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The truth is th
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Please god make sure its (Score:5, Funny)
Hundreds of hours of smoking hot performance.
Not so sure (Score:2)
Abuse (Score:5, Funny)
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You call it abuse, I call it service!
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Better Eat Your Wheaties! (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd like to see some real world numbers for this. Watching video and using wifi (to access the flight schedule information) would certainly drain the battery a bit faster than "100s of hours" before delving into your notebook battery.
Mmmm, marketingspeak.
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Minimal battery use? (Score:2)
If the Wi-Fi runs 2 percent of the time... (Score:2)
Here's how I'd guess the PDA in the lid works: You put the URLs of RSS feeds on the PDA, and every 30 minutes or so, the PDA connects to the Wi-Fi chip, associates to the network, grabs the RSS feeds, and turns off Wi-Fi.
Not if it's on for 2 percent of the time.
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Showing what now? (Score:5, Funny)
I like watching audio; cuts down on noise pollution.
ph33r my mutant powers (Score:3, Funny)
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ObGhostbusters (Score:5, Funny)
Technically dual screen. (Score:2)
Re:Technically dual screen. (Score:5, Funny)
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Rushes off to patent it
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Mainly brought about because my wife and I have only one laptop to share, I considered putting a second LCD display on the back of my laptop's "lid", cutting away the cover so both LCD's could share the same light source. (Okay, so I'm not even sure the light is two-sided, but this is mostly theoretical anyway, I don't have the guts to start performing major surgery on my computer)
The only other question I had
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This does require that the computer be turned on and using power... I'm not sure how Asus manages to run the second screen without using power.
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External display with no power required! (The refresh rate does leave something to be desired.)
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About a year ago, I searched and searched for a notebook which was smallish (15") but had anything resembling a decent 3D accelerator card. No such beast. 15" was the smallest you could get. I started looking later on and even 15" started to become less common. The higher end 3d cards only came in notebooks with 17" screens.
Luckily this trend is subsiding. Dell now offers a 12" notebook with a decent 3d card. But your assertion that 'choice
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DS Irae (Score:2)
Diiiiiii-esssssss, DS, DS irae! [ytmnd.com]
Comments you'll get (Score:3, Funny)
Comments like: "That's the biggest damn PDA I've ever seen." or "Shit, guy, you should buy a video Ipod."
We need dual screens on the inside. (Score:5, Interesting)
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I think a good head mounted display would be the better option. They aren't there yet, but I expect they will be before long. Something like the glastron with higher resolution and some mini
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There, fixed that for you.
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this is not new... (Score:5, Informative)
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I think I've heard of this before (Score:2)
Too bad I can't get an OS X laptop with this feature.
Pimp my Laptop (Score:5, Funny)
Dual-screen? (Score:3, Insightful)
Now show me a laptop that folds open to have two 19" screens side-by-side and you have yourself a deal.
Re:Dual-screen? (Score:4, Funny)
I think it's neat (Score:2)
Also being able to scan for wifi coverage without walking around with the laptop open like an idiot would be a nice change.
Overall, seems like a good idea.
yeah but if you find wifi (Score:2)
Re:I think it's neat (Score:4, Informative)
Well, no, because it can access the laptops hardware, at least when the laptop isn't actually powered down.
http://www.portalplayer.com/preface/whitepaper.pd
Reading is FUN-damental!
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I guess your idea of 'trivial' and mine are pretty different.
I stand by my opinion - a little built-in device that can access a sleeping laptops hardware is nifty.
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Oh No!!! (Score:2, Funny)
Yes, they are off (Score:4, Informative)
Try reading the fine manual on Sideshow.
Anyway, yes, the laptop is off when this thing is running (at least in the most classic implementation). They have their own ARM9 processor and memory. They work a bit like a PDA stuck to your laptop that syncs with the laptop when it's on and then can show information when it's off.
Hmm (Score:2)
Wrong (Score:5, Informative)
This is an "aux" display which is part of the native Vista featureset, and FAR from being the first laptop manifactures with this facility.
There you go [pcworld.com]
And those that said it can't work with your laptop off: that's the whole point. Or you think I'm gonna spin my laptop all the time to see both displays?
Yes, the aux display has standalone electronics, it wastes very little power, and it can sync with Vista and work with the laptop off. Only when you need to access the HDD (like, listen to mp3-s) the laptop powers up when you use the aux display.
What kinda geeks are you, waiting for my sorry ass to explain all of this to you!
Why, God, why? (Score:2)
- It is a seperate QVGA display, but relies on a system-on-a-chip and custom board to drive it. It derives power presumably from the laptop battery, but more than likely at lower draw.
- It is updated with new information when the laptop's main OS is on (ActiveSync, anyone?).
- It runs XML-based "gadgets" -- my guess is something like Confabulator widgets -- that perform certain functions.
My question is, why on eart
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seen a home-made one before (Score:2)
a bit of JFGI and I found it:
makezine article [makezine.com]
So Asus are borrowing ideas from Apricot? (Score:2)
http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?
(small 2nd screen above the keyboard, in case it isn't obvious)
I always thought that it was a daft idea then...
Why not a removeable PDA? (Score:2)
Oh well... I should moderate but.... (Score:2)
So... you can get an iPod for $200 - $250 or you can buy a whole new laptop with this Thingy on it... I'd rather not drag my laptop out to do what I can do with an iPod + looking at the plane schedule on the wall.
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twin screens... psh (Score:2, Interesting)
Bon Voyage (Score:2)
YA "convergence" device? (Score:2)
And if I've got the whole laptop with me anyway, why mess around with a tiny screen and no decent input method if I can have a 14" monitor and a full keyboard, just by opening the damn device ?
Also, the damn laptop now has an unsightly bulge, making it twice as thick so it won't fit in my laptop bag. Keep the mongrel, I'll use my current laptop plus a separ
Just stupid (Score:3, Insightful)
The reason I buy a flip phone is because I want to protect the screen when it is in my pocket. Now, insted of a nice protective plastic cover, I have another LCD screen which can get broken. Now they want to do this to my laptop? No! The last thing my laptop needs is a screen that will get destroyed the firt time I accidentally hit a table with my laptop bag.
The clamshell top has a purpose, to protect the screen, it is not just wasted space which could use another fragile part.
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That's not the only reason to buy them. Flip phones are smaller (at least in the dimension that counts) than bar phones with the same screen size and button count, and they protect the buttons from being pressed in your pocket. I like being able to see who's calling, or just check the time, without unflipping the
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The problem is, one good bump and I expect that I am going to lose that screen. In order to keep that from happening I now use a belt holster for my phone, and I always make sure to put the phone into it with the screen facing my hip. I figure that my body will have more give than a table or chair
Congratulations, Asus (Score:2)
Dan East
Re:it's not "twin" (Score:5, Funny)
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That's funny. I thought the screen faced that way so you could, you know, see it while using the laptop.
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