Tiny 8-Inch Laptop Has Slick 12-Inch Folding Keyboard

Lots of folks who spend time on the road for work know that having a small and lightweight notebook computer can save you a lot of weight in your luggage and still let you get work one. The catch is that the smaller a notebook computer gets, the smaller the keyboard gets and the less comfortable and easy to use the notebook becomes. This little notebook is a Lilliputian 8-inch machine, but it has a larger 12-inch keyboard inside.

Clearly, the images here show a prototype device used for testing out packaging, but it would be called the Portabook XMC10 and is from Japanese firm King Jim. The small notebook would run Windows 10 and use a 2.4GHz Intel Atom processor. That CPU would be paired with 2GB of RAM and 32GB of storage.

The keyboard is clearly the most innovative thing about the notebook, which otherwise has hardware on par with a tablet. The keyboard is neatly split into two halves that swivel to allow each half to sit bottom to bottom on the keyboard shelf when folded.

It's rather like the old moving keyboards that IBM had back in the day that never caught on. One big difference is that some of those IBM keyboards self-deployed as you opened the lid of the notebook leaving room for things to go wrong. The XMC10 seems to have manual keyboard operation. The machine costs around $740 and the worst part is that it's quite thick at about 1.5-inches.

SOURCE: Gizmodo