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Windows 7 Igniting Touchscreen PC Market
ericatcw writes "Apple Inc. may still be coy about whether it plans to launch a touch-screen tablet computer this year, but Windows PC makers are forging right ahead. In the past three weeks, five leading PC makers have announced or been reported to confirm plans to release touch-screen PCs in time for the multi-touch-enabled Windows 7, reports Computerworld. Many appear to be using technology from New Zealand optical touch vendor, NextWindow, which already supplies HP's market-leading TouchSmart line, and Dell's Studio One. NextWindow's CEO says the company is working with partners on 8-10 products set for launch within two months, in time for Windows 7's October 22nd release."
I have a Tablet PC. Whenever I pull it out and use it at a coffee shop or park I will inevitably have 2-3 people per hour come up to me and ask what is, "Is it a Mac?" and are always amazed that I payed less than $1k for it and want to know where they can buy it etc etc...
I use it almost exclusively as a digital sketch pad but it works great as a general browsing computer as well. You can get a pretty good tablet for about $600. The most common reaction from people was that they had no idea such a thing even existed.
The real key to the whole touchscreen interface is multitouch and dynamic dragging.
iPhone really took off because it offered an interface that few had ever experienced. The interface is natural, easy to master, and effective. All truly revolutionary technologies have these aspects.
Second, if touch is natural, then wanting to move things around the screen is too. There should be support for this built into the OS. Unfortunately, it is limited to only a few specialized programs (photo viewers, for example) at this time. Full OS support would allow me to do things like move the stupid +- bar that separates the story from the comments link here up to the title area and turn it into a couple of buttons. But neither the engineers at Microsoft nor the engineers who build OSS software interfaces have the first clue as to how to design for usability, so I hold very little hope.
Wash your damn hands after you go to the bathroom, picking your nose or dealing with some body fluid.
Be you Admins? nay, we are but lusers!
I guess when they say "touch" they mean models that can use a finger instead of a stylus. Tablet computers have been with us for some time now, but nobody seems particularly interested, other than delivery services taking signatures, and those are more like a PDA than a computer.
But the real WTF is the title "Windows 7 Igniting Touchscreen PC Market." Seriously? That's 100% marketing speak. How is Windows 7 "igniting" this market, when there are no actual units being sold, and thus no idea if it will actually "catch fire" or not?
... and then they built the supercollider.
If you hover over her name, the link is to ComputerWorld. Likely her name is Erica T. and she works for ComputerWorld. Probably for whoever cwmike is. Hell, she probably is cwmike.
You probably wouldn't like her if even she is a real person, because she likely works for the marketing department over there. Marketing people suck.
So now people will have to put greasy fingers on the screen to do anything ? is the same junk as multitouch , they might seem cool, but they aint productive. I want to keep my hands on the keyboard for typing not having to move them down for a a trackpad, for the touch screen, riight, aint any keyboard there at all in tablet mode anyway.
I have a serious question - does anyone else really dislike people's greasy fingers on a screen? I understand multi-touch when it's a public display, for instance a kiosk. But on my monitors, DO NOT TOUCH is the rule.
Anybody know how well Linux works on touchscreens/tablets?
one simple reason - nothing beats a mouse and querty for input speed and flexability, on 99% of applications.
Is this one of those "let's feed a positive story to the press to create some good vibes" type of story - straight out of marketing?
Count me cynical, but expect to be regaled with Microsoft-scripted adverti- er "news stories" between now and the official release.
I am anarch of all I survey.
I remember somebody (from ibm i think) implementing pinch+twist in perl, does anybody know if the code every got polished and upstreamed?
I think much of the framework for this stuff is there (hal, mpx, etc) but as always it needs somebody to really polish it up before its ready of users, i.e if you buy an embeded device with linux installed your probably ok, but setting up debian/fedora on the same system would be a PITA.
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
The mutlitouch on the iPhone is nice and all, but it makes drawing a little awkward. I know that there are people can draw well enough on a iPhone to make covers of magazines, but I've never been I to finger painting. I would hope that there would still be some cheap stylus based tablets coming soon. Or that the Wacom would seriously lower the price on the Cintiq.
I just can't imagine anyone doing well in this space. Something big enough to be a tablet, should also have a keyboard or else it's just not very useful...
