14 DAY TRIAL // Back in October, Asus presented the SideShow notebook prototype. Essentially, it?s a lightweight portable with a window-like LCD on one side. Asus says that the idea comes in handy when you look at photos (and other image-displaying actions). I guess that the versatility of such a product can only be seen in time, so I won?t comment on the practical issues.
Overall, the W5Fe is very much like the older W5A and W5F notebooks, but features a smaller 12.1" LCD alongside with the 2.8" SideShow QVGA auxiliary display. 1GB of NAND flash also comes preinstalled. According to Asus, the QVGA display can be used to monitor meeting schedules, emails, play games, view photos, listen to music and if you have an attached GPS device you can also use the screen to display the navigation map.
Regarding the new product, Asustek claims:
?With the launch of Microsoft's Vista Operating System, notebooks are now capable of a more powerful processing that is predicted to change and improve the current computing behavior. SideShow is an independent operating system that it can be switched on without booting up the whole system. With imbedded flash memory, users can save selected data to SideShow, in forms of text, image and audio, for later review. The external system is well synchronized with the main operating system that users can set for automatic outlook (emails, calendar and meeting appointments) update when the main system is powered on for swift refresh to ensure data consistency?
Behind the sleek look of the SideShow notebook, you will find a Core 2 Duo heart running on the all known 945GM Express chipset. The notebook supports up to 1.5GB of DDR2 memory, SATA hard drives up to 160GB of storage space. The portable also comes with Bluetooth 2.0+EDR and 802.11a/b/g connectivity options so you won?t be left behind when it comes to wireless computing. The notebook is said to hit the retailers in late January.