Here at Computex in Taipei, we’ve already seen laptops with leather from Asus and wood from HP, but at a press event today, we saw a dual-screen machine made out of fabric.
There are a pair of 3:2 aspect ratio, 12.3-inch FHD resolution displays powered by a Whiskey Lake U-series, quad-core Intel processor. It’s on a purpose-made motherboard that is split between the two sides. The main motherboard with processor, storage and memory is on the top, while the networking, connectivity and I/O are on the bottom, which should make the bottom cooler than the top.
If you’re worried about typing on a touchscreen, no worries. Intel is also showing off a very low-travel Bluetooth keyboard that can fit in like a bookmark when it’s closed.
There are also batteries on both sides, for up to 60 WHr total. The whole thing weighs just 1.7 pounds.
The fabric came from a vendor in San Francisco, and it looks great. It felt more like a folio than a standard laptop, which is kind of luxurious.
Windows, in its current state, an Intel representative told me, may need some changes for a design like this to work perfectly. For instance, it would need to be able to align two screens for reorientation and control brightness on two independent displays. It would also require more modes, like being able to use it like a book
A rep also suggested we could see a lot more designs like this in the next two years, so stay tuned.
