Hacker News Reader

Comment by othercharles | Hacker News Reader

I can appreciate some kind of dual screen laptop, for the right kind of person and application, maybe, but this monstrosity is.. very strange. It seems to cater only to folk who have doubled down so many times on never learning ALT+TAB that they've committed to probably never getting laid for 7 lifetimes.. one for each of those insane matroska doll screens, which I can only assume are about 100dpi each.

Also, one bump and it would obviously explode. Zero need for it in any application, and I don't want to meet anyone it remotely appeals to. Sorry.

As for the dual screen case, there are much cheaper and far more practical options available that plug in via USB, if it really were the case you need those extra displays on the move. The primary need for this I imagine would be demo units. Certainly not trading from your local Starbucks, where you would rightly deserve every glare and smirk received for presenting this horror.

View on HN

> they've committed to probably never getting laid for 7 lifetimes

> you would rightly deserve every glare and smirk received for presenting this thing

I think there's some valid criticism in your comment, and I don't think this design is very practical. That said, can we avoid this type of comment on HN? All kinds of geeks out there find things outside the norm interesting and I'm sure some community is interested in this type of hardware.

Shaming and insulting people who are interested in things you find impractical doesn't really fit with the spirit of HN, IMO.

EDIT to refer to guidelines:

"Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community."

It's a valid concern, but please don't interpret the comment as snark. Speaking as an engineer, in absolute terms the competence of someone (or lack thereof) is clearly signalled with a setup like this. Perhaps it may have been better phrased in these terms.

Similarly, the second comment regarding what I believe many would agree are obvious social implications arising from a device like this could also have been better phrased. Isn't it also a rule on HN to treat all comments as being made in good faith where multiple interpretations exist? In any case I apologise for the phrasing, it was rather blunt and certainly somewhat off the point, but I also believe it captured important sentiments that would have been difficult to conjure with alternative phrasing.

@othercharles

Not to worry - no offense taken.

That's the thing though...

Not one person who has seen and used this in person responded in ways you've mentioned.

We've also had very positive feedback and suggestions from around the globe.

However we welcome any constructive criticism as it provides an opportunity to improve.

Quite obviously you can't see a use case - however from your perspective as an engineer your feedback is still very important to us.

Could you elaborate further on what you mean by "social implications arising from a device like this".

Also your feedback from an engineering perspective would be useful too.

For clarity - this is our design philosophy in a nutshell: (https://expanscape.com/about-us/the-3-us/)

"Social implications" angle is quite straightforward,

- to the informed, a device like this should not be necessary. It did not exist because it was never required, and where a desire for mobile screenspace is required, better solutions have existed for a long time. I define "better" as "less hinges", "more optional", "cheaper", and ideas along this dimension. A skilled engineer carrying this without an extraordinary reason would automatically strike me as a deeply impractical person, thus limiting the trust I would be willing to place in them. I appreciate trying to push boundaries, but the instant interpretation is that it could only be intended as something like a souped up Mini Cooper covered in blinking LEDs and under-the-hood neon lighting.

- to the uninformed, a laptop like this basically scares normal people away. One of the greatest accomplishments of the technology industry in the past 10 years is that regular people now carry laptops. There is no longer any reason to stand out, so it is even more noteworthy than ever before when one explicitly chooses to stand out (we lost our "special case" rights no later than 2010). You can pack an 8-core workstation with 16TB of NVMe in a perfectly useful and unobtrusive device the average person might only suspect were slightly outdated. The tone set by this device would be the same as wheeling a minicomputer into a coffee shop in the mid 1980s -- outlandish, curious, unaware of social norms. It would be as if you'd willingly dress in a neon pink 80s shell suit out of a desire to avoid being hit by passing cars, when the alternative is simply to stay on the sidewalk.

Social norms matter. They open doors just as easily as they slam doors shut. And this laptop most certainly would have people saying "no" more often in relative terms than they might say "yes" to you, much as turning up to a business meeting wearing that neon shell suit rather than a formal jacket would in most scenarios.

I hope this helps

Thank you for your feedback.

We respectfully have to vehemently disagree I'm afraid.

I feel that some of your analogies are somewhat odious and don't really make sense in the grand scheme of things - to me - but we can agree to disagree.

I also feel you put too much stock in what others think about you and what you might be doing rather than putting stock in what may help you to harmlessly achieve a goal regardless of these alluded to "social norms". - Please correct me if I'm wrong here.

Your envisioned "Social norms" also appear to demonstrate a potential reason for the complete lack of innovation in screen real estate in the laptop industry for the last decade.

With the exception of Asus no other mainstream laptop OEM/ODM has really pushed the envelope when it comes to additional screens when demand has clearly been out there for at least the last 10 years.

8 core/16 Thread laptops with 64GB RAM and Multi TB NVMe have only become available in the mainstream in the last 3 years. There are many, myself included who required this in portable form for many years previous to that. (My use case was GNS3 and EVE-NG labs when I'm out and about and internet was patchy)

I reached out to G Screen in 2010 with funds ready to purchase their dual screen laptop prototype and unfortunately wasn't able to.

I made my first quite basic prototype a little while afterwards.

When Project Valerie was announced I thought at last I can now buy the dream - alas it wasn't available - so I just doubled down on my prototypes.

I have personally and professionally had a need for more portable screen real estate since at least 2005.

Also you are definitely mistaken - No one cares what the engineers toolbox looks like as long as the engineer GETS THE JOB DONE in a timely effective manor. Those are literally the only metrics that matter.

Some people are more effective with a 1 screen laptop. Some prefer n screens. Bottom line is I am more effective and can react to anomalies faster if I can view multiple infrastructure monitoring tools without the constant tedious minimising and maximising especially when at customer sites or at the data center.

Some people don't mind balancing a laptop in one hand while tapping on the keyboard when resolving issues in a comms cabinet - I prefer using my TeenySERV Duo.

My "tools" are also personally fine tuned to my other particular use cases. (Granted my professional workload is a little extreme)

Note that we also have other prototypes with less screens for individuals with different use cases.

Imagine my surprise using my prototypes and being told by multiple people that they want it "yesterday" for their professional and personal use cases.

Our company inbox is literally overflowing with people trying to acquire the 7 Screen prototype in stark contrast with your world view.

The demand and diversity of these individuals, digital nomads, CEOs/Executives, lay people, finance specialists, content creators, developers, film studios did initially surprise me but it does make clear that they aren't concerned with your envisaged "social implications"

With the greatest of respect I think that your envisioned "social norms" don't quite resonate with the general direction or actual norms for laptops in 2020 or going forward in this particular instance.

I predict the trend will steer towards Multi screen laptops, laptops with rollable/foldable displays and finally augmented reality headsets capable of projecting very high resolution content directly into the viewers eyes simulating a multi monitor setup. (Some of these are already available and being actively developed in 2020 already...)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com