MSI dualscreen UMPC concept had us at 'dualscreen'

We were already fairly impressed with MSI's netbook-sized dualscreen e-reader, but this smaller 7-inch screened variation might even be the more alluring of the two. Only the lower of the two screens is touchable, and it while would naturally be a tad small for regular typing, we could almost see a decent thumboarding scenario arising. But really, we're just taken in with the look of this thing. It's incredibly thin, pure premium, and the little clock display on the is just icing on an already sexy cake. There's no word on what's under the hood here -- we'd have to guess some Atom variant, since this will run Windows -- and we're naturally in the dark about the rest of the vitals like price and release date.

MSI dualscreen UMPC concept had us at 'dualscreen'

[Gadgety Posted Jan 8th 2010 5:41PM]

Make a 5-inch suit-jacket pocketable version.

[SmoothMarx Posted Jan 9th 2010 12:25AM]

@Paul Miller @futurepaul

"and the little clock display on the is just icing on an already sexy cake"

on the what?

[weedy Posted Jan 9th 2010 5:02AM]

Sorry, but I couldn't resist noticing the similarity of this design with unibody aluminium Macbook Pro..
Is it intentional?

[Michael Pollard Posted Jan 11th 2010 10:15PM]

@weedy
Except for a few minor details...
Like having a display instead of a keyboard?!?

:)

[kadajawi Posted Jan 9th 2010 6:35AM]

Hmm... LCARS anyone? I want one. Not sure what for though.

And yeah, something to turn around the clock display would be nice.

[AM321CAN Posted Jan 9th 2010 11:26PM]

Microsoft Courier ne1?

[Michael Pollard Posted Jan 11th 2010 11:01PM]

I'd love something like this. If I want to do serious typing, I'll stick on a USB keyboard anyway. For anything that doesn't need serious typing, I'd rather have the reconfigurability.

Gaming with a game that uses a WASD arrangement? Only have those keys shown that you need, like say, W-A-S-D, F1-F4, CTRL, SHIFT and SPACE. Move the WASD to the right if you prefer for right-handed duty. You know, since the Optimus keyboards never turned out practical...

But without any pointing device, having the upper screen touchable would really be helpful. Even necessary, unless you have a virtual touchpad gadget on the lower screen or something wacky like that. But even that would be backwards, when you should be able to just touch the part of the screen you want, not touching the bottom half in such a way to represent touching the top half, which is basically what a touchpad does, virtual or otherwise.

Here's a thought - you can have your Windows desktop gadgets completely off-screen! With regular office apps, you will probably want to rearrange the toolbars to be on the touchscreen, above your virtual keyboard if you are using one. You know, so you can just PRESS an icon, rather than using an abstract representation of a pointer to do so.

Doing art or graphics? Have your tools below you, like you would with a traditional, physical palette; then have the vertical touchscreen for the actual art or graphics.

You mostly use your computer as a media player? Keep the controls (including media details, artist, etc) on the lower display. Don't have them interrupt the media. You can play a music video, for example, in full-screen, but still have the artist, song name, album name, etc, still in front of you. And you can press a button to queue a suggested song or video next, all without interrupting the video. Playing a movie? Keep playback controls off-screen, and be able to actually PRESS the buttons, not try to find where the mouse pointer disappeared.

I'm really wanting some AFFORDABLE touchscreens to be released for my desktop. I have 22" (1680x1050 $125) and 24" (1920x1200 $175) displays I bought a couple of years ago, and I'd gladly replace them with touchscreens for those prices, or even a slight increase. But $350 for 21.5"? I'll wait, thanks.

I'd really like to replace both my 22" and 24" displays with touchscreens and add a 22" horizontal touchscreen, LCARS-style. Many point out -- and rightly so -- that vertical touchscreens aren't ideal for heavy interaction, sore arms and all. But they're great for occasional interaction, like sliding down a webpage, selecting text (which is much easier on a stylus-friendly screen) or pressing icons. For heavier interaction, you want the horizontal touchscreen.

[FallenArms3 Posted Jan 13th 2010 10:37PM]

This just now got to Twitter? That's odd.