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Rosa Golijan

Acer's dual-screen tablet behaves like a laptop

Acer's dual-screen tablet — the Iconia-6120 Touchbook — just became available for pre-sale and it is one very curious device. It's essentially a dual-screened 14-inch tablet which behaves like a laptop.

The Iconia has two large touch-enabled high-definition widescreen LED backlit LCDs which act as both the display and keyboard on the faux laptop.

Users will be able to type away on a virtual keyboard, bring up a clever control interface by simply placing five fingers in a circular pattern on the bottom display, or access specific applications by drawing predefined or customized gestures — such as a dollar sign to launch a finance application or a checkmark to launch a to-do list — onto one of the screens.

The device will know to bring up a keyboard when it feels both of a user's palms on the bottom display and it will use predictive text input in order to speed up the typing process and prevent mistakes. Oh, and it will recognize handwriting and convert it to text, too! (Unfortunately no stylus is included with the device, so you'll have to either purchase one separately or try to write with your fingers.)

Speaking of your greasy fingers: They won't bother the Iconia's LCDs too much as those are made with a "wipe and clean coating" which will supposedly make it easy to keep smudges off the screens — which are made of ultra-thin and ultra-durable Gorilla Glass brand material.

As far as the Iconia's guts go, there's an Intel i5 processor along with 4GB of memory, a 640GB SATA hard drive, and a 1.3 megapixel HD webcam. The device will support USB 3.0 and offer two USB 2.0 ports, an HDMI port, and an Ethernet port as well. Final weigh-in will be at 6.18 pounds, so we don't think the gadget will break any backs despite being powerful enough to comfortably run Windows 7 Premium.

The  Acer Iconia-6120 Touchbook will be priced at $1,199.99 and be available in April of this year (although it is on pre-sale right now.)

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Rosa Golijan writes about tech here and there. She's a bit obsessed with Twitter and loves to be liked on Facebook.