Amazon.com will be the original landing site of the gScreen Spacebook 005, a
dual-screen laptop developed by gScreen Computer.
The Spacebook appears to be the first mainstream offering from the Anchorage,
Alaska-based company, which began in 2003 with a focus on developing dual-screen
laptops for filmmakers, photographers, CAD engineers, and video and
graphics designers, and has since received interest from bankers, accountants,
traders and branches of the military.
While the idea of a dual-screen laptop remains novel, other PC makers are
experimenting with this type of form factor.
In January, Lenovo made a splash at the 2009 CES Expo with the ThinkPad W700ds,
a mobile workstation with a main 17-inch display and a secondary 10.6-inch
screen.
The gScreen Spacebook features a full-size keyboard and two 15.4-inch LED
backlit display screens; one
appears to slide out from behind the other. The resolution of the screens
is unknown, but given their intended audiences, an impressive resolution is
likely.
What gScreen has revealed is that the Spacebook will include a 2.26GHz Intel
Core 2 Duo P8400 processor and either a Nvidia GeForce 9800GT chip with 512MB
of dedicated memory or a Nvidia Quadro FX 1700M graphics chip with 512MB of
dedicated memory.
It will run Windows Vista or Win XP Pro, have 4GB of RAM
(two 2GB DDR2 SO-DIMM), a 320GB, 7,200-rpm
hard drive and a nine-cell battery. And there’ll be an IEEE 1394 1 graphics
card output, an HDMI slot, microphone and headphone slots, and a PCI Express
Card slot.
In the fourth quarter of 2009 it’ll ship from the United
States to 29 countries, and a few months
later will be available from Amazon.com sites in Canada,
Japan, the U.K.,
Germany and France.
Eventually, Buy.com and Newegg.com are also expected to be retailers.
Pricing has not been announced, though it is rumored at $3,000. And,
according to the gScreen blog, once the 15.4-incher is out, a 13.3-incher will
be in the works. With the two screens expanded, the Spacebook 003 will
offer 24 inches of screen from a 13.3-inch laptop. Go, Alaska.
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