Now this is exactly what I was hoping would come up when there was a buzz around Apple‘s ipad. Sadly the ipad did not go all the way and still has tremendous scope for improvement in terms or becoming a proper computing platform than a media display unit. The concept was put forth here.

The MSI however loses out on giving a  page span virtual keyboard that is identical to a real keyboard. Some thinking would have prompted them to give a more usable split keyboard when vertical and use one touch screen as input device when horizontal and the other as a display, creating a regular laptop kind of environment to work in.

Hands on is discussed at Endgadget

Dual Screen tablet

Tablets in Grid mode. One gets 10 screen space (assuming that the screen borders are minimal) and 5 processors.

Today, in the fast developing craze over ipad and earlier over iPhone, we have somehow forgotten Apple‘s first try at building a hand held computing device that did not do so well in the market. It did have a host of features including a fully functional hand writing recognition which was fairly good by existing standards in 1998 when it’s development officially was shelved.

The Newton Handheld platform was only followed by the modified OS X platform for the iPhone 10 years later.

Newton (platform) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Just a tribute to a pioneer. Not to forget what came first and where the “Pad” of ipad actually comes from. Probably just sentimental for Apple.

MessagePad 2000