
Project Valerie – The world's first triple display laptop - vasco
http://www.razerzone.com/project-valerie
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ryandrake
Wow, when I went to hit the back button in my browser, a jarring "HEY, BEFORE
YOU GO" pop-up appeared on the page, prompting me to do whatever. Haven't seen
that trick before! Nice to see annoyance-delivery is still an area of active
innovation.

~~~
SamBam
Oh man, I see that all the time. Mouse leaves the window and I get a
fullscreen ad begging me to sign up.

Half the time, I'm still reading the damn article, I was just playing with the
mouse. Now I have to find your hidden Close button to keep reading. Go to
hell, marketers.

~~~
kossae
FWIW, the Esc key normally gets rid of these. Regardless, it is such an
annoying marketing trick. Who knows... it must still provide a positive ROI if
so many sites are still using it, unfortunately.

~~~
pavel_lishin
The esc key is about 50/50 for me, at best. I usually find that the back
button is more effective.

~~~
rangersanger
cmd+w tends to work well. As for ROI, as a former ecomm product manager I can
tell you that our marketing department's reasoning for requesting the feature
was not based on ROI, rather, herd mentality. And, once a feature is there,
it's extremely difficult to remove.

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owenversteeg
At first, I thought "damn, I want one right now."

But then I realized something - most of the time, when I use a laptop, I'm
fairly space-sensitive. You can't use one of these on a train, tram, bus,
plane, or in any situation where there are people next to you.

And even when there _is_ enough room, you pretty much instantly give up any
semblance of privacy. Even though 99.9% of the time what I have on my monitor
isn't something that I'd mind a random person seeing, sometimes it is. My
current laptop's an Ideapad Yoga, 13" screen, and if I close a window and a
sensitive document, or picture, or what have you is on the screen it's not a
big deal. My body easily hides the screen from anyone behind me, and since the
laptop is so small it's usually kinda tricky to see stuff on the screen from
the sides anyway. Besides, I'm one of several people in the (train
car|bus|plane|area) that have a laptop open, so usually nobody's watching my
screen anyway. If someone's got one of these things? I'm going to take a look
at it, probably look at what they've got open and what they've got on the
screens. So are the other 40 people around me.

When they say "mobile desktop", that's exactly what it is, to me. If you use
the 3 screens anywhere you wouldn't use a desktop PC, things become awkward.
The problem is that the vast majority of places where I use my laptop aren't
places I'd use a desktop PC.

~~~
ChuckMcM
I think there is a comedy routine in there somewhere. Imagine the passenger in
the middle seat of a crowded flight and suddenly their laptop keeps growing
and growing :-).

IBM did a similar idea with a dual screen thinkpad, it was not very
successful. My impression was that it just didn't make a lot of sense. Imagine
a couple of USB-C connected displays on either side when you wanted them, no
need to lug them around when you didn't. That would seem to be a bit more
sensible to me.

~~~
geoffpado
Apple actually marketed their computers this way once… I don't think they
meant it to be funny:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQWjxAdSsHE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQWjxAdSsHE)

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wonko1
Reminds me of Lenovo's dual display laptop, and its truly awful advert:

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MhGkxkzmPbQ](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MhGkxkzmPbQ)

~~~
nekohacker
Isn't the W-series business-class? This seems pretty out of place for
marketing towards corporations.

~~~
coldtea
You'd be surprised before 2000 or so.

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Roritharr
They really should walk over to LGs booth and take a look at their small,
flexible OLED screens. These babies would make great panels for foldout
screens as they are crazy slim.

Even the TV-Size ones are only 2.57mm thick.

(I badly want slideout screens, although at a 13 inch formfactor. My Dream
would be something like the Surfacebook, with the option to slide out screens
on both sides)

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colept
It looks nice and all, but Razer's customer support and driver software is
abysmal - that cannot be overlooked.

~~~
Slackwise
Let's not forget build quality. They're the only¹ brand of mouse I've ever had
die on me — multiple models, within 6 months of use.

A Boomslang or whatever it was called back in the day, then _two_ Diamondbacks
within a year, in like 2007.

I've had friends say their Naga and Lachesis or whatever die within a year
too, usually the buttons or entirely.

I've now used a Logitech G1 since 2007 or so, with extremely heavy gaming
abuse, and no problems at all. I am considering buying several more off eBay
just so I can use it forever in the case this one breaks.

¹: Okay, I had the wheel go out on my $20 "Logitech Wheel Mouse" from 1999
after 10+ years of heavy use, and a $10 Dell generic mouse at the office after
5 years of heavy use. Just the wheel though. Might have just been dust,
really, and fixable for both. The Logitech was used to death in gaming for at
least 5+ years.

~~~
slantyyz
My Razer DeathAdder (which I bought because it was the top pick on the
Wirecutter) lasted about a year before it started giving me phantom clicks. I
bought the DeathAdder after a similarly priced Logitech bricked itself after
about six months.

These days, I just buy cheap wired mice, because I don't really trust the
expensive ones.

~~~
Slackwise
> These days, I just buy cheap wired mice, because I don't really trust the
> expensive ones.

Yea, that's why I like my G1. It's built to last abusive clicks and has only
800DPI, which is perfect for me.

~~~
tw04
I still have my MX500 - love that mouse.

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Skunkleton
That is awesome! I cant wait to see one of those in a coffee shop.

~~~
tln
I can't wait to see one of these on an airplane... just hope I'm not the poor
sod in the next seat!

