SlideN'Joy Extender Adds Up To Two More Screens For a Multi-Monitor Laptop 80
MojoKid writes: Nothing beats the portability of a notebook when it comes to getting work done while on-the-go, but with that portability comes a number of caveats like a smaller keyboard and being forced to use a touchpad if you don't want to lug around a portable mouse. Then there's also the limitation of a single display, for those who need more screen real estate for certain tasks. Enter Sliden'Joy, a Kickstarter project that's set to launch on July 6. There's not a lot of technical detail given about it so far, but the basics are easy to understand. Sliden'Joy effectively hooks onto your notebook to allow you to extend one or two screens out of either side, giving you an effective dual or triple monitor setup. Two models of Sliden'Joy are going to be produced, offering either 1 or 2 displays, and sizes of 13, 15, and 17-inch are all going to be supported. There's no word on pledge levels quite yet, but the ultimate goal is to reach 300,000€ ($~332,000 USD) in 30 days.
touchpad (Score:2)
... being forced to use a touchpad if you don't want to lug around a portable mouse.
If you used a laptop with a quality touchpad, you might have the opposite view. I will never prefer a mouse over my laptop's touchpad, with the singular exception of games, which I don't play anymore, anyway.
Sliden'Joy? (Score:4, Funny)
Really? Sliden'Joy?
Their first action should be hire a marketing guy who will probably have them change the name lest it be automatically banned by various internet filters as a sex toy.
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Really? Sliden'Joy?
Their first action should be hire a marketing guy who will probably have them change the name lest it be automatically banned by various internet filters as a sex toy.
That would probably improve sales over the number that I expect this to sell. I will check the kickstarter when it pops but, frankly, I expect to be underwhelmed and not invest in it.
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For example, in the text I'm writing, if I want to select a range of it it takes me around five more seconds to pinpoint the location I need with a touchpad as opposed to a mouse.
Have you tried enabling the "three finger drag" operation? I found it made a great difference to the usability of a trackpad.
I still prefer a mouse when working at a desk - but since Apple introduced the large, glass trackpads I've felt no need to carry around a mouse for use 'on the road'.
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I don't like 'drag lock' functions because then that makes more steps. You have to three finger click, and then drag, and then three finger click. Too many actions for one operation. With a mouse it is basically one action, hold button and move mouse.
With the Mac trackpad it is one action: Press with three fingers and drag.
Clicking with three fingers gives the Dictionary and Thesaurus :)
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Turn off all the multi-touch crap except two-finger scroll. "Tap to click" on a touchpad is one of the stupidest things ever invented. And the touchpads on Apple stuff have always been light years ahead of the old Alps touchpads with the "edge scroll". Whenever I have to use an old Dell from the 200x era it drives me nuts. Doubly so if the drivers aren't installed, because PS/2 emulation mode has tap-to-click enabled.
And if you want a mouse so bad, GET ONE. They're like ten bucks. No laptop has a built in
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As a person who generally doesn't like macs I can't resist noting that I've never had any other laptop with a touchpad or touchpoint button that wore out but I won't go down that road. At least I didn't pay for the mac.
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I had three different "Aluminum" case PowerBooks/MacBookPros. (That case frame was crap, the DVD slot would go out of alignment, my skin oils made pits in the surface, and the latch didn't work very well.) The last one had the battery go bad at an early age.
I was calling Apple tech support about my click not working, and "oh by the way, my battery isn't holding a charge". I was asked the number of charge cycles and "Okay, we'll send you a replacement."
A few days later by the time it arrived, I realized th
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I think it's really well designed, and excellent at achieving it's purpose.
It's purpose is, of course, to really fuck up any users who are not touch typists intent on RSI, and any users who are touch typists by forcing them to take their hands off the keyboard.
