Archive for the ‘Multi-Touch’ Category

Whilst the Tablet PC active digitizer pen is the trusted workhorse of many serious business Tablet PC users, the push towards touch screens has been somewhat puzzling to us.

Sure, multi-touch features are pretty cool and nice to have, but what does a swipe or a pinch really offer that is going to help you to become more productive?

Many of the people that call us insist that their Tablet PCs must have touch, but not many of them have a clear idea of why it should. There are a couple of reasons for that:

1. There is a lack of awareness of the difference between an Active Digitizer Pen and a Stylus.
2. Touch is the talk of the town
3. There is an anti-stylus agenda run by folks such as Steve Jobs from Apple.

Currently, touch offers some basic convenience for doing things like

• Clicking on links
• Typing short text on a virtual keyboard (too slow to write a paragraph without frustration though)
• Playing touch games
• Using programs specifically designed for touch

As many people have now noted, a touch screen only device does not offer you much in the way of input.

Most people don’t realize that an Active Digitizer pen is a lot smarter than a stylus. It offers you the ability to:

1. Use handwriting recognition that is accurate and fast – up to 40wpm
2. Take notes in your own handwriting – no need for text recognition or conversion, just keep your notes as handwriting
3. Annotate documents like word and PDF files in an easy and natural way.

Currently touch adds a little bit of convenience, but as Xavier Lanier noted over at Gottabemobile.com, even the die hard Apple fan boys don’t take notes on their brand new iPads – because it is not practical with only a touch screen to work with.

However, touch is destined to become much more than just a sideshow thanks to the tireless work of Microsoft Research. Touch has the ability to significantly augment the already powerful input features of the Tablet PC.

Watch the video from Microsoft Research’s Ken Hinckley here to see what we mean:

Combining natural input methods like this gets us seriously excited. As Ken points out on his accompanying blog post, this is the future of natural interface. Not just pen or touch, but both working together!

We had a great time with the Fujitsu T4310 recently, right up until the point where we broke the screen :-0… but that’s another story!

What we really loved is how zippy and responsive the multi-touch screen is. So we took a video of a number of Windows 7 multi-touch goodies including:

• Microsoft Collage – This really shows how smooth and slick Multi-Touch applications can be under Windows 7
• Microsoft Virtual Earth – Another touch goody from the Microsoft Surface team, included in the Windows 7 Touch Pack – Very fast app as you’ll see
• Multi-Touch typing on the virtual keyboard of the Tablet PC Input Panel
• Handwriting Recognition – The best kept secret of Windows
• Touch web browsing.

The Fujitsu T4310 is an absolute pleasure to use. It has a very fast Intel Core 2 Duo processor, but it also has a great 5+ hour battery life.

Take a look at the video here:

Some prospective iPad users have made the comment that you can get a stylus for capacitive touch screens, and that’s true. You can. The experience however appears a bit underwhelming – like drawing with a crayon.

Take a look at the following video from a long time Tablet PC user in Malaysia who compares the resistive touch screen on the Fujitsu UH900 to the capacitive touch screen on the Lenovo S10. During the video he shows:

• Writing with a stylus pen on the resistive touch screen – good experience on the fast and small UH900, although not quite as good as active digitizer
• Writing with finger on the the capacitive touch screen – no leverage, very hard to sustain for longer than a few seconds
• Writing with a pogo stick on a capacitive touch screen – like using a crayon.

Fast forward to about 6:30 to see the pogo stick (crayon) in action.

From this video you will see that a capacitive touch screen is fairly useless for pen-like or fine input – think sketching, drawing, note taking  and handwriting. To resolve that problem, Windows Tablet PC manufacturers include an active digitizer on their capacitive touch screen Tablets.

Engadget gave the new Fujitsu T4310 a great review, not for its looks, but for its great multi-touch tablet experience with Windows 7.

The key feature for really useful and functional touch Tablet PCs is the inclusion of both the Wacom Active Digitizer Pen and the capacitive touch screen. The T4310 is one of the many new Windows Tablet PCs that include both!

A touch screen on its own makes for a very limited Tablet PC experience.

Navigating web pages and opening programs is a dream with touch under Windows 7. On the other hand handwriting recognition, sketching and note taking are completely impractical with touch.

So the inclusion of the pen gives you both the convenience of touch and the note taking and sketching functionality of the accurate digitizer pen.

Take a look at the Fujitsu Lifebook T4310 in this video below:

We’ve had a great time playing with the new multi-touch Fujitsu T4310 over the summer. The combination of windows 7, Office 2010 (currently in beta) and multi-touch just rocks!

The first Fujitsu tablet to come out with multi-touch was the T4310, and it has now been followed up by the T900, the replacement for the beefy T5010 Tablet PC. Fujitsu continue to innovate with pen and touch computing and are one of the clear leaders in the Tablet PC field.

The following user give a good demonstration of the T4310. Although this user points out a couple of the shortfalls of the product, he still gives it a big thumbs up… And so do we.

Part 2 in particular shows how the capacitive touch screen works with OneNote 2010. It makes navigating your workspace super easy!

You won’t find a better demonstration of the combination of digitiser pen and touch. As you will see in this video, touch nicely augments the functionality of the pen.

Touch does not eliminate the need for the pen however, and as you’ll see a digitizer pen is pretty essential for serious Windows based tablets.

Call us on 03 9012 6602 for more info on Fujitsu Tablet PCs.

We finally got around to reviewing the multi-touch HP Tx2! The Tx2 has been a very popular Tablet PC and it is introducing many newcomers to the wonders of touch computing.

The HP Tx2 is a great way to get into Tablet PCs for a very good price. While most full sized 12” Tablet PCs are selling for over AU$3000, the Tx2 is under $2000.

Best of all, it’s packed with goodies like the iPhone style multi-touch capacitive touch screen.

We’re looking forward to trying out Windows 7 on this machine! Roll on Tablet PC air-hockey and finger painting.

The out of the box experience of multi-touch in Windows Vista will be limited to third party software at this stage, but Windows 7 takes multi-touch the whole nine yards.

The following demos from Gizmodo are of the HP TouchSmart desktop PC, but you can expect the same experience from the HP TouchSmart Tx2.

Windows 7 Touch and Multitouch on HP TouchSmart PC from Gizmodo on Vimeo.

As you can see, the multi-touch experience is built into the system from the ground up… it’s even in good ol’ paint.

Multitouch Air Hockey in Windows 7 on a TouchSmart PC from Gizmodo on Vimeo.

Air Hockey on a Tablet PC! Now that will be something special! We’re excited just thinking about the possibilities of multi-digit, multi-hand and multi-user interaction…

It is only a couple months since we blogged about the future of Tablet PCs and Multi-Touch screens. We predicted 12-18 months before Multi-Touch would hit the market… how wrong we were.

“Multi-Touch” in this context refers to the new generation of capacitive touch screens that can detect multiple points of contact at once. The more commonly found resistive touch screens can only determine one point of contact at a time.

Capacitive touch is the hardware enables those iPhone style functions like:

• Two fingered scrolling
• Pinch zooming
• Two finger tapping
• Swipe style gestures

Unlike resistive touch screens, capacitive touch screen only require a negligible contact pressure to function. That makes capacitive touch much easier to use for finger functions.

There are two Tablet PCs that currently include capacitive touch screens:

• The new HP Tx2
• Dell Latitude XT2

We’ll have more details and video reviews on both models in the near future. Both are now available.

Of course, iPhone style functions require software support and both HP and Dell have enabled this to a certain extent.

The upcoming Windows 7 will also enable much broader support for multi-touch.