If you haven’t seen the photos of this laptop with two screens doing the round of the Web, take a look below.
With two 17in HD LED displays, the SpaceBook goes against every trend in laptop design we can think of (well, apart from the Core i7 and Core i5 processors). It's more than 1.7in thick, weighs more than 4.5 kilograms, and according to its makers has the world's largest laptop screen space. While it sounds a bit like vaporware, prototype models have been pictured online, and the company is apparently taking preorders.
Image Source: gScreen
We're sure it sounded logical to the inventor, Gordon Alan Stewart, who apparently came up with the design when he needed a video editing workstation on a 6 month working holiday in Hawaii. As he states on the
gScreen web site: "I realized one morning that I did not want to haul my desktop and extra monitors around to every hotel for editing with the Adobe suite."
As odd as lugging a 4.5Kg laptop overseas sounds, it actually makes some sort of sense when you think about it. Sure, there are now plenty of powerful laptops that can replace a desktop PC. But for some of us, it's never the same as sitting in front of a PC. Especially if you're used to having two screens.
One solution might be to get a 17in laptop and plug it into a dock and second LCD. But if you’re on the road, then carrying that second screen isn't exactly convenient. The Spacebook shrinks it all into one luggable (remember that term?) package. And it's still less than half the weight of the original
Compaq Portable.
Someone must think there's a market for the twin-screen laptop - this isn't the first.
Lenovo brought out this one a couple of years ago. Instead of two whopping 17in screens, the Lenovo had a 17in main screen and a smaller slide-out 10.6in screen.
The Lenovo and Spacebook are expensive ($US2395 for the Core i5 version of the Spacebook). But given the number of toolbars and programs we have open at any one time, maybe having a separate screen could actually come in handy, if the design could be made lighter, less cumbersome, and cheaper. Dell?
