Hasta La Gadget!

You know about Kno right? Yep, it’s that giant dual-screen tablet up there that’s meant for students, and while we had seen an early version of it and its single-screen brother about six months ago, we figured we’d take a closer look at the shipping versions here at CES. Our first impression of the thing is that it’s one awesome tablet for taking notes. Both the dual-screen and single-screen versions come with a magnetic stylus, which not only latches onto the side of the screen but provides an incredibly smooth inking experience. As you will see in the video below, you can write over text in a textbook and even create a Post-it note. The palm rejection is also top notch, and considering your entire wrist has to rest on the display to take notes at the top of the screen, it’s pretty clutch. The rest of the hardware is equally as first rate — the metal make obviously makes ’em both quite heavy (the single tablet is 2.6 pounds and the dual-screen one 5.6 pounds), but they feel very rigid and we really dig the etched edges, which were designed specifically to mimic pages in a textbook. The bright 1440 x 900-resolution IPS displays provide very wide viewing angles.

So, how’s the Linux-based software interface? Unlike the version we saw a while back, it was pretty responsive and intuitive. You’ve got the My Apps section, which contains links to web applications, and the My Library section, which is where you’ll be able to purchase books and open them. The browser supports multiple tabs and the on-screen keyboard is obviously quite wide. At this point there’s no way to convert handwriting to text, so you’ve got to use the keyboard within web apps. We’ve got to say, Kno has made a solid piece of hardware with an equally impressive textbook reading and note-taking experience, but we’re still not convinced that anyone out there wants to carry around one, nevertheless two 14-inch touchscreens. (Kno claims that students actually carry more weight around than that between textbooks, laptops, etc.) But hey, the only way we know how to find that out is to get one of these, throw it in the backpack, and try using it in real life. Until that happens, hit the break for a hands-on video.