MSI dualscreen UMPC concept had us at 'dualscreen'
By Paul Miller 
posted January 8th 2010 2:55PM
posted January 8th 2010 2:55PM
posted January 8th 2010 2:55PM
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I'll take two...
Looks nice. Good touch having just one screen t'ouchable'
Like the whole look of it, and reckon could have a good stab at typing on such a small space.
Most of my browsing involves very little typing indeed. Though guess wouldn't suit those of you who do type a lot...
@ljf With time, it will be better than any regular keyboard. Keyboard will be seen as an ancient input option.
@ljf Not just that, but it has the perfect form factor to simulate a book or note pad. You could use it in a multitude of ways as MS' Courier showed us.
@ljf great concept with 1 concern & 1 suggestion ..
concern: what is the approx battery life on such unit powering 2 screens? battery life, unit weight, or price would take a hit.
suggestion: OLED-looking clock should have an 'accelerometer' or should at least have function to display the clock the right direction when opened up.
p.s. MSI logo should be less prominent and up-side down, but that's just some very little things... love the concept nonetheless! will considering getting one when it hits the shelf.
@ljf
Is it me, or did MSI come to CES with more eye candy than everyone else?
@ljf I want one of these, but with a Wacom instead of touchscreen!
@ljf DS?
@JonS as the courier showed me, is what you wanted to say. in the fashion of movies that tell you fuck off as they wrap down the final minutes into happily ever after, i'm convinced that hardware manufacturers are giving me the finger, which i'd have firmly lodged up my ask if i were a mindless early adopting consumer. it's quite obvious the difference between innovation and convergence and all devices are doing now is converging, blurring the lines between markets. so it's pretty obvious what products are going to be coming out for the next 30 years or so sans the influence of yet to be born boy geniuses who will kick start real innovation once more.
FILLED WITH WIN!!!
@doutorpiranha
As for the article, not so much.
"and the little clock display on the is just icing on an already sexy cake"
Don't leave us hanging, where's the damn clock?
@MONKEY
found it. Looks gorgeous. When can I place an order on this awesome piece of hardware?
Well.. thats the future right there!.. beautiful!
WHO CARES ABOUT THIS CRAP! I just want to know about the Envy 17. Please Engadget, throw me a crumb.
@compmonl I care about this beautiful "crap."
HI I'M COMPMONL AND MY NEEDS ARE THE MOST IMPORTANT! SO PLEASE WEBSITE THAT I DONT OWN DO AS I SAY BECAUSE I AM MUCH MORE IMPORTANT THAN ANYBODY ELSE HERE!
@Jouva
Fix your caps lock key
You can get good quality microsoft keyboards if totaly broke!
Looks awesome!
Flipping the clock when the lid is open would be a nice service to people sitting across from you (and would look less silly)
Kinda sucks only the bottom is touch.
But it can still have my babies
Sexy
I assume both screens have the same craptacular viewing angles we've come to expect from small LCDs? This would be infuriating with two separate screens that are at variable angles to each other.
@chispito
That's true, especially since having a soft keyboard requires looking at your fingers a bit more than with a standard keyboard.
However LCDs can have good viewing angles if you get a quality screen. The problem is that becomes more $$$, but i think in this case I think the extra expense would be required for usability.
@Kerensky97 3-4" OLEDs are already quite common in smartphones, so I doubt a reasonably priced 7-10" OLED is that far off, so that's an alternative.
Sucks, really, what we get as LCDs at all sizes - as Kerensky97 said, there's good LCDs, but usually we get crap ones, or the quality varies widely. The eeePC 1001H and 1005 (first gen) had rather good screen's, whereas 1005PE and 1210N have rather mediocre ones. You never really know what you're going to get without someone doing measurements.
Now this is what a UMPC should be. Give it 10+ hours of useable battery life and a broadcom video card and we have our PMP + eReader + General purpose web browser right here !
@Dhruv Bhutani
Is it just me or does it look as if when fully opened out , it would be a seamless display... Awesome !