I think even Apple's device (if there is one) would basically be a touch screen laptop. Otherwise they'd be crazy to do a touchscreen focused device of that size.
We'll see I guess, but beyond anyone that owns a Wacom tablet, I'm not sure who really wants these.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
igniting peoples faces
Tablet PC's were marketed heavily between 2002 and 2006 along with the Tablet edition of XP, but no one wanted them and I understand why. The stylus makes a decent mouse, but you need the keyboard to use a computer for most online activities- which means constantly rotating the screen. The onscreen keyboards are painful to use, and most people are confused by the handwriting recognition and easily irritated with any mistakes it makes and confusion over how to correct them. And worst of all, its uncomfortable to hold most tablet pc's at the angle that allows you to both see the screen in full brightness and use the stylus. People are used to resting their hands on their laptop, and not using them to hold it while they use a stylus.
I'm not sure if a capacitive touch display on a laptop would be any different. It works on the iPhone because of how small it is. Once you get to laptop size, the touch displays are frustratingly too large to palm in 1 hand, and effort-ful to use in a standard clamshell laptop.
I think Touchscreen displays will in the future be a secondary display that is mounted closer to the user to allow for easy hand input. Having a single display that is in the correct position for working with a desktop system, which also works as a touch display is difficult to use since it requires you to hold your arm out while you sit. Having a small 11-17 inch display that sits off to the side where your mouse sits would allow easy tap access without a lot of stretching. Ergonomics are what will drive the success or failing for touch interfaces on PC's or Laptops.
But the real WTF is the title "Windows 7 Igniting Touchscreen PC Market." Seriously? That's 100% marketing speak. How is Windows 7 "igniting" this market, when there are no actual units being sold, and thus no idea if it will actually "catch fire" or not?
What it means is that the software used to interpret screen touches is so CPU intensive that it will melt your computer. Combine it with a bad lithium battery and you'll pretty soon see why these things can be described as igniting the market.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
It's cute for a little while. But your body's not evolved to stare at your hands for eight hours, or touch the object of your gaze for the same.
If the screen is at a good viewing height, it's strain on your arms and shoulders. If it's at desk height, it's strain on your neck. In between it doesn't fit the work environment.
So... it's an interesting interface for special purposes or brief interactions, but not a good platform for evolution of an interface because if the news guy that makes it look cool had to use it all day he'd morph into a troglodyte in short order.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Now I am really going to get it !! She's bound to spank when I touch all over here Win7 screen !!
no feedback no hope, also they become filthy as hell in workplace environments. u can't see if someone has washed their hands or not, u got that new disease? yeah that Windows Touch disease! it's the great NEW thing from Microsoft. i should work in advertising :D
Isn't that what the mouse/touchpad/keyboard shortcuts are for? Keeping your hands on the controls seems better than having them on the display. Kind of like driving by touching your windshield.
You have obviously never used Vista's handwriting recognition. XP Tablet's was passable only with training. Vista's is in no way confusing and is much, much better out of the box, and if you bother to spend the 1/2 to train it to YOUR handwriting, it is fantastic.
I have used my tablet for drawing, taking notes (its much nicer to pay attention to people in a meeting and just write your notes than to hide your face behind a laptop screen and click while others are talking. They have their place, I personally find that meetings happen to be perfect for tablet PCs
I reject your reality
you thought vista's handwriting recognition was good - windows 7's is amazing. with no training at all it picks up almost every word I write, and the gesture based correction is awesome. When recognised, the word itself turns into a button that you tap to correct. It also uses gestures to add spaces, split words, join words and delete individual letters or words. Most of the time on XP was spent correcting, whereas on 7 it just gets it
Why not buy yourself some pencils and a drawing pad instead, and help keep the forests in employment.
I find that meetings are perfect for tablet PCs.
I believe it should be the other way around, i.e. tablet PCs are perfect for meetings, unless you happen to be either a) a PHB browsing slashdot, or b) playing buzzword bingo at the meeting and hoping nobody notices.
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
they really mean setting your fingers on fire... windows 7 is just too hot!
The real question is....
Is this the year of linux on the Touchscreen?
~men are from earth. women are from earth. deal with it.~
Five bucks says it's supposed to be "Eric AT CW", so good luck finding "her".
