Taiwanese hardware maker Elitegroup ECS yesterday revealed it's going to be demo'ing at Germany's CeBIT show this week. One offering caught our eye: the G200 laptop, which sports an "ingenious... smart neck that allows the screen to be lifted, tilted or swiveled to a comfortable level for the user".

Indeed, it is ingenious, but the ECS didn't come up with the idea. Enter Taiwanese notebook developer Dialogue. In June 2006, it showed off its Flybook VM. As the pics we took of the device at the Computex event in Taipei show, the VM's screen is mounted on a telescopic stand allowing the display to be position upward and forwards more like a desktop LCD monitor.

Compare that with this shot of ECS' G200, now doing the rounds on the web:

This isn't the first time Dialogue's design has cropped up elsewhere. At its Developer Forum event in September 2006, Intel showed off a concept laptop with - you've guessed it - a special 'slide up and tilt forward' display. Here it is: