The reason why a lot of us lust after the Art Lebedev Optimus Keyboard is because of the OLEDs, organic LEDs. It's one of the most advanced keyboards and having a little screen on each key is really awesome. This leads us to think about laptops and how to integrate something like the Optimus into that design. It's the holy grail of mobile design, the dual screen laptop. It's kind of like a Nintendo DS, only for adults. Having two screens is the ultimate in mobile technology. I've always wanted something like this and most of us here agree that it's the way of the future. Two screens. Both touch screens. Will this really revolutionize laptops?
It's called the Canova dual screen laptop and was created by V12 Design. It's currently in the concept phase and will be heading towards the development stage of production. Apparently, V12 have hooked up with Estari to help with the development of the Canova. Since Estari has experience with all things that include dual screens, it might be a good partnership that will produce something, not just concepts.
There are a lot of things that come to my mind when I see this concept. First of all, the overall thickness frightens me. With OLEDs and wafer-thin displays coming out, it would be logical to have something slimmer, like a MacBook Air, not something five times as thick. The other thing that we came up with is that you don't need two screens like that. You need one really good screen, and a secondary input surface, something like an integrated digitizer that could display a touchscreen, kind of like a big Nintendo DS for adults. [via Engadget]
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Comments (1)
Print out a full size picture of a keyboard. Go lay it on a hard table and start typing. Not only is it very hard to do without any sort of tactile feedback, it's actually quite painful after a few minutes.
While something like this certainly has possibilities, I can't see it for anyone who does any amount of typing without also having to take a long a separate keyboard. A rubber overlay is one possible solution, but carrying along a separate piece is less than ideal.
Also, I have to disagree with your assertion that one screen could be of better quality than the other. The big advantage of having two screens isn't so that one is relegated to being nothing more than an input device - you've already got that... a keyboard! The big advantage here is using both equally. Art board on the top, palettes below. Video output on the top, timeline below. Show your client two different layouts at once, side by side. If you're going to have to suffer through a less than ideal input mechanism, you might as well gain something from it.