NEW YORK — There’s an amusing trend among gadget makers: They keep trying to improve their products by adding a second screen. All too often, this is less like adding a second patty to a hamburger and more like adding a second neck hole to a sweater. It does more harm than good.
The most recent example is Acer Inc. with its $1,200 Iconia laptop.
Closed, it looks like a regular laptop. Open it up, and you’ll find no keyboard, but two 14-inch, touch-sensitive screens facing each other.
If that sounds weird, well, it’s no less weird in use.
The second screen replaces the keyboard and touch pad. You can’t use a laptop without those things, so the Iconia has a virtual keyboard and touch pad appear on the lower screen.
But if the lower screen is taken up by a keyboard and touch pad, what is it good for? It’s not like we’ve gained any screen space.
Only by making the keyboard disappear can you use the screen to display content.
