-This is something we first saw at a sneak peek back in December, but they're really showing it off here in CES, so--
-This is amazing.
-We're calling it a CES laptop.
This is the Acer Iconia which is a dual touchscreen 14-inch laptop.
There was a dual touchscreen Toshiba that was kind of cool.
It was a Libretto but that was-- those were 2 tiny, I think, 9-inch screens or 7-inch screens.
-Yeah, it was small.
-Okay, so this is gonna detect when I take my 10 fingers and put them on the screen and it's gonna pop up a keyboard.
It knows when I put all 10 fingers down, I want the keyboard.
Otherwise, it'll let me just use the bottom screen as a touchscreen and you can have a web browser window--have it on the top, have it on the bottom--either way.
But it knows that if you put 10 fingers down, that means you wanna type.
And if I take 5 fingers and I put them down like this, it's gonna call up kind of a media jog wheel, so it has a bunch of control interfaces programmed in, they're gonna react based on, you know, what kind of finger configuration you put down; and once you learn those, you know, 10 fingers seem pretty easy on your number 5 fingers.
If they get more complicated than that then it may not get as useful.
But those two basic--
-It's a little-- it's a little more complicated than starting to type.
-Yes, exactly.
-Like that.
-But almost if you put your fingers down like you're about to start to type, then the keyboard pops out.
-Right.
-And, you know what?
When I checked it out a greater length back in December when they first showed it off in New York at a very brief sneak peek, I thought it actually worked fairly smoothly.
Whether it works long-term in terms of being practical, the type-on remains to be seen, but I have become a very adept iPad typist, so I am now convinced that there is a way to do on-screen typing well.
It's almost as if we take a regular laptop and when we're not actually using the keyboard, it can just disappear
and be something else useful.
-Okay.
-Now, but whether it'll ever be a mainstream thing, who knows?
But I think it's a clever concept.
-But it's almost like, you know, having two monitors with your desktop, for example.
-Right.
I think it's going to be about a thousand bucks as premium laptops of this size are.
You know, it is kind of a concept car piece, though.
It's not your everyday practical laptop, but there's always those things for people who want to show off these.
We call them like CEO laptops in a way.
-Right.
-Or a coffee shop show-off laptops.
You know, 'cause there's always a guy with a Lamborghini- or Ferrari-branded laptop in the coffee shop.
-It might be one of those things where when you start using it,
I can imagine getting completely hooked 'cause we are a multitasking world these days.
-That's exactly it and that is the Acer Iconia.
