Asus W5fe: is SideShow the main attraction?

Sideshow_mailCisco 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?

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