Hands-on with Intel's e-ink laptop

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By David Fearon in Beijing

Posted on 16 Apr 2007 at 12:05

Intel has shown off a ground-breaking new notebook chassis design. Currently dubbed the 'portfolio wrap laptop', it sports a leather-effect slip cover with its own integrated, high-resolution 'e-ink' LCD display.

The model was revealed during the press-only 'day zero' of the Spring 2007 Intel Developer Forum being held in Beijing, China.

The display is a Windows Vista SideShow-enabled device, allowing the portfolio to run any standard SideShow gadget. The difference between this and early SideShow-equipped notebooks, such as the Asus W5fe, is the display has a far higher resolution of 800x600, and being an e-ink display it needs less power since it only draws on the battery when the image is updated.

It's an intriguing way to handle the addition of a SideShow display: the slip-cover is completely removable, taking power and data via a small port-replicator-style connector that hooks into the bottom of the laptop.

Although the model is only a prototype, it's clearly at an advanced stage: Intel had several of the devices to show off, each sporting production-quality gloss finishes in several different colours. That high-gloss casing, 0.7in thickness and 1kg weight make it the sexiest design we've seen Intel come up with in a long time.

The only drawback is the e-ink display is monochrome with only four shades of grey, and its update time is about a second - you certainly won't be using this screen for gaming.

Questions about whether the portfolio-cover laptop will reach the full production stage were met with a knowing smile from Intel executives and a gesture to a different laptop on a nearby stand. The other unit was a design now being sold in the UK as the Dialogue Flybook, designed by the same Intel team and displayed as a pre-production prototype at IDF last year.