WEBVTT

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thanks to lastpass for sponsoring our coverage of computex 2018 you can try

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lastpass for free at the link in the video description

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this is a hands-on that is so exclusive

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only a handful of people in the world have touched this device so far that we

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had to come all the way to ASUS's headquarters in order to get it this

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is the one unit of what they're calling project

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precog which takes an idea that we've

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sort of seen before in the lenovo yoga

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book which had a touchscreen on the top and then it had like a touch surface

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that you could use as a keyboard and touchpad on the bottom and takes it to a

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completely different level so it's kind of a notebook in the sense that

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like a two-in-one you could use it on the desk in front of you or

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in your lap in front of you or you could

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flip it around and use it just as a Windows tablet see that got that start

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menu this thing actually does work by the way you guys um or you could put it

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in tent mode but then it's also kind of just like a

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like a giant flexible touch

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surface and they've got a book mode that would allow you to use it as well i mean

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i guess this is sort of self-explanatory as as kind of a book one of the most

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striking things about the device to me

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is that they've achieved near symmetry in the design so the the top

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and the the bottom of the laptop as as concepts are sort of being challenged

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here because check this out so this surface here like yes this ASUS

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logo by the way none of this stuff is final this is all very much in

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engineering stages right now so this ASUS logo here is is right side up if

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you hold it this way but then you flip it over to the other side and you could

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just as easily have that logo here or here there's no feet there's no nothing

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you could literally put it down this way

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open it up and there is absolutely no reason why the keyboard and touchpad

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couldn't just be on this side and that's actually a big part of where

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the name of this product precog comes

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from ASUS knows that with great flexibility you can actually lose some

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of the intuitiveness of the device and they're talking about

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some of the ways that they plan to tackle this so for example they want the finished

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product to be able to detect when its keyboard is moved near it so that the

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on-screen keyboard could go away and the same would go for something like a mouse

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this is just a regular off-the-shelf mouse but the example that they're

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talking about is like oh well maybe when you move the mouse here

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now the touchpad that is like sort of a virtual touchpad on the bottom screen

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can go away and maybe when that moves so you can

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take more advantage of all the screen real estate that you paid for the

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keyboard itself could also move which i

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guess brings us to the other challenge that ASUS seems to be well aware of and

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yet i still have uh my doubts about how

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they're going to uh solve how do you

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make a keyboard usable on a touchscreen

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how do you make a keyboard experience that runs as as an as an as an image on

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a touchscreen even remotely usable there are a couple

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of main issues here that quite frankly the solutions i've seen for so far

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are not even close to adequate so first of all is haptic feedback when you press

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down on a key on a keyboard the the the response in your hands and

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your fingertips needs to be instantaneous and i have never

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experienced a haptic motor that is fast enough or

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crisp enough that i would consider it to be acceptable as a replacement for a

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real keyboard and then the other one is

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the positioning so when i sit down at my laptop the

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first thing that i do is run my fingers over top of it and find the bumps for

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the home row that's how within you know a second or

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two i can be typing at full speed ASUS

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has actually shared with me some of the

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ideas they have for tackling these problems

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and i have to say that my initial impressions of the idea were much worse

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than they are now but there's still a lot of work to be done

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and they're not expecting any kind of real product based on this concept to be

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available until sometime in 2019 with

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that said there's still a lot that we can try to

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guess at based on what we're seeing so far so in spite of the thermal challenges

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because you got to remember most laptops breathe either through the bottom which

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this one won't have a bottom because both of them are the top the hinge or

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the keyboard or some combination of the two

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it will have to be basically passive but they're still saying that they might

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expect to be able to put core i7 grade hardware in it let's hope Intel's next

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generation has fantastic thermal and power consumption properties we can also

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look at the i o so right now we've got a couple of Thunderbolt 3 ports which i am

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actually shocked to see in a form factor like this either of which can be used

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for charging based on our short hands-on time with the product

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another thing that we know is that the top and bottom have only slight

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differences in thickness so you can see it's just the thickness of the glass

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right here that is allowing them to put processor memory storage battery somehow

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they've managed to jam a battery in this thing are we going to see some kind of

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custom shape battery technology powering it are we going to maybe see them split

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up the battery apple actually did that in the iphone 10 where they put part of

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the battery in one portion of the phone and part of it elsewhere could we see

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something where they put some battery here and some there

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something i'm really curious to see what they do with is speakers so right now

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you can actually see that's probably part of the reason why we've got some

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extra thickness on the bottom but we actually saw sony demo a tv at ces 2017

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that had the speakers built into the panel of the glass so it actually

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produced sound by vibrating the glass and it sounded shockingly good i mean

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i would love to see that technology built into something like this

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but while that all sounded really positive and excited there are still a

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lot of challenges for them to overcome like right now do you think Windows 10

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is ready for this kind of an interface hardly i mean even something as simple

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as taking this chat window that's running in their demo and dragging it

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with your finger up to the oh wait there's a hinge there

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so they might need some kind of momentum based

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software solution for flinging Windows from one screen onto the other so

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there's a lot of software work still to be done

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here but again i really wish i could tell you

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guys more about how they're planning to solve the keyboard problem i'm pretty

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hopeful and i want to hear from you is

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this kind of a device important is this something that you guys want to see let

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me know in the comments below and let me know what you think are

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the biggest challenge and the biggest benefit

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to a device like this that's it's more screen now than laptop

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you know folded and

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not evil but but definitely

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bad you know like in that way speaking of bad it would be bad if you guys didn't

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so thanks for watching guys i hope you enjoyed what will probably be the last

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video we upload from computex 2018 we certainly saved the best for last here

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and don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss any of our videos on Linus tech

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tips i'm shocked at how thin they managed to

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make this thing in spite of two touch screens