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Transform a Regular LCD Into a Touchscreen
eZtaR writes "NAVisis is introducing a new USB gadget (for Windows only including Vista) called LaptopTablet. You mount it onto the side of your regular LCD monitor to transform it into a fully functional touchscreen, controlled with an included pen. The gadget is priced at around $100 and seems a good alternative for Photoshoppers."
Let me know when some high end printing company bundles this so I can go to work on Photoshopping my paycheck. (For educational purposes of course)
Infiltrated dot Net
RThe TabletMouse looks interesting as well. The company should probably hire a better translator though. "Welcome to NAVIsis, The Best Company of Tablet Device"? Apparently, all your mice are belong to them.
...but there has to be a pr0n application here somewhere.
Who wants to hold their arm out, hovering over the keyboard, attempting to "draw" on a surface that isn't firm (laptop hinges are not designed to resist pushing on the screen)? This is a terrible idea in my opinion. The big advantage of *real* tablets is that they fold "roughly" flat so you can write/draw on them more naturally. Even at that, they are usually too thick, making writing uncomfortable.
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
Quite literally. Laptop screens aren't designed to be touched, let alone scraped and prodded all over with a stylus. Or does this thing come with a plexiglass overlay?
The touch screens and active stylus input displays have a thick glass or plexiglass or other durable substance to protect the screen, but every LCD (laptop or desktop) I've ever set up has a warning about not touching the screen in w/ the setup / operating instructions.
My boss and several co-workers regularly touch the LCDs here in the office, making the surface bend and distorting the image and it makes me wince everytime.
William
(who is looking forward to _all_ LCDs coming w/ some sort of digitizer built-in after manufacturers decide the added durability and lessened expense of one manufacturing line instead of two makes economic sense)
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
Needs a pen, that sucks. I prefer real touchscreens where you simply touch them like the ELO.
as for photoshoppers, doodling on a monitor sucks. Using a pen tablet on the desk is far easier and way more intuitive as well as not having your hand and pen device in the way blocking your view.
This is a neat device, but for the price you can get kits from ebay to add a real touchscreen layer to your lcd or laptop instead of something that requires a special pen.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
A serious graphic artist probably wants a CRT for accurate colour, gamma, etc. And at least an A4 Wacom if they prefer drawing, but on a horizontal rather than vertical surface.
Most pros I know use a Wacom in Photoshop or Illustrator, but mostly they're mouse people.
I can't imagine that a serious Photoshopper would want to use an LCD screen and draw on it with a stylus, it's just not accurate enough.
Conversion Rate Optimisation French / English consultant
I considered myself a holdout but I just replaced the last of our CRTs. If you're designing for screen, output is increasingly going to be viewed on a flat panel. If you're designing for print, RGB output is always inaccurate.
LCD displays have improved since the late 90s and the advantages of CRT monitors are becoming fallacy.
His "borderline troll" is undoubtedly accurate.
Pressure sensitivity is key for most any artist, it's where the real value of the Wacom tablets lie, allowing you to control the quality of your brush strokes with pressure as you work. That's a bigger part of the tablet's advantage over the mouse than the actual "pen" method of input for many artists. This makes no mention of any kind of pressure sensitivity. Clearly, it can't make the screen pressure sensitive. Perhaps they could build a sensor into the pen that measures pressure and use the edge device for position, but that doesn't look like it's what they did, their pen looks like a "dumb" device, not a wireless pressure sensor. Even if it did have a pressure sensor in the tip, it's going to have to be so sensitive that it requires a really light touch, or else you're going to mar your screen, and that would greatly diminish its value.
As far as resolution is concerned: they say "sampling" is at "about" 400 DPI (whatever that means), but then it says "recognized resolution 0.2mm" which is about 125 dpi. The Wacom tablets artists work with recognize a resolution of about 5,000 lines per inch.
I'm sure you can draw a cartoony sketch with it just fine, but there's no way this device as it stands now is going to replace tablets for professional artists. That doesn't mean it's worthless. A lot of thing you want to do with touch sensitive displays isn't professional art. These could be a much cheaper alternative for touch-sensitive user interfaces and games and such. Maybe in future generations they will add some sort of pressure sensitivity through the pen and increase the resolution by an order of magnitude. Until then, the "borderline troll" is correct.
Can anyone tell me how to set my sig on Slashdot?
I think you meant to say "graphics professionals who use the software application Adobe Photoshop®."
sincerely,
- Adobe
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.