Intel debuts concept notebook with four displays

(Credit: Nicholas Aaron Khoo)

SAN FRANCISCO--Talk about extreme multitasking. If two displays on a notebook, like Lenovo's ThinkPad W700ds' Side Panel, don't do the trick for you, Intel's about to up the ante with four. Yes, that's four--one primary LCD screen and three auxiliary OLED screens above the keyboard. The aim here is to allow the user to organize information the way he or she prefers it.

Touted as the world's first multitouch, multiscreen concept solution, the prototype (code-named Tangent Bay) was unveiled at the Mobility Meetup, an Intel Insiders event for bloggers here. We got Intel rep Renuka Awasthi to demonstrate the touted seamless interaction between the main screen and auxiliary displays.

Intel's Mobile Product Line marketing manager for Greater Americas showed some music files being dragged and dropped between the OLED panels using a finger, as well as flipped video files being moved up to the main LCD display from the auxilliary panels with ease. One could also contract, zoom, scroll, and pan content from one screen to another.

After the jump, blogger Nicholas Khoo has more photos and videos for Crave.

(Credit: Nicholas Aaron Khoo)

(Credit: Nicholas Aaron Khoo)

(Source: Crave Asia)

[slickuser]

lame, period

[Shadcell]

Could be useful in gaming, if your inventory or map or something was on the secondary screen.

[chabig83]

Why use three small screens above the keybaord instead one wide screen. Lame.

[dragonbite]

Why go to all of this trouble? Instead make a clamshell with 2 touch-screens.. one with the image of the keyboard and one for the screen side.

Then you can either open up and use both sides as a screen, or play multi-touch games with a friend (each holds onto an end of the laptop).

Kudos if you can switch which one is the keyboard screen and which one is the screen-screen. :)

[mjconver]

Didn't the Nintendo DS do this a couple years ago?

[morton101]

i would like to see a laptop size ds

[Firehazel]

@ morton101
that would be beyond awesome.

[richcsst]

Pointless, simply pointless.

1> They are at the wrong viewing angle. The need to climb over (so to speak) and look at them eliminates any perceived usefulness they may have.

2> Wouldn't just 2 or three inches added to the width of the main screen accomplish the same purpose? You'd also be able to read this extra real-estate much easier.

3> Oh great! More buttons to press! Seriously, just because you can add touch capability, doesn't mean it's needed or appropriate.

4> Nice, why have one screen to suck up your battery? Now you can have four!

[jav182]

No offense but you should really read up or more carefully on what exactly those screens are. The view angle argument is pointless, the way that OLED's work make viewing angles a thing of the past. And on a multimedia laptop, which that is obviously supposed to be, you aren't supposed to have a laptop that lasts for 3 hours. Just the hardware to make that technology work smoothly (if you noticed all of the videos the computer was playing) makes your battery life drop down to less than 2 hours, and having 3 extra OLED screens were 70% of the display area is turned off due to the fact that it is showing black (another nifty little OLED feature) really wont make much of a difference.

Personally I think that the extra buttons are great, seeing as they are screens you can customize what they show, and they could be very useful with Windows 7.

And 2 to 3 inches on the side of the screen? That nearly defeats the purpose of a laptop in the first place...

[nSeika]

Throw things around here and there, why not put one of the screen in place of the touch pad and make it multi touch. I think Sharp had a notebook with touch screen as touch pad already.

And auxiliary display arranged horizontally still sounds more comfortable than moving point of view up and down while working.

Seems like it would looks pretty fitted in aluminium suitcase too

[Super2online]

While most of you don't think to highly of this. I would imagine that given the chance, it could be very useful when apps where written to take advantage of it.

[electron-chaser]

Conceptually it is moving in the right direction. I multi-task all day on two screens, jumping among spreadsheets, email, two or three browsers simultaneously, would like to be able to touch a thumbnail-like image to open it, touch it again to minimize. Thumbnail needs to be just large enough to flag whether the doc is a browser or spread or whatever. Videoconferencing would be well-served by this. What you have there is a potential video switcher. Would make a good workstation for training - pulling up podcasts, going live to the boss. Hmmm...

[chasrobin]

As someone who uses multi screens now for day to day stuff.
And considering this is a conceptual mockup, Intel is moving in the right direction.
I can imagine using this very easily.
I would like to see better touch screens (accurate and sensitive) smaller seperation between the screens (NO BORDERS)
They should hit up apple on the touch screens ala iphone, and process management capabilities (what screen will an app default open on) and ability to span screens.
And of course to be able to clone any of the screens to a full sized externally attached monitor without DRM issues I would assume it would have HDMI output it would suck if it could not display content on both due to that stupid copy gaurd junk they are trying to push on everyone. Anyone who plays with HTPC knows it's a pain.

[FrogPad1]

I am including the video of the one handed SoftFrog on tablets and iPhone. These are both in Alpha stage, yet are working very well. Because the FrogPad IP is multi touch, we are using both multi touch and single touch technologies on our SoftFrog. FrogPad is a proven User Interface on hardware..

I suggest that it can be an alternative/additional user interface for all Multi Touch applications.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=te9O8HavQpQ

[richard993]

Poor concept, very short battery life, not very practical. All you really need is a touch screen that makes it easy to switch between screens or virtual desktops... oh hang on a second, that's what Apple has done and you don't even need two screens! Your focus is really only on one screen (maybe two if you are really talented), so why have four screens at all? When you can switch between virtual screens ultra-fast, you really only need one screen anyway. Try open source VirtuaWin and set the mouse property "Enable Mouse Desktop Changing", set the desktop layout to 2 wide and one deep, and see for yourself how easy it is to work with one screen and feel like you have two.

[mvtl]

eINK type display sould be used instead of OLED

though the concept is not functional

[vherdeux]

that was so great... i can use it in my work in technical drawings... and in designing purposes..