Our concept of Dupliances inherits and combines the underpinnings of both the traditional appliance, which focus on supporting a physical activity, and the information appliance, which encompasses a virtual activity. The result is a two-in-one appliance, hence a dupliance. So, why would anyone want a dupliance? We believe there are many reasons why people would want dupliances, but this work is particularly founded in the following two observations: First, a key drawback of information appliances is that as each supports one specific instance of virtual activity, their physical bodies merely constitute lifeless containers. The physical body of an mp3-player is primary an electrical circuit jug needed to support the virtual activity of playing digital music through analogue headphones-- and the jug is nothing in itself, just a plastic lump. If you don't agree, consider yourself running out of batteries, would you still have any use of the mp3-player? Second, it has been argued that if one device is to do the work of many it must compromise on how well it handles each task. However, if we don't limit the scope of the device to only support virtual tasks, this argument becomes less apparent. Take a napkin, for instance. Some people put a knot on the corner of a napkin as a reminder of something, which we can consider as a form of virtual functionality, while still retaining the napkin's physical purpose of drying one's hands. This example shows that an appliance may in fact have two functionalities that will not by default interfere with one another as long as one of these functionalities is intended to support virtual activity and the other supports physical activity. The napkin with the knotted corner is hence an example of a dupliance. It is our jobs as designers to find physical and virtual tasks that make sense together and are orthogonal, and which may be combined in the same physical body. We believe some potential benefits of the notion of dupliances-besides putting the uninteresting physical containers of information appliances to use-include fewer devices to carry, novel synergy effects arising from creative embodiment of virtual and physical functionalities, and an expectantly higher degree of acceptance from some user groups, e.g. children. The prototypes are currently being tested and evaluated on the intended target group of children age 5-10 to learn more about the dupliances in terms of their acceptance, effect and affect on the users.