Me? I carry a mouse. For the work's laptop. And a mouse for the client's laptop. And a good, left-handed mouse for my laptop stays in my locker when I'm not on the boat. And
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Perhaps you should try Windows? Not that the standard drivers are any better but with some configuration the vendor drivers are pretty damn good. With some training a touchpad is much faster for normal use than having to move one hand to a mouse, it will not be as quick as using a touchstick but those are only available for a very limited number of vendors/models. :(
As currently setup I use single tap to click, double tap to start selecting text and/or drag an object, two finger tap for right click and two
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For media consumption browsing, etc I can concede that you can go for a long time without ever touching the keyboard. Then I suppose if there are swipes that would replace what you would otherwise need to go to the k
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Well I compare using the touchpad to using the mouse and then (for me, for this computer with my configuration) the touchpad is much faster for everything except gaming. A touchstick/eraser mouse is of course much faster as one doesn't have to move a hand from the typing position but have other limitations (right/middle click requires moving a hand, left click does too unless one enables tapping the stick, either positioning speed or accuracy is limited even with a tweaked configuration and good acceleratio
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I'm on a Macbook right now and the touchpad sucks.
Then you just plain don't like touchpads; because Apple is nearly universally-recognized as having the best Trackpad, by a very large margin.
So, you can do one of two things:
1. Get an external mouse. Done.
2. Use the most-excellent Keyboard Shortcuts built into OS X (and then you don't even have to remove your fingers from the keyboard!). Look at this list [apple.com], and this list [apple.com]. If you can't find sufficient abilities in those two lists, you are truly unique in your text-manipulation requirements.
Adverts (Score:5, Insightful)
Is this just a pre-hype for a kickstarter to get people to rush on day one ? ...
come on slashdot this is not news yet
or am I getting old
Re: Adverts (Score:2, Interesting)
If you're old, how about contributing to the Shenmue 3 kickstarter...
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ysnet/shenmue-3 [kickstarter.com]
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Is this just a pre-hype for a kickstarter to get people to rush on day one ? ...
come on slashdot this is not news yet
or am I getting old
Well, if it helps, that shitty Hot Hardware ad-farm doesn't even link to the Kickstarter page. The only links in the article are "tags" to more crap on their site. I was mildly curious about how it attaches to the laptop and where power comes from, but oh well.
It's articles have been posted a few times to Slashdot in the last couple of weeks and every time there's never a link to the real content. The site is useless garbage.
USB 3.0? (Score:2)
No thanks, I prefer to have less latency. Also, no word on resolution, but unless it uses HDMI 2.0 or DisplayPort, it's not going to be HiDPI. Who would want a non-HiDPI, 30Hz screen these days?
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It looks like USB 3, and "Full HD" most places using that use at least 1920x1080, doesn't mean they won't pull a TV and use the 720p resolution.
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No thanks, I prefer to have less latency. Also, no word on resolution, but unless it uses HDMI 2.0 or DisplayPort, it's not going to be HiDPI. Who would want a non-HiDPI, 30Hz screen these days?
You certainly wouldn't use it for gaming or watching videos, but for having a couple of documents open simultaneously? It's just fine. I used to use a 64MB USB GPU that would stutter horribly if there was any video frame within the monitor, but worked perfectly for displaying Excel or Word documents.
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No thanks, I prefer to have less latency. Also, no word on resolution, but unless it uses HDMI 2.0 or DisplayPort, it's not going to be HiDPI. Who would want a non-HiDPI, 30Hz screen these days?
Maybe I'm up in the night about this, but USB seems to be the least-common denominator on a laptop. If this devices requires HDMI or DP, then a portion of the target audience would be cut right out.
For Mac owners with iPads, try one of these (Score:3)
They don't have hooking on aspect of the system in the article, but are still nice additions.
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I have tried Air Display, between a MacBook Air and a Nexus 7, and it works. Kind of.
Very very laggy display, since everything goes through wifi, Mac OS seems very confused about the resolution of the Nexus 7 (can't blame it) and strange skewing of the display are some of the problems I enconutered.
