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My vision is getting worse with age, and there are times when I have to stick my nose closer to the laptop screen to read certain websites. I can hit buttons on the keyboard to increase the text size, but sometimes this screws up the formatting. I can also pull the entire laptop towards me, but that makes typing awkward.
So this laptop screen design from Acer looks rather intriguing:
That's their forthcoming Predator Triton 900, which is actually a gaming laptop. I don't need the 4K screen and what's bound to be a high sticker price, but it sure looks nifty in operation:
And yes, it can be flipped over to show the screen to a person sitting across from you.
No word on release date yet.
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I’m a lapsed industrial designer. I was born in NYC and figured I’d die there, but a few years ago I abandoned New York to live on a farm in the countryside with my wife. We have six dogs.
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Acer's Innovative Hinged Laptop Screen
You will have to pry my 2014 Acer R7 out of my cold, dead hands. i7, 16gb, 512ssd still going strong. We bought 3, just in case. It was a woefully unsuccessful form factor so they were dirt cheap and finally what I had been waiting for to migrate from desktop to portable workstation. Sadly 5+ lbs, but excellent for my now bi-focal needing eyes. These days track pads are much better so it may be less compelling of a move for many, but the form factor here is superlative for lap and bed use.
Here's hoping it has pen support. This could be a pretty great portable workstation for people who need that kind of horsepower for their work.
"And yes, it can be flipped over to show the screen to a person sitting across from you."
Hi Armin, I agree the flipping thing round might not be needed, but the trackpad par for the couse in high end gaming laptops.
Innovative? What purpose do it serve? More moving part and more electrical contact to malfunction and screen is closer to your eyes to make macular degeneration a sure thing. Actually the designe isn’t new either as it reminded me of the cheap makeup mirrors at ikea.
Sharp Mobilon TriPad, anyone? Where DO these ideas come from?
Yeah, that's the thing I was trying to google. I assumed it was a Zaurus.
This was exactly what I thought of too when I saw the Acer! frog design did the original design for this. It was called something else originally (can't remember what), guessing they sold or licensed it to Sharp.
If you are using a Mac like every sensible person… you can zoom the whole screen. Get closer virtually, without any worries about reformatting. I do this all the time. It's like a reflex now.
Go to System Preferences > Accessibility and play around with the "Zoom" settings. You can zoom in/out a preset amount with keyboard shortcuts such as Opt-Cmd-"+" / Opt-Cmd-"–". Or you can 'slide' any zoom amount using your scrolling gesture plus a modifier key such as Cntrl. Incredibly useful. The graphic result is so good that it's sometimes better than actually increasing visual size in any in-app way.
I learned this a few years ago at an Apple software demo at the Apple Store in SoHo. Can't remember which of Apple's applications the demonstrator was demo'ing, but he kept zooming in to clarify, then out again. So cool. After the demo I asked him how he did that. He sighed, and said that that was always the most-asked question after each of his demos. He seemed a little disappointed that my question wasn't about his excellent demo itself.
Sensible? Not even slightly, MACs are overpriced and underpowered garbage