Tag Archives | Touchscreens

Massive Dual-Touch Screen Acer Laptop is All Kinds of Wrong

Posted by Jared Newman on September 13, 2010 at 11:39 am

Over the weekend, TechReviewSource scored some photos of what is allegedly an Acer laptop with dual touch screens.

I’m not familiar with the website, which doesn’t name its single source that provided the photos, so take these details with a grain of salt, but the 15-inch laptop reportedly packs a 2.67 GHz Intel Core i5 processor and Windows 7. The goal is to release the laptop in fall 2011 — it’s still slow and buggy right now, says the source.

A lot can change in a year — my gut says this is a prototype that will never see the light of day — but for now I’m wondering if any PC makers really think the dual-touch screen Windows laptop is a great idea to begin with.

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Would You Buy a Touch PC?

Posted by Harry McCracken on September 9, 2009 at 7:36 am

Touch PCI’ve guestblogged again at WePC.com–this time about touchscreen PCs, which are apparently a trend that’s set to explode (or try to, anyhow) once Windows 7 ships. I think that Windows 7 will help–it’s the first version of Windows with built-in support for touch input–but that a lot more has to happen before touch computers have a shot at being a hit rather than a fad. Check out my thoughts and let the WePC.com community know what, if anything, would convince you to buy a touch-enabled PC.

While you’re there, you might want to investigate the WePC.com contest. The site’s giving away gaming PCs, laptops, and netbooks to folks who provide the most insightful answers to questions  (or who are just lucky enough to win in regular drawings).

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Touchscreens Get Cheaper, Bigger, and…Touchier

Posted by Harry McCracken on July 22, 2009 at 6:00 am

SynapticsEven in the era of the iPhone, devices with touchscreen interfaces aren’t anywhere near pervasive–and some of the gadgets that do have touchscreens aren’t that great. Synaptics, the company that makes touch-input hardware (including a high percentage of the world’s laptop touchpads) aims to help change that with a couple of new touchscreens it’s introducing for hardware makers to incorporate into their gizmos.

The new touchscreens include the ClearPad 1000, a low-cost capacitive model that only offers single-touch input–but which is priced to compete with resistive touchscreens, which aren’t as precise as capacitive ones. (If you’ve ever used a touch-enabled phone whose screen is more frustrating than effortless, chances are good it was a resistive model).

At the high end of the market, Synaptics is selling the ClearPad 3000, a model that allows for gestures involving as many as ten fingers at once. That’s a lot of fingers-and the 3000 is available in sizes up to a roomy eight inches, which means it may show up in tablet computers of the sort that don’t quite exist yet but which lots of people are talking about these days. Synaptics already offers a midrange touchscreen (now called the ClearPad 2000), which offers two-finger multitouch.

Devices with the new screens may begin to show up later this year. It wasn’t all that long ago that gadget screens made the leap from monochrome to color; it wouldn’t stun me if a very high percentage add touch capability over the next few years.

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