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After making the rounds around the web for the pats few months, the W5Fe is officially announced

The Asustek W5Fe should be familiar to most DailyTech readers by now. ASUS brought you word of the W5Fe back in October, but the company just officially announced it as the world's first SideShow-enabled notebook.

The W5Fe shares most of its design aspects with the older W5A and W5F notebooks, but features a rather unsightly bulge on its 12.1" widescreen lid. Housed within that bulge is a 2.8" SideShow QVGA auxiliary display and 1GB of NAND flash.

According to Asustek, the SideShow display can be used to track meeting schedules, phone numbers and emails. The display can also be used to play games, view photos, listen to music and can even be used as a navigational device.

Once you get past all of the SideShow business, the W5Fe is still a Core 2 Duo notebook at heart running on an 945GM Express chipset. The notebook supports up to 1.5GB of DDR2 memory, SATA hard drives up 160GB in size along with Bluetooth 2.0+EDR and 802.11a/b/g connectivity options.

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More Bulks
By Novaoblivion on 1/7/2007 10:18:02 AM , Rating: 2
To me it just looks like it adds more bulk to the computer, if I had one I doubt I would use the little screen very much.




RE: More Bulks
By Bootstrap on 1/7/2007 11:20:48 AM , Rating: 2
Agreed. One of the Asus resellers showed this off a while ago on the notebookreview forums and my response then was exactly the same as it is now. I only use my laptop while I'm away from my desktop, and when my laptop is off, it's usually buried safely in its bag. In these situations, it would be much more convenient to me to pull out a cell phone for email or an iPod for music then to whip out the whole laptop. When the laptop is out of its bag it means it's already powered on, so I have no use for the little screen then either.

I guess this could be useful if your laptop is your primary computer and you leave it closed on your desk when you're not using it? Then you could have quick access to email and such. But viewing photos and playing games? I can't ever see myself using it for these purposes. I guess if I had one I might find some use for it, but it really seems gimmicky to me. Given the choice, I wouldn't even pay an extra $50 for this, let alone $200 or whatever its average cost is.


RE: More Bulks
By borowki on 1/7/2007 1:41:32 PM , Rating: 2
I wouldn't want it even if it's free. Using it would make you look like a retard. I mean, to read the screen you'd have either hunch over the machine or tilt it up. Might as well just open the lid.

A better solution is for the laptop to have some sort of a ultra-low-power mode where it'd send data to a phone or PDA over Bluetooth. We'll probably see something like this in the Mac first.


RE: More Bulks
By tuteja1986 on 1/8/2007 2:23:50 AM , Rating: 2
MSI Had one before Asus had even showed it off.


Portal player called Preface
By crystal clear on 1/7/2007 6:56:58 AM , Rating: 2
PORTAL PLAYER whivh was acquired by NVIDIA has a product called PREFACE.

An article appeared sometime back on this product:

This is a list of what that gadget can do: Music playback (including when the PC is off), picture slideshow, support for Outlook 12 calendar, Windows Mail, contact info, current date/time, world clock and alarm, battery meter (level of laptop battery), reminder memos, timed memos, closed-lid system and application control and system state info (ie, on, off, standby, suspend, hibernate, etc.).

This stuff will increase the notebook price by $200 on average but big boys such as Asus, Quanta and Acer and Fujitsu are on the list of supporters. It will be available with Vista launch and it can even handle car navigation or Skype.

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=36...





By crystal clear on 1/7/2007 7:03:42 AM , Rating: 2
sorry-got add D.T. also-
Asus W5Fe: The First of the "Newport" Dual Screen Notebooks




What's the 1GB of NAND Flash for, Readyboost?
By heulenwolf on 1/8/2007 11:00:58 AM , Rating: 2
The article mentions that the laptop has a sideshow screen (which I think is well named) as well as 1GB of NAND Flash. What's the flash memory for, Vista Readyboost?




By erwos on 1/8/2007 1:05:22 PM , Rating: 2
It's to store the software, configuration, and widgets for the sideshow device. I'm guessing you can also toss some media on there, too.

I'm not sold on the whole concept, either, but at least it's something new.


Redundant
By dubldwn on 1/7/2007 5:36:37 AM , Rating: 2
quote:
According to Asustek, the SideShow display can be used to track meeting schedules, phone numbers and emails. The display can also be used to play games, view photos, listen to music and can even be used as a navigational device.

Oh, ok, so it's just like my phone.




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