Laptop Next

It’s been long since the rumour of Apple Tablet was out in the market; for the consumers who cannot wait any longer to get touchy-feely with their laptops’ screens, KCI communications has a better and immediate solution as the Duo turns 17 inches laptops and monitors into a tablet. There is a small device acting as a “base station” that is clipped on to the top of the monitor and it continuously receives or picks up inputs from users with the Duo pen. The technology can be explained as follows: As the ultrasonic and infrared waves are reflected from the base stations, the amount of time taken is noted and pen’s coordinates are calculated.

The pen can be used to navigate through the desktop and enables the user to write directly on the screen in eight different languages; user can also mark PowerPoint presentations, WebPages or documents with this pen. The most remarkable feature of this Duo pen is that it can convert into a ball point pen so that user can take notes on traditional paper and then watch them appear in the included software called Note Taker.

There are two similar devices called Cannon’s Papershow which is a dedicated paper-to-screen device for those professionals who want to conduct interactive PowerPoint presentations and another gadget called LiveScribe Smartpen, aimed for students; it links audio to written texts. But Duo stands apart by being the first device that captured ink and converted plain monitor into a touch screen.

A couple of issues are suspected from the device; While using a laptop, writing and tapping on the screen will cause it to sway and hence require the user to hold one side of the screen with available hand. This is not a disadvantage but doesn’t make for an ergonomic design. As the base station is powered by USB, it is likely to drain lot of battery life and this can be another issue.

Keeping these issued aside, the Duo is still priced at just $119.99 along with shipping costs and is the cheapest tablet PC available. It is identical to the readymade tablets save base station as it automatically synchronizes Windows 7 tablet software and Windows Vista. The Duo will soon be working with 22-inches monitors and will be available for Macs by November.