~~~
Skunkleton
That would be a hell of sight. Bonus points if they have all the displays
folded out while reading their kindle :p

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fao_
Finally, I can program on the go :^)

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vorotato
Good on them for calling it a "Mobile Desktop" instead of a laptop.

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vinayan3
Reminds me of the Dell XPS laptops which were like bricks, incredibly heavy.
Not to mention the battery life was awful and the power brick was huge. Two of
my college roommates had them and I remember they had huge backpacks and
lugged them around campus.

I guess the people who would want these laptops don't care too much about
portability or battery life?

~~~
mjolk
I imagine this Razer "laptop" will have a price-tag of _at least_ $5,000 and
will have a battery life of less than a movie. This is a dogshow hardware to
give to a few enthusiasts, industry people, and trade floors to build up the
brand; it's more of a "we're enthusiasts too" brand pitch than it is a
product.

~~~
errantspark
Maybe not at that price point, but I would consider buying one. I normally use
3 screens and I like to travel.

The segment of the population that requires a real GPU to get work done buys
desktop replacement laptops and probably always will. Not everyone is a
"digital nomad" or whatever. Sometimes you've just got to show a client a few
tens of millions of polygons of art/CAD and you want to apply the finishing
touches on the plane ride over cause you're way behind.

Though admittedly it's more likely to be a Dell Precision or a BOXX than this
monstrosity I think there's more room in this market segment than you might
think.

~~~
mjolk
I wouldn't bet on a lower price point or any sort of portability with a GTX
1080 (the lightest 1080-equipped single-screen laptop I could find is over
7lbs).

> I think there's more room in this market segment than you might think.

I have an external display that I bring along to try to bridge the gap in loss
of productivity of working in annoying places, but it (asus mb168+) has
garbage drivers (can't adjust brightness on OS X or windows 10; crashes OS X),
which is why I'd even consider a native multi-screen device. I think there's
more room in the "external displays that aren't terrible" market than the
big/heavy performance desktop-replacement market.

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supermatt
I never seem to have been able to purchase a razer laptop. I recall there was
one with a built in touchscreen at one point, possibly a keyboard with a built
in touchscreen too, but have never seen it for sale. Do they ever come to
fruitition? :(

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egypturnash
Only the hugest of laps will do for Project Valerie.

[https://twitter.com/egypturnash/status/817111039519010817](https://twitter.com/egypturnash/status/817111039519010817)

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YeGoblynQueenne
Oooh, a laptop with the touchpad next to the keys, not underneath! I want one!

~~~
unstatusthequo
Shit! I didn't realize that until I saw your comment.

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Johnny555
Looks heavy. And fragile.

~~~
BlackjackCF
Props on them doing something new, I guess.

But also yeah, looks like a hinge can easily snap off... and knowing Razer's
wildly fluctuating quality in its products, this thing is "Hingegate" in the
making. Calling it right now.

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kbenson
This might be when calling something a notebook instead of a laptop and making
a big deal about the name is worthwhile.

I can't really imagine trying to use this on my lap.

~~~
baldfat
Opposite meaning today?

I went to check and 9 years ago laptops were bigger then notebooks.

Back in 2008 - What is a Laptop Computer? (n.) A laptop is a small, portable
computer -- small enough that it can sit on your lap. Nowadays, laptop
computers are more frequently called notebook computers, though technically
laptops are somewhat larger in size than notebooks, in both thickness and
weight. \-
[http://www.webopedia.com/DidYouKnow/Hardware_Software/laptop...](http://www.webopedia.com/DidYouKnow/Hardware_Software/laptop_notebook.asp)

~~~
kbenson
Interesting. I was never aware of any actual distinction between them, I
always assumed they were alternative names for the same thing. A niche
technical marketing failure, at least in my case.

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chrischen
Its got a GTX 1080 so they can ditch the screens and bundle a VR headset and
give you virtual screens through Big Screen!

~~~
ggame
You can't read in VR for very long and it's probably the number one thing you
do with your screen.

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anotherboffin
The first thing it reminded me of was the ThinkPad W700ds, but I didn't
remember the second display was that small.

~~~
LeifCarrotson
I wonder if something like that was the reason they keep calling it "the
world’s first AUTOMATED triple display laptop" (emphasis added). Is/was there
another triple display laptop for which you had to manually extend the
screens?

~~~
anotherboffin
I previously ran a quick Google search and found no other triple-display
laptop, but I must admit I didn't spend too much time looking.

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51Cards
really not feeling that keyboard layout. I really hate an off-center keyboard
on laptops (like ones with a number-pad). I actively seek out machines that
have the keyboard centered. Otherwise really interesting concept.

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lawless123
Call it "The Homer"

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stargrazer
Does razer do Linux at all?

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richardboegli
AWESOME. I want one. :)

Now if they only did it in the 12" and 15" as well....

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walterbell
Please support vPro (VT-d, TXT and TPM) and lots of RAM for security
virtualization use cases, e.g. Qubes secure compositing desktop with colored
borders around VM windows, or Windows 10 Enterprise virtualization-based
security.

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billylo
Quick, @TimCook... look here.

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tln
3x 17.3 inch screens < one 40" screen

The 40" will have double the surface area. And can be had for under $500!

[http://www.rtings.com/tv/reviews/by-usage/pc-
monitor/best](http://www.rtings.com/tv/reviews/by-usage/pc-monitor/best)

~~~
slantyyz
That's a misleading metric.

You could just as easily say this laptop has the equivalent of a dozen 1080p
screens, but at that pixel density, it's misleading too.

