Screen queens: 7 dual-screen devices you can buy now (or hopefully soon)

Are two screens better than one? In recent years, device makers have been exploring this question with mixed results.

Lenovo sold a notebook less than a year ago with a slide-out second screen, but no longer offers such a model. There are similar notebooks which incorporate slide-out dual screens, though these clunky devices are not readily for sale in North America.

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Are two screens better than one? In recent years, device makers have been exploring this question with mixed results.

Lenovo sold a notebook less than a year ago with a slide-out second screen, but no longer offers such a model. There are similar notebooks which incorporate slide-out dual screens, though these clunky devices are not readily for sale in North America.

Watch the slideshow version.

Other computer makers -- including ASUS, MSI and even the One Laptop per Child organization -- have presented concepts for dual-screen notebooks and tablets, but have not released actual products. The biggest success so far with the dual-screen concept has been in the area of gaming, with the Nintendo DS.

Still, there are several devices utilizing two screens that you can buy now - plus a couple more that their makers hope to bring to market soon.

1. The Kno

This beast features two color screens each measuring 14.1-inches diagonally and weighing a hefty 5.6 pounds. Perhaps acknowledging that the field of choices for tablets is quickly becoming crowded, its makers have designed The Kno for use in higher academia, and their business plan appropriately markets it to this audience.

They pitch their two-screen offering as a "digital textbook" which offers e-book versions of college textbooks at about half the price of their dead tree counterparts. The Kno itself, though, isn't cheap, starting at $899. (A single-screen version starts at $599.)

Each of its screens has a 1440-by-900 resolution and a multi-touch interface. A stylus is included, which you use like a pen to scribble words or doodle on one of the screens. The operating system is based on Ubuntu. It comes with only 512MB of RAM and a processor "up to 1.0GHz." It gets online through Wi-Fi, but there's no version with 3G. And it lacks a camera.

Want one, regardless? You'll have to sign up and be put on a wait list to buy one. Its makers claim that "there are not enough to go around.''

2. Toshiba libretto W105

This two-screener appears to have a bit of an identity crisis. On the one hand, it's like a netbook with a second screen in lieu of a keyboard. On the other, it's like two tablets sandwiched together. And it runs Windows 7 Home Premium (32-bit).

The two LCD screens are both multi-touch and measure 7 inches diagonally. The libretto can be used where both screens show images in portrait mode, or positioned horizontally where the images are displayed in landscape format. In this orientation, you can touch type on a virtual on-screen keyboard running on the lower screen to use the libretto W105 like an ordinary netbook.

The libretto W105 was released in August, but is currerntly sold out from Toshiba's Web store, despite having been priced at a hefty $1,099.99. Stock is said to have been limited, as Toshiba reportedly intended only to manufacture a limited number of them. (A few online retailers are still selling them, but your best bet may be to go on eBay to try to snag one.) Yet the fact that the libretto W105 sold so quickly suggests that there could be a worthy market for small-form factor notebooks with two screens.