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Tech

Why Does This Laptop’s Screen Extend When You Wave Your Hand at It?

Call me a killjoy, but this seems like something fun to watch when it’s somebody else paying for it.

I’m baffled. Slightly impressed, but baffled. You wave your hand at the Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable, and its screen expands from a respectable 14″ to 16.7″. It all happens automatically. The screen slides upward like the curtain before a theater show, powered by (presumably) electric motors, magic, and hope.

Am I the only one who thinks that it’s a neat feature, but the ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable is already $3,300, before you add options. You’re already opening the laptop lid when you flop it down on the desk to use it. Could you not just tug the screen upward if you needed the extra screen real estate?

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expensive magic

Lenovo pitches the Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable as a replacement for those who require a second display or a larger standalone monitor when they’re dealing with heavy workflows that crowd a 14″ display.

It certainly expands the screen a lot larger than 2.7″ seems like, so I’d expect it to be a useful part-of-the-way step between a laptop’s normal screen and a standalone monitor, which is typically in the 20-something-inch range or above and has more real estate than the ThinkBook has even when its screen is extended.

I have to imagine going with a manual mechanism would reduce some of this wild cost, as well as provide fewer problems down the road as the laptop ages and the mechanism endures wear and tear. Certainly it’d be cheaper to repair.

If we’re going to start putting electric motors into our laptops to automate things like this, let’s start with the clamshell lid. But I’d go way beyond just opening and closing the lid (with a hand gesture, of course) when you sit down to use it or call it a day and pack it up.

No, I’d make it talk. Whenever Microsoft Cortana or Google Assistant or whatever spoke through the ThinkBook, I’d have the lip flap open and closed like a mouth. Now that I’d pay $3,000 for. Nothing less.

Lenovo, bring me my talking laptop, please.

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