New Sharp netbook: strange as a five-legged cow

The first time I laid eyes on the Sharp Mebius NJ70A netbook was rather like the first time I laid eyes on the fabled five-legged cow that roamed a pasture near my childhood home. I squinted, scoffed, and wondered what the point of that extra bit was.

While the fifth leg on the cow (coming out of its neck of all places if you were wondering, and a true story I might add) was just plain gross, the extra screen, doubling as a track pad, on the Mebius NJ70A is just strange. It's cool in a sort of over the top, "why would you want that" fashion.



_{Above: Sharp Mebius -- odd as a five-legged cow}

The thing will be covered in grease from your favorite lunch or snack food and fingerprints in about 30 seconds. The screen is an optical sensor LCD and you can use your finger or a stylus to navigate around the netbook's main screen or write email with handwriting recognition. Again, I say what's the point. Do you really see anyone writing an email out on the fancy-schmancy track pad when the keyboard is like right there?

The main screen of the little netbook is a 10.1-inch job and the brains of the outfit is an Intel Atom N270 processor coupled with an Intel 945GSE Express chipset. Storage is a 160GB HDD and a webcam is integrated -- standard netbook fare. That strange optical sensor LCD/track pad/handwriting doohickey is 4-inches wide, LED backlit, and has a resolution of 854 x 480. Pricing, availability and exactly what the engineers were thinking is unknown at this time. I can't help but wonder about the battery life with the battery having to power two screens.

Needless to say, this is a Japan-only release for now, and Sharp Australia has made no announcement about releasing it in Australia or elsewhere in the world.