So you want an extremely portable laptop, but don't want a tiny cramped keyboard? Then have a gander at this 8-inch laptop which has a 12-inch keyboard inside of it.
So, how does this work? The Portabook XMC10 (made by Japanese firm King Jim) essentially splits the larger keyboard in half, with the two halves sitting vertically side-by-side each other when the notebook is closed and not in use. In this arrangement, the device is an 8-inch notebook, with the keyboard folded up neatly inside (as pictured below).
When you open the machine, you simply slide both halves of the keyboard upwards (the mechanism is called a “slide arc”), and they click together when they meet horizontally to form a full keyboard – a keyboard which is 12-inches in width (and obviously hangs over the sides of the 8-inch form factor, as you can see in the image at the top of this story).
Because it hangs over the sides like so, the typing experience with the keys near the edge might be less than ideal in terms of feeling flex in the keyboard. Even so, this is a pretty neat idea – albeit not a completely original one as these sort of keyboard tricks have been tried with notebooks in the past.
Of course, as Gizmodo reports, this being a Japanese product, you'll probably struggle to get hold of the XMC10 anyway (if you're interested, it retails for the equivalent of just under £500 in Japan).
As for the specs, this Windows 10 laptop is powered by a 2.4GHz Intel Atom CPU backed with 2GB of RAM, and it offers 32GB of flash storage. The 8-inch display has a resolution of 1280 x 768, so it's hardly a powerhouse.
Also check out: Lenovo IdeaPad Y700: a gaming laptop with a multimedia twist