Past the novelty aspect of the software, I just gave up as the Nexus 7 display was simply too small to be usable. Air Display went into the trash on both devices, which is too bad, since it was a pretty good idea
Re:For Mac owners with iPads, try one of these (Score:4, Informative)
Exactly how many (Score:1)
Blowjobs does it take to get my Kickstarter linked as news?
Re:Exactly how many (Score:4, Informative)
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Well, this is slashdot, so you should take a page from this product's playbook and name it so it sounds like an accessory for a male sex toy.
Weight and balance (Score:2, Insightful)
Thinking about the weight of this thing, the second picture in the article is more accurate. The one that looks like the screens are flat on the desk and keyboard in the air. Not quite ergonomic though.
High Priced Meh. (Score:2)
Sorry but these are going to be USB 3.0 monitors, so they will not be 1920X1080 or higher and not impressive. They need to be displayport to leverage 2 displays at full high resolution. THEN be a high quality enough panel to not have defects.
I'll stick with the ASUS usb panel I carry with my laptop for when I actually need an extra screen. It's very low res (1366X768) but it's useful for having a PDF up or other very low framerate app up while I am at a customers site.
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That's a tad harsh. I have a 1680x1050 display connected as a third display via a USB-3 adapter and while I didn't expect much, it's worked pretty well for sysadmin tasks. I even occasionally throw full-screen Netflix/HBO/Amazon video on it without any serious problems.
I think the real benefit here isn't gee-whiz cutting edge display technology as much as it is a set of display(s) that are fairly seamless to carry around and use with a laptop to give you a triple head display.
It would be nicer, sure, to
iPad (Score:2)
If you just need one extra screen, you could use an iPad: http://www.zdnet.com/article/d... [zdnet.com]
Of course, it looks to be Windows/Mac only and limited to one iPad, but they say they're actively working on it [duetdisplay.com].
Really? (Score:3)
Every laptop I've ever had died from hinge-strain breaking the hinges.
To the point that I'm always ultra-careful opening and shutting any laptop, but it still happens.
I'm quite impressed that the Samsung I use at the moment isn't showing a single crack yet, but I imagine it won't be long.
This just seems like the worst of bad ideas possible. And it hinges on the side? God, that's going to put tremendous strain on parts of the screen that were never designed to hold weight.
Even if it's not just a con, there's no way that's a practical product unless the original laptop is designed for that extra weight and strain. And, I'm incredibly suspicious of the price, and also incredibly suspicious of quite how you're going to get that to work with any laptop.
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Every laptop I've ever had died from hinge-strain breaking the hinges.
This just seems like the worst of bad ideas possible. And it hinges on the side? God, that's going to put tremendous strain on parts of the screen that were never designed to hold weight.
Even if it's not just a con, there's no way that's a practical product unless the original laptop is designed for that extra weight and strain.
Yup, I am with you on this one. I am a lot more interested in this option [matrox.com], but I haven't got the cash (or desk space at home) to try it right now.
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When I see comments like this I always wonder who the source is... No mention of how you used it, when you used it, what the failings were, and you are an AC. You may be right but your comment does not carry a lot of weight.
Re:Really? (Score:4, Funny)
Who wouldn't want to be able to download a spare screen from the internet on demand?
caveats my arse (Score:2)
Caveat means a warning. The word you're looking for is tradeoffs.
Already done... (Score:5, Informative)
I was a backer of this project that was pretty much the same:
Packed Pixels [kickstarter.com]
Nice screen at 2048 x 1536, but not yet delivered. They just about hit their funding goal of £60,000 on 29th November 2014, and they're now taking pre-orders [packedpixels.com]. It would probably be better to just pre-order one of these than back a whole new Kickstarter - at least these are close to production.
-- Pete.
