Gigabyte Smart Lamp doubles as an Ultrabook hub, is missing a few ports (hands-on)

Gigabyte Smart Lamp doubles as an Ultrabook hub, is missing a few ports handson

Things we expected to see at the world's premier computer show: mainstream notebooks, gaming notebooks, thin notebooks ("pineapple shrimp, lemon shrimp"), maybe even a tablet or two. But a desk lamp? Not so much. And yet, that might be the most memorable thing Gigaybte is showing here at Computex. The Smart Lamp is, as you'd expect, a proper light, one you can use on four different brightness settings. But it also doubles as a laptop hub, with a DVD player built into the base, along with a handful of other ports. These include two USB sockets, dual headphone / earphone jacks and an SD reader.

It's a neat idea, to be sure -- who doesn't love two-in-one devices - but considering it's supposed to supplement the ports normally found on Ultrabooks, it seems to be missing quite a few big ones. Why not throw in an HDMI port, or some other kind of display output? Ooh, or how about an Ethernet jack? Or a DVD drive that can burn discs in addition to play them? Anyway, you can color us slightly disappointed after having gotten an up-close look, even if the concept itself deserves an 'A' for creativity. No word yet on how much this will cost, when it will go on sale or in which countries it will be available. Until then, check out the walk-through video below -- not that this thing needs much further explanation.

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