HP to show Firefly notebook with multi-touch, dual screens

Monday, January 5, 2009, 11:15
Gadgets
200 views
View Comments

CES is just around the corner, and the blogsphere is already swarming with factual news and speculation on what will and will not be curtained off there. Not only the state-of-the-art products are all set to grab the attention in the CES, but the concepts of the upcoming products will also be the center of attraction. Many a tech giants have already announced to debut their products there, now it’s HP’s turn that too has plan to reveal a concept note book, which, the company claims, will double as showcase for the future of desktop replacment notebook.

Dubbed as the Firefly, the prototype will have 17-inch display, which is typical of many notebooks as to its size, but relies on a multi-touch trackpad from the Voodoo Envy 133, laid in an abnormal location. Instead of before the keyboard, the pad is positioned at the side in a seemingly more comfy position. The pad also boasts of backing more complex gestures such as scrolling and pinch-to-zoom, but also gives support to left- and right-clicking and is claimed to be nearer to a true mouse as input.

As its reviews, the Voodoo-supported Firefly, which echoes Fujitsu’s LifeBook N7010, also comes with a 2nd, 4.3-inch display, which functions as an 800×480 secondary screen, worth using for IM and further small tasks but for butting in a game or lessoning the amount of available space on the main panel. Pitched as a gaming system, the system also comes incorporated with a 2.4GHz Core 2 Extreme mobile quad-core processor at its heart, and boasts of dual Mobility Radeon HD 3870 graphics chips embedded jointly in CrossFire mode.

Further, a 250GB, 7,200RPM hard drive with 4GB of memory also boasts of getting rid of common complaints regarding slow load times on notebooks, whereas a customizable backlit key-board and a distinctive infrared webcam mode adapt the notebook to night-time gaming. HP is reported to have no plan to put the Firefly into production, but is said use it similar to a technology demonstrator.