With its pair of equally-sized screens, Kohjinsha's DZ-series laptop is one of those products that seems kind of useful, but is also completely ridiculous.
The DZ-series has two 10.1-inch, 1024 x 600 resolution screens. The user pulls each screen away from the center of the laptop, locking them into place so they extend roughly halfway beyond the body of the machine. Obviously, this provides more screen real estate, but it also allows you to run two windows fully maximized at a time.
Aside from its dual screens, the DZ-series is very much like a standard netbook. It runs either Linux or Windows 7 Home Premium on a 1.6 GHz AMD Neo processor, with 1 GB of RAM and a 160 GB hard drive. There's also a 1.3-megapixel Web cam, wireless n and a battery good for up to 4.5 hours. It costs a little over $1,200 to get the Windows-based laptop shipped from Japan.
The dual screen laptop has been attempted before, but hasn't really caught on. Lenovo's Thinkpad W700ds takes a slightly different approach, with a smaller, retractable screen that hangs off the main 17-inch display's right side. The base model sells for $2,100. Also, gScreen is hyping a butterfly laptop like that of Kohjinsha, with 15.1-inch screens, but hasn't yet released the product.
Kohjinsha's model has the advantage of stowing away into a compact form, but its squished vertical dimensions could be a hindrance. Most netbooks suffer from this problem, especially when you want to watch a video or play a large-screen Flash game, but it'll be even more frustrating on a computer that's supposed to afford more real estate. I praise Kohjinsha for its unconventional thinking, but for my money I'd rather get a 17-inch laptop with better specs.
