Multiple Monitors Laptop, Are Dual Screens the Future of Mobile Devices?

Microsoft's newest research is about dual touch screens being used in future multiple monitors laptop or mobile devices. That's right. Two touch screens.

Yup, Randy Pausch-the Carnegie-Mellon computer scientist, who researched human-computer-interaction-always warned people about buying just one of anything. So he'd probably have approved of computers with two screens instead of one.

Apple's Version of the Multiple Monitors Laptop

Not just Microsoft, actually. The latest Internet rumor has it that Apple has regained the cutting edge of technology, and is about to release a Brick 'dual screen' multiple monitors laptop. (Yes, it's a Brick because it'll be able to smash through Windows, in case you were wondering.) This is a hybrid between a Macbook Air and an iPhone and will be something like a cross between an e-book and a tablet.

Are you still following? Good. Now onto the features: Holding the Brick horizontally, with the screens at an angle, makes the bottom screen turn into a virtual touchpad and keyboard.

Fully unfolding both halves makes the screens snap together in a tablet with a continuous touch-sensitive screen. In the tabletop mode, the touch of a button orients the screens towards users sitting facing each other. In e-book mode, the Brick is held like a laptop, but vertically.

Other Companies On the Scene

V12 Design, an Italian industrial design company has been working for about four years on a multiple monitors laptop (dual touchscreen laptop), called Canova. Canova 2 is now being developed in conjunction with an American company. Valerio Cometti, the founder and Managing Director of V12 Design says that Canova was created for artistes. The Second generation has a new style.

The potential of Canova is being fulfilled now, and things are being done that haven't been tried before, including voice recognition. According to Cometti, haptic interfaces will need to be a feature of all laptops and notebooks, in the future.

Well, no-one's unfamiliar with the way Microsoft works, right? Take the coolest thing going, like the multiple monitors laptop, reverse-engineer and figure out how to manufacture it, then crush the competitors to tiny pieces with their marketing power. And Steve Jobs definitely doesn't get to throw Bricks through the Windows.

Multiple Monitors Laptop, Microsoft's Plans For The Future

So, given the buzz about dual touch-screen, it shouldn't come as a surprise that Microsoft is about to read the Codex. Codex started out as an e-book reader, but the original designers actually had in mind something that had to do entirely with writing-a thought tool, basically. Writing, sketching, annotating, this was supposed to form the core of the writing experience. And, the Codex stays true to this idea to the extent that it comes with a mesh-pocket with a mole-skin tie, that can hold pens, notebooks, etc.

Thing is, though, that the Codex isn't designed to be an e-book reader but more like a multiple monitors laptop. Opening it up to face both screen doesn't make it read like a book. Nor does the Codex pretend to turn into a single screen device. The Codex is a dual-hemispheric, multitasking, haptophile's dream come true.

The Microsoft designers concentrated chiefly on the intelligent partitioning of tasks and interfacing across screens, in case of the Codex, and that shows. You can get pictures off Flickr on your left-hand screen and they'll easily go into your notes on the right-hand screen, where you can mix, match and edit.

On a single-screen device, you need to use tabs, minimize, or flip back-and-forth. The Codex lets you see your research, references, raw materials on one screen and your project on the other, all the time, even while manipulating them.

In fact, this doesn't stop here. You can even close a folder on the left-hand screen and have it open up on the right-hand screen. It all work as a seamless package-the closer focus materials and the navigational materials work together. You don't 'need' to view pages consecutively; the Codex lets you view any two pages simultaneously. Say good-bye to the back button.

You can't get on without side-bars? You get side-bars on the Codex. Yup. The nig picture and the minute details of your paper, thesis, project, plaything, whatever you're fiddling with, can be accessed and viewed simultaneously on the Codex.

You can even take the screens out of the Codex and have them retain functionality. So you can set it up like a laptop with one screen becoming the touch-screen keyboard. You can also switch into face-off mode and work or play with someone else.

Microsoft's been becoming more creative for a while and a multiple monitors laptop is a step in the right direction. Touch-screen technology was pretty impressive and dual touch-screen technology pushes Microsoft to the top of the game.

It's still no Apple, though.