Despite the fact that Vista is not out yet (at least for the consumer release) laptop manufacturers are already working hard at releasing SideShow enabled laptops. The SideShow technology was initially designed to conserve laptop battery (get information from a laptop when lid is closed or latop is "OFF"). We expect to see more and more laptops with SideShow support in the months to come. So far, at CES, I was able to spot 4 notebooks with Sideshow ranging from color QVGA (320x240) to single line monochrome displays. One of the most popular units, as first seen in early 2006, was the ASUS W5FE latop, world's first SideShow enabled laptop. I was expecting to see a bulkier notebook, but I was quite surprised by its small/slim appearance.

This is a "Press Release Quality" picture.

This picture was taken at CES, as you can see the unit is quite small and slim.

This is a close shot of the SideShow menu system. (please excuse the flash reflections, unit looks better than in this picture!)

This is a rather interesting laptop model the Twinhead NoteBook (prototype). This prototype model sports a small OLED SideShow display with a resolution of 128 x 64 pixels. What's interesting about OLED technology is the fact that Organic LED displays do not need a LED backlight to operate thus conserving even more battery life. While this display is a graphic LCD it can only display alpha-numeric information. Nevertheless, the SideShow protocol can easily scale from text based to color hi-resolution modes without having so basically any gadget should be able to provide you with information, regardless of screen size.

Another new laptop model sporting a Sideshow display was the Toshiba R400. This unit has a negative monochrome LCD that can display time, battery, WIFI signal strenght, number of emails and some calendar information in a single line display. Since the unit is uses negative STN/FSTN technology, the LED backlight needs to be ON in order to see the information but I am sure that the power drain is insignificant. For example a 10-20mA backlight can run on 6Ah laptop battery for weeks... This is one of the best designed units (of course, what else can you expect from Toshiba's 20 years experience in building laptops...).

Last but not least was the LG's Z1 laptop with equipped with a 320x240 QVGA TFT display. As you can see, the shiny plastic lens over the Sideshow display can reflect a lot of light during flash photography. In reality, unit looks much nicer. However, I don't think that a glossy surface is the best choice for a SideShow LCD that is exposed harsh environments such as a laptop lid. Regardless, this unit has a sexier and cleaner look (also slimmer design!) that the ASUS W5FE, despite the fingerprint marks shown in this picture.

Here are the specs of the Z1:

* In-lid secondary display based on the NVIDIA Preface media platform
* Intel Core 2 Duo processor, T7200 (2.0GHz, 667MHz, 4MB L2 Cache)
* 12.1-inch wide XGA (1280 x 800) display
* 1GB DDR2 memory

For more information on LG's Z1, please visit http://www.lge.com

AB

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