Acer's dual-screen Iconia notebook hits Amazon for $1,200

Matthew DeCarlo

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Customers in the US and Canada can now preorder the dual-screen Acer Iconia-6120 "touchbook" for $1,200 through Amazon. Although the system resembles your typical notebook when closed, it forgoes a hardware keyboard in favor of a second 14-inch 1366x768 Gorilla Glass display.

The Iconia-6120 is powered by a dual-core 2.66GHz Intel Core i5-480M processor -- an Arrandale chip, not Sandy Bridge. Although the last-gen part undoubtedly sacrifices some performance and efficiency, it's still capable of 1080p video playback and should be sufficient for standard use.

The system also equipped with 4GB of DDR3 1066MHz RAM, a 640GB 5400RPM hard drive, a 1.3-megapixel webcam (1280x1024), one USB 3.0 and two USB 2.0 ports, HDMI-out, Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, and a four-cell 3000mAh battery that offers around three hours of runtime.


Since the Iconia relies solely on touch input, Acer preloads a ton of proprietary software. You can activate a virtual keyboard, numpad and touchpad on the bottom display for a more traditional experience. The predictive text feature should catch enough typos to make the experience bearable.

There's also mention of handwriting recognition software as well as a social media hub with access to services like Flickr, Facebook and YouTube. We imagine Acer has also implemented various gesture controls along with touch-optimized applications for web browsing, music, photos and videos.

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I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that practicality wasn't a big concern when designing this. It is very cool though!
 
Seems practical. Everything is going to touch screens... I think I may like a non-mechanical keyboard, actually.
 
I have a tabletpc and Windows7 has very good touch and pen support. handwriting recognition is excelent. I think this makes a lot of sense. On my tablet, when I bring up the virtual keyboard (Windows built-in), my only problem is that I run out space. haveing a separte screen area for that is handy.
 
Looks like a fun toy. Not practical under good use, just like a puppy, will get you attention in the park or at a cafe.

Too bad it has a very short baterry life. Probably should have used the new AMD E-350. And it would have been cool to get a Touch OS Dual booted on the device. I hope they keep trying this kind of device. Would have been nice if it split in two and you can use the secondary touch display as a tablet...
 
Not surprising that the battery life isn't great... I remember studies showing that power draw from the screen can account for something like up to 25% of a typical laptop's battery drain, depending on the brightness levels. So, double that drain with a dual screen setup like this, and it's not hard to imagine the batteries being taxed hard.
 
So... The main drawback of a tablet (lousy text input) without the main perk (entertainment with a long battery life).

Want a touch screen-like input, buy a mac (or just the trackpad). You get the pinch to zoom, 2 finger rotate, hand gestures, tap to click, etc... and a keyboard.

The two screens are useless since your hands will be covering one of them most of the time....
 
This means that in a short while there will be standalone input tablets like this one that I can plug into my desktop PC. That's one piece of hardware that I'm really excited about.
 
It has enough power to do average gaming, music, video streaming, and whatever. So even for geeks like me it is a fun computer. Not a power house at all. But plenty to toss around. However not totally practical for real gaming like WOW or Aion. idk about other gamers, but when I game i don't look at the keyboard, I feel it. Touch screen means you cant feel. Could be annoying haha. I would buy this computer for pure awe and coolness for not for heavy gaming.
 
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