Asus makes the news again with the first Newport laptop

So Asus has made the news again with the W5Fe which is one of the first Newport laptops that have a small color screen on the outside of the laptop to be used while the laptop is off or hibernating to view things like email, calendars, notes, movies, images, etc. I think this first debuted awhile ago back at some conference but I think it was mainly a prototype thing. This seems a bit more solid and actually seems pretty cool. Use of the outer screen will require Vista so dont expect these laptops to be out for another half year or so. And for those worrying about battery, according to the article the outer screen shouldnt have a big impact on battery life.

http://crave.cnet.co.uk/laptops/0,39029450,49284115,00.htm

 

The outer screen seems fairly gimmicky to me. I can't really think of a good use for it which would justify the probable cost.

~ Brett

 

Loaf,

Bill Gates showed this prototype about a year and half ago when vista was still under it's code name "longhorn". Asus is the prototyper to the stars if you will..... but this is nothing new. That picture is actually idential to that of the prototype and in all honesty, I don't think the models are actually going to be released exactly like this. Asus is trying to wait for technology to catch up to them a bit as they want these secondary screens to be as flush to the systems as possible and the bump out on this prototype makes the bump out on the Vx1 look like nothing.

Gates said THIS is the wave of the future, and I think we'll see these external screens on all models come spring...... and to Nrbelex, within six months of their production release, I bet you'll wonder how people lived with out them. I say the W5 prototype during the winter and it's really got some cool potential. I only see it being difficult to maintain the minimalist design by trying to integrate these.....

 

With the suggested uses, email, calender, video, flght info, I don't see why I would pull out a laptop when I could do all those on my phone. If you need info that badly you're likely to already have a blackberry type device which does all that with a screen not much smaller.

May be I'm just short sighted. /shrug

 

Not short sighted so much as not seeing the big picture.... ok, well they're sort of one in the same I gues

... don't ask the question why would you pull this out instead of your phone? You need to ask yourself why do you need to have a screen on the lcd covey when you could just open the lid? If you ask yourself that question, which is the real question at hand... you could come up with multiple answers. What Bill Gates would say would be that it gives you secondary information that you could "view" in a "small space", rather than having to open the lid and start typing away. It would be like getting a text message instead of calling someone. They could see your email, or see what the weather is like, or what music they are listening to without the need to open their lid.... Think about this as something that may help if you're in a meeting, or in a class, or on the subway.... just places that opening up the computer just to get those little bits of information may be a pain or something like that.

I don't disagree that it's just another level of laziness or even on the other side - coolness...... but it deffinately isn't something anyone needs. So we'll have to see how they work out.

 

I could see this being useful, a small 'notepad' sized touchscreen with a styles would be awesome - pull out the laptop and write notes to myself without turning it on.

I don't carry a seperate PDA - yet - I'm not that much of a techie, but it would be a useful feature for sure.

Personally I've always wanted to have a desktop scree, about 23" widescreen, with two small 7" screens flanking it, that could display other things while I game fullscreen on the main screen.

Nice to see Asus in the news - I see that sales are up 25% over the previous quarter, which is awesome. I love the look of the W7j, and hope to see the 13.3" with dedicated form factor continue in the future.

Justin, is there a way to get some feedback to Asus about the ultraportable design? It would be great if the Ensemble ultraportables had support for some type of dock bar in the future, especially with the dedicated graphics. I saw that one of the new high end models (V1J?) has support for a dock bar, so I know it's a technology they have. That's the only major feature I would add to my Z33. I'd gladly pay extra for a dock, or the increased cost of an Ensemble package including it.

 

OK, now that's an interesting idea, but I think well beyond the current scope of the project. Perhaps that'll be what this turns into, but who knows, in a couple years we may realistically be used head mounted displays...... so it's all possible.

Asus is breaking into the business market a bit more and the V1j has a complete docking station - which is the first of it's kind for Asus. They are continuing the port bar concept on a lot of the new models, even the R2h UMPC, which is great. I'm not sure what they're doing and when, right now anyway, but they're trying to impliment it more and more over the next year.

 

Since the thread seems to have drifted toward notebook design I was wondering if ASUS or anyone else offers a Tablet PC with dedicated graphics. I would think with the focus on the visual interface for Tablets that dedicated graphics would be preferred. Maybe we'll see more movement in this direction when Vista comes out and pushes GPUs even more.

Another thing I was wondering about is if ASUS is moving toward some type of Media Centre functionality in non-Media Centre focused PCs. I guess this would mean using XP Media Centre with a included remote control but just without a dedicated TV Tuner. Something like what Apple has. I believe HP has a remote control that fits into the ExpressCard slot so that's certainly doable.

 

sounds like a great idea to me.

it would turn your laptop into a ipod but have access to the hd without booting up.

Getting around booting up is the ocnveneience. Id pay hundreds of dollars for it. Youd leave it on in the library and read and listen to music, and then outlook would beep you when that hot chick sent you an email.

Totally sold.

 

One of the issues I see with a dedicated graphics card in a Tablet is the loss of battery life. With a touch screen and Wacom, you're already trying to squeeze every minute out of the system as possible and the addition of another major component might throw off the equation even more.

~ Brett

 

tablet visual interface is more about the 2-D visuals like writing notes and diagrams. not so much the hard core 3D stuff that requires a graphics card. Also tablet pc users are usually more about mobility for use on the go in tablet mode. Graphics cards shorten battery life and increase heat both of which reduce mobility. That being said, Toshiba offers a tablet pc with a graphics card and so does Acer. You can probably find more info over at the tabletpc section of the site.

 

Well you know what would be really usefull..

I use Photoshop a lot at work and have used wacom tablets a lot in the past and I now use a Cintiq21UX basically a 21'' screen that you can draw on, its fantastic.

Anyhow I would love it if you could use a stylus on the touchpad, wouldnt that be cool, even though the touchpad is small, it is big enough for signatures and editing images in Photoshop.

Actually the funny thing is, my gf is a teacher, one of the other staff at her school was going mental trying to use a pencil on the touchpad of her Dell Latitude, she was swearing black and blue that her son was a big IT know it all and said you can use a pencil on the touchpad of your laptop and that hers was not working, she actually got really pissed at my gf when she said you cant do that.

Would be great if you could but I dont know any that do?

PS: I hope that additional tumor is optional? that bump is frekan massive

 

I think it would be cool if the screen was on an arm that would allow it to swivel out, so that it could be viewed while the laptop is open. I could run a utility that monitors CPU usage, or temperatures, while leaving the main laptop screen free...

 

I like the idea of a pda interface on the little screen. Or maybe a removable pda! But maybe that's just overkill. Basically if you could have something that could access the HD and last for "100s" of hours that would be amazing. Watch movies on it or hook up to a tv even. I'd buy one for sure.

 

Well..... that's certainly far fetched, but when considering the size of the pop out on the prototype, they probably could have fit a pocket pc in there, with a dock.

Now, Asus has done some cool stuff in the past. In our second year, we had a model with audio dj (much like a lot of other models we still have today), but the cool thing was that part popped out and you had 64mb portable mp3 player to take to the gym or something. So, they've at least gone in the direction before of combining devices like that.

 

I think it looks a little strange, but heck if it really gets a couple hundred hours of battery life off mp3's for example... that's impressive!