dual-screen

"The Sony DS?" That was my first choice for the headline of this piece, but I felt it was a bit too cute and somewhat misleading.

No, it's not the Sony DS, but it does have dual screens, but do dual screens improve or hinder the tablet experience?

Design The first thing you'll notice about the Sony Tablet P is the dual-screen, hinge-based design that allows the tablet to be compacted, like a clam shell.… Read more

The concept of a dual-screen smartphone is relatively new, and a perfect storm of two schools of thought. One is that if it can be done, it should; the other is if one is good, two are better. Well, you can guess how that turned out.

It isn't that the attempt to enlarge the smartphone viewing space is inherently terrible; it's not. The idea of multiplying the screen real estate without multiplying the device's footprint is exactly the kind of technological envelope-pushing that could engender brainier, more-powerful smartphones. It's just the implementation that's never found its sweet spot. Alas, take a look.… Read more

I love the matching LCD monitors on my desktop. They keep my multiple windows and programs organized. I'm a two-screen kind of gal, and it has always felt a little strange to pop open a laptop and settle for a single screen.

The SpaceBook 17 from Alaska-based gScreen brings all that dual-screen glory to the laptop world. As you might expect, the SpaceBook is no featherweight. It features two 17-inch LED displays. All that hardware adds up to 10 pounds, so you may want a rolling bag to haul it around.

The monitors slide on top of each other to allow the laptop to fold down into a traditional shape for portability. The battery is placed at the front to add stability to the design.

Two glorious screens, plus hardware specs that are geared for handling video editing, mean that the SpaceBook is hungry for power. The battery lasts an hour and a half. You'll want to keep an electrical outlet handy for longer work sessions.… Read more

Can't choose between a laptop and a tablet? The Acer Iconia may be the product you've been waiting for.

At a Manhattan press event on Tuesday, Acer announced a dual-screen multitouch laptop that, while looking like a concept computer in the flesh, also looks like it's trying to get the best of two worlds at once. Iconia is a 14-inch laptop with an additional 14-inch screen where a keyboard would normally be, making the device in effect a large-scale version of a Toshiba Libretto we reviewed a few months ago.

The focus on the Iconia seems to … Read more

Sometimes, convergence between two devices happens so naturally that you hardly notice. You wake up, and your iPod and your phone are the same thing, and you wonder how you ever managed them as separate devices.

Some convergence is a bit more blunt. Case in point--the Entourage eDGe, a dual-screen tablet and e-book reader CNET reviewed in March of this year. In a perfect world, there would be one screen that offers e-ink readability as well as LCD features like color, photos, and video playback. Not content to sit and wait for this mythical color e-ink technology to arrive, Entourage literally links the two screen types together to deliver the best of both.

Is it an elegant solution? Nope. But it works, and it delivers the experience of marking and annotating e-books like nothing else on the market. Its biggest problem (aside from the $490 price) was its unwieldy size.

To answer this criticism, Entourage is now selling the Pocket eDGe--a scaled-down version of its original product offered at a scaled down price of $399.

The two connected screens of the Pocket eDGe include a 6-inch e-ink Wacom tablet on the left, and a 7-inch (800x480) resistive LCD touch screen on the right. Like the original eDGe, the Pocket version includes Bluetooth, Wi-Fi b/g, and USB sync and host ports. You also get a microSD memory slot to expand on the 3GB of internal memory, built-in microphone, and built-in 2 megapixel camera capable of video and stills.

During our hands-on demonstration of the Pocket eDGe, we noticed that the modified Android 1.6 OS performs much faster than original eDGe we tested in March. We're told the performance boost is entirely due to software optimizations Entourage has rolled out to users over the past few months.

Compared with any other popular e-reader on the market, the Pocket eDGe is still a little chunky at a half inch thick when open, and an inch thick closed up. Still, we have to admit, it's a much more portable proposition than its predecessor. … Read more

After recently debuting in Japan, Toshiba is now selling its dual-screen laptop/tablet in the U.S., the company said Monday.

As previously reported, the Libretto W105 (marketed as the W100 in Japan) is a small, 1.8-pound, 7-inch Windows 7 clamshell device that sports two capacitive LCD screens: one for viewing, and one for typing. The typing screen is much like the virtual keyboard on the Apple iPad, though the Libretto offers a few extra keyboard configuration options. The W105 can also function as a dual-screen tablet.

As of Monday, the W105 is available in the U.S. via … Read more

(Update: See our report on Lenovo's official announcement of the W701DS.)

Way back at CES 2009, we were obsessed with Lenovo's somewhat absurd/impressive take on extreme laptopping, the W700DS. With dual displays--one 17-inch, and a second slide-out one at 10.6 inches--and a Wacom digitizer surface built in right next to the touch pad, the W700DS was the experimental supersize ThinkPad to satisfy the dreams of desktop replacement dual-monitor fetishists everywhere.

Not only does a revamped W700DS finally seem to be nearing a U.S. release, but these specs were leaked by Lenovo, according to ThinkPads.com. … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Amid the tablet, smartbook, and smartphone wars, a new conceptual spin on the old screen-and-keyboard-connected-by-a-hinge way of doing things has us wondering if the idea is so crazy, it just might work.

MSI showed off a concept 7-inch mini-laptop/e-reader at CES, and its most notable feature was the swapping out of the keyboard with a second screen. The device could generate a virtual keyboard in the lower space, or another sort of interface--and, of course, the device could be turned on its side like a book, allowing two-page reading in a more book-like format than single-screen e-readers. It'… Read more

CHIBA, Japan--This otherwise run-of-the-mill laptop from local PC purveyor Kohjinsha has not one, but two widescreen displays.

One of the 10.1-inch screens actually slides behind the other, so it's able to be closed like a normal laptop. When they slideout they form an admittedly odd-looking, but useful dual display setup.

Also inside the laptop: a 1.6 Ghz AMD Athlon Neo-MV40, 4GB of memory, Bluetooth, a TV tuner, and a biometric fingerprint reader. The OS will be Windows 7 Home Premium, graphics are DirectX 10 compatible, and the whole thing weighs about 4 pounds. More photos of the sliding screens in action after the jump.… Read more