Asus W5fe: is SideShow the main attraction?
Cisco Cheng gives the Asus W5fe a solid run-through over at PC Mag, but I wanted to focus on the Windows SideShow aspect, as that’s the newest of new features on this Windows Vista laptop. The SideShow is a 2.8-inch display on the outside of the notebook and provides information from the computer even when the notebook is powered off. From a power perspective, both the SideShow display (shown, credit: PC Mag) and the computer use the same battery source, but each has their own independent on/off switch.
Cisco indicates that the current number of available gadgets is between slim and none (WMP, e-mail, calendar, stock ticker, webcam, and picture viewer), but there’s no doubt we’ll see more to come since Vista just launched a few weeks ago. Gadgets can pull data from either the laptop hard drive or dedicated flash, but the flash capacity is limited to 1 GB on the Asus. Still, for basic PIM and scheduling tasks, that ought to be more than enough to get you started using SideShow in lieu of a handheld for the same functions.
I like the idea of a secondary display for quick access to key information and I’m excited to watch the technology and gadgets evolve. If you were a SideShow Gadget developer, what gadget would you build?
Doom!
I would think about the types of applets from the original SideKick (showing my age here). They would need some kind of user input keys (Asus looks like cursor move and Enter only) but Microsoft showed various kinds of SideShow devices with input keys
1) A calculator
2) A notepad
3) A Calendar – just the current month
4) A clock – duhh – just the current time
Other interesting widgets:
1) Simple games – Tetris, Asteroids, Space Invaders etc.
2) Map viewers – load a Google map while in PC mode zoomed in all the way, store it locally, then allow viewing with zoom and pan.
3) Is USB connectivity possible? If so, a USB media browse
Regards,
Alan
MS-DOS emulator ;D
I would like the SideShow to be able to support the same gadgets as Windows Sidebar. The internet-connected ones (such as the Weather or Exchange rate one) would, of course, show only an offline snapshot of the data.
This would give us access to much wider range of gadgets. Why create yet another standard when one is already out there?
Also, I would like the SideShow to be touch-sensitive by default
Anyone with me?
Bruno