@Dhruv Bhutani except for that big seam where the hinge is...
Nice! This is how all laptops will be in the future. A changeable and adaptable user input interface to the program/game/etc.
I was hoping in fact apple would do this before anyone else but they've been wanting to have everything perfect lately... :-)
why is dualscreen such a good idea here? isnt a lighter tablet with just one screen more usable?
@htd
You can have more screen real estate in a more travel friendly form factor.
I also think that the screen(s) would have less of a chance of getting broken this way.
@htd
If you had keyboard unless their weather seal, if you drop a juice or water to your keyboard it will fry up the laptop, happened to me.
I'd trade my Macbook in for one of those in a heart beat!
@DiGiC
I will take it off your hands if you want...
I just don't see this as anything more than a short term novelty. The future will contain innovation, this is just putting a ton of touch screens on a piece of hardware to try and appeal to people who are caught in the fad of the "touch screen everything".
It looks really nice but I would hope that they make it so that the clock one the back flips to make it readable when the lid is in the up position
I have a feeling this is going to pretty pricey.
What the hell is the top screen for? A big fish and some non-touchable giant icons? I don't get it.
@Chefgon
Well it's there for the same reasons it's there on a normal laptop.. because decades of laptop ergonomics tells us that that is the best place for the main display. It's also the same reason tablet PC's suck unless you like to look downwards all the time or use your hand as a screen stand.
The LCARS fantasy may be alluring to some, but the day they get rid of physical keyboards is the day I install Dragon Dictate and never look back. What we need is an interface pad that physically *morphs* to fit the application.
@psycros
That tech is being explored actually!
I like this device, but I'm not sure that I would want a laptop that I couldn't easily touch type on. Just a guess that this would not be a bit hard to work on in that sense.
@psycros
That would be great. I think haptic feedback does a surprisingly good job of fooling the human mind into a false sense of button pressing though. I find it much easier to type on a screen which has vibrating feedback.
Looks great, but I wish MSI would make their logo a lot smaller; it kind of ruins the aesthetic of the device.
Wow!
Widgets/Shortcuts/Keyboard on the base, and the rest is pure display.
Genius.
Can I trade in my Archos 5IT?
This device basically is full of delight in my opinion...
I don't see the point. Just how small and thin do people think these things can get and still be durable and legible?
Interesting unit indeed.
But I have a question, Engadget is often reviewing very high end digital cameras. How come during CES a large percentage of photos in your stories look as if they were taken from a circa 2003 phone camera? Surely you guys have something better on your shelves (even a $75 canon point-n-shoot?) to take photos with?
@DigDug Firstly, if these pics look like 2003 phone camera pics, I must have bought the wrong 2003 phone. Secondly, the cameras Engadget reviews are not "very high end" - have they even done a midrange DLR? Depending on your definition can mean "very high end" means Lecia M9 or even the medium format cameras.... but the type of cameras that Engadget reviews? Naw.
not good enough. make the both touchscreens (w/o ridiculous price increase) and make sure the touchscreen keyboard is easily reprogrammable to do whatever function i want. Also, 7inches isn't too small to have a full qwerty keyboard, sure it may be a little crampt but i'd quickly get over it when programming websites takes dramatically less time thanks to the customized keyboard values. having only one touchscreen is too limiting. I'd rather have a flat tablet with a separate (and wireless) touchscreen keyboard or two touchscreen sandwich. none of this half and half crap..
@nurlip
This is just the 'cheapo' version - 10" dual touch screen here from msi: http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/06/msi-dualscreen-e-reader-hands-on/
that is so cool, it reminds me of a DS
Personally, I would go bigger like 10-12" for my use. But I like the idea of having different screens for viewing and touching. Or I could see a bunch of fuzzy with burger/fries and surfing. Damn spend more time cleaning the screen than using. Nice concept.
@bluevaping
http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/06/msi-dualscreen-e-reader-hands-on/
This is fantastic!