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Looks clumsy (Score:2)
I have docking stations at home and work so I get multiple large screens and trackballs for my laptop, but yesterday I received the AOC USB powered monitor that's been available for a while. I actually ordered the $90 older model. It's big and bulky (although not very heavy at all) but I plan to take it with me on the occasions when I'm expecting to be working in a non typical place AND needing extra space. I don't think I'd want to lug this slide enjoy thing all over the place.
It may have a few specialized
You do'n't have to suffer with the touchpad (Score:3)
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I have had several of those Dell Latitude business class notebooks (D630/800/820/83), and an HP 12.5" Elitebook. They have both trackpoint and touchpad, and that is maddening for me as when I reach for the trackpoint, I almost always "touch" the touchpad, and randomize the cursor placement, and have to back up, and recover (if I notice in time, otherwise I start clobbering existing text).
I recently got a Thinkpad Tablet 2 standalone bluetooth keyboard with only an optical Trackpoint, and love it. The lac
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Indeed, touchpads suck
But Keyboard Clits suck much more.
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without taking my fingers off the keyboard.
And I haven't been able to fly on any planet with a gravity.
If you put a caveat like "without taking my fingers off the keyboard", of course you can claim "victory". But, with a Keyboard Clit, you still have to take at least one hand out of the "typing position" to use the Clit; so it is just as "disruptive" to touch-typing as a Trackpad.
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still have to take at least one hand out of the "typing position" to use the Clit;
No. I have to take one finger out of typing position. And being as the QWERTY keyboard only puts a few keys within reach of my index fingers - and not all of the most used ones - it is a far lesser drawback than taking my whole hand away to use the touchpad with decent accuracy.
But go ahead and tell us how awesome your touchpad is. I can't force you to acknowledge reality if you choose otherwise.
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FTFY.
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One trick with pointer nubbies is that you really need to turn up the mouse pointer movement sensitivity to maximum. You'll overshoot o
Bulky (Score:2)
I fear that something like this is too bulky to be practical. Besides, when I need multiple monitors, I'm at a desk.
Perhaps a better option would be a 19 or 21-inch laptop; or VR glasses?
History repeats itself... (Score:2)
http://www-01.ibm.com/common/s... [ibm.com]
I remember looking at these when they first came out and thinking it would be useful for sysadmins/coders who work in odd areas, but the form factor is pretty much useless on a plane/train, inside a rack, or anywhere else you don't have a full desk to set it on. And the fact that it was an 8.5lb laptop in the days of their competition getting down into the 5-6lb class. Coupl
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So they're trying to reproduce what IBM did 10 years ago on the first ThinkPad W series laptops?
http://www-01.ibm.com/common/s... [ibm.com]
Yes but with several significant differences.
I remember looking at these when they first came out and thinking it would be useful for sysadmins/coders who work in odd areas, but the form factor is pretty much useless on a plane/train, inside a rack, or anywhere else you don't have a full desk to set it on. And the fact that it was an 8.5lb laptop in the days of their competition getting down into the 5-6lb class. Coupled with the high (even for IBM) pricetag, it didn't do so well.
Given the configuration it wasn't designed to be either light or affordable: high-end Intel processor, 17" screen + 10" screen, high-end Quadro graphics, color calibrator integrated in the base, Wacom digitizer in the palmrest and a lot more. A obvious desktop replacement machine for people that need to design stuff on the go - a small niche.
Adding how much weight? (Score:2)
Portable external monitors have been around for some time, with USB power and connections though some may have HDMI or VGA inputs available. They're not terribly expensive, the cheapest 1920x1080 I saw on a quick look is under $160 for a 15.6" USB-powered one from ASUS but there are other manufacturers. 720P ones are available for under $100.
If you have an appropriate tablet, there's also some software that will let you use an Andr
Matrox dual/triplehead? (Score:2)
They need power and they're semi bulky (about the size of two decks of cards) but there's a VGA and HDMI version, they have no lag, they're cross platform.Lots of configuration and resolution options as well-- especially helpful if you have differently sized monitors.
Video techs and staging crews use them for video presentations or video installations. And the price point is better.