14 DAY TRIAL // Forget about Apple's MacBook Air, Asus' Eee PC or even Voodoo PC's Envy because, in just two years, these notebooks will no longer be considered cool. In fact, over this period of time, notebooks will change so much that you will not even require a keyboard. And that is because, according to an Italian industrial design agency, future portable computers will sport a dual-LCD design and no standard keyboard.
The name of the Italian agency is V12 Design, a company that is also responsible for creating a dual LCD laptop called the Canova. In fact, the company's founder and managing director, Valerio Cometti, is the one that came up with the idea.
The company's first-generation Canova design had a dual-touchscreen form and, according to Cometti, "it was developed for creative types, such as artists." Soon enough, the Canova laptop became more than just a design on paper and was materialized in a real product - one that was made of stainless steel and carbon fiber and didn't run any operating system or software. It was designed to be used more as a newspaper or writing pad with an electronic pen, rather than a portable computer device.
However, Cometti wanted to take his idea a step further and presented it to laptop manufacturers, who actually took a keen interest in what he had come up with. This is where the Canova Generation 2 comes into being. According to Cometti, his V12 Designs agency has been working on a second-gen version of the dual-screen laptop design, along with an US manufacturer. Although he held back from revealing the name of the US collaborator, Cometti did share his beliefs that the device would be completed in as soon as 16 months.
"We developed a brand-new style for the second generation. We did stretch the potential of the Canova noticeably, making it able to do things no notebook has been able to do so far," he said to a representative of the LaptopMag website, over the phone.
Cometti even pinpointed some of the new product's possible features, which include support for multi-touch input and built-in microphone. This means that one of the laptop's displays will provide a software keyboard, as a means by which users can input data. The built-in microphone is meant to support a voice recognition system, which Cometti believes "will become a more popular and widespread feature in these dual-screen notebooks."