How excited we were when OLPC unveiled its XO-2 design a few months ago. The thought of a dual touchscreen laptop was mouth-watering, and the pictures of a touch keyboard had us all wondering if it would create a whole new way of computing.

But someone actually beat them to the punch. V12 Design, an Italian industrial design agency, developed a similar concept four years ago. Valerio Cometti, the founder and managing director of the firm, came up with a dual LCD laptop called the Canova.

The first-generation Canova had a dual-touchscreen form and Cometti told us, “it was developed for creative types, such as artists.” The first-generation model, of which we have a whole slew of images below, actually existed and was made of stainless steel and carbon fiber, but it didn’t run an operating system or software. It was envisioned to transform from a sketch pad, to a writing pad with an electronic pen, to a newspaper.

Cometti pitched the idea around to laptop manufacturers, who took interest. Which is where the Canova Generation 2 comes in. Cometti said that V12 Designs has been working on a second-gen version of the dual-screen laptop along with a U.S. manufacturer. He believes the laptop, if you can call it that, will be complete in as soon as 16 months and will come to the U.S. market. He could not reveal the name of the U.S.-based company with which V12 is co-developing and designing the system.

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