I don't think that touchscreen is meant for developers, this is meant for the person who jumps on the internet to google something or watch a youtube video. Realistically these type of activities take very little typing, a word or two in most cases. If a decent on-screen keyboard is available that would eliminate the need for a mouse/keyboard, making this much easier to install in places that you don't typically find a PC.
Imagine having one in the kitchen to look up recipes or watch the news while you cook, in the bathroom to listen to music while you shower, I'm sure that I'm missing some huge possibilities here. Most every non-technical friend of mine would love to be able to touch the screen to get where they want. Touch is much more intuitive to an average person than keyboard and mouse; take the iPhone or iPod Touch for example, no keyboards or mouse but hugely successful even if you would never write a program on one.
If there were an iTablet which had a bit more than basic apps and a decent size (say, the screen part of the Airbook, or maybe half that) you could use it in pen mode. If Apple were bright enough to incorporate a decent Bluetooth stack you could then add a keyboard to it, in which case the laserprojected keyboards would come in handy (although I've not used on, maybe the stuff doesn't work that well).
That way you could travel light and still have decent computing facilities with you.
As for tablets, I just hope it's not like HP ELitebooks. I had one foistet upon me on a project, and it was utter, complete *rubbish* at digitising - you just could not calibrate it accurate enough to have the pen where you put it on the screen so it was unusable. Add to that that MS in its infinite wisdom decided that as soon as you're pen capable you MUST have that keyboard image visible on login (so, just watch which keys are pressed during login to get the password, and no, an ability to disable that is not available) and it made me decide I'd not use that for my own work where possible. That laptop was twice the price it was worth because of the fancy screen. Rubbish, rubbish, rubbish.
I thus hope Apple can do better. If they do I may even buy it. I just use what works for me :-).
Insert
Duh.
Come on, you expect us to believe that there is one part of Vista that they got right?
As I recall, the hardware manufacturers were not pleased the last time there was a push on tablet format PCs.
Microsoft left them with a lot of financial losses after pushing them quite aggressively to run with Windows Tablet Edition, only for it to fail to take off.
I believe HP was one of the companies affected the most, and I notice they're not listed in these new manufacturers.
In that case I better invest in some screen wipe stocks, or better still in a screen wipe factory.
The Touch Book from Always Innovating has a detachable keyboard and a touchscreen. I've pre-ordered one, and expect to have it by September. Looks like it may be part of the future you speak of -- though it won't play Planetscape Torment on it's ARM processor... :-)
Who?
Because he's a Microsoft reputation manager, and his job is to promote their products.
I am Spartacus !
Squirrel!
Computer. Computer ? Hello, computer !
Squirrel!
True, and worth mentioning that Win7's handwriting recognition is better than Vista's. It can literally figure out things that I wrote without looking, and that I would have a very difficult time reading if I just looked at it unaided (my handwriting sucks to begin with, but I can usually read my own writing at least).
For classes, and probably for business meetings, OneNote is close to being a killer app for tablets. I'd like to see what they do to it in Office 2010 - the current version is good but could use a bit of work in some places - but I have tons of notes on it already, with hand-drawn diagrams, highlighting, snippets from other programs pasted in, and tons of handwritten annotations (the notes themselves are mostly handwritten too, but occasionally typed). The search feature can index the handwriting and find the stuff I'm looking for, which compared to traditional notebooks is a HUGE boon.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
On my Vista tablet I never trained it, and it does recognize words quite well. I hardly ever need to rewrite. I have never gotten it to recognize fuck though, no matter how well I write. It always thinks it is something else like flock or flick or fluke or something starting with f. It did recognize shit once!
My tablet is an HP Touchsmart so I can touch as well as use the pen. I can write with my finger, but most of the time I don't use the touch because the precision of the pen is much better. The screen is small (12 inches) with 1280x800 resolution, which is acceptable. The machine is brutally heavy and hot so I keep it on the table instead of carrying it around. The battery life is really short because it runs the fan all the time.
I would buy a better tablet rather than a nontablet laptop because I like writing instead of typing sometimes - writing and drawing seems to give me a higher creativity. Tablets really need more battery, more speed, and larger screens. Of course that will make them way more expensive, and they're still so much more expensive than nontablet laptops but with all the other components falling in price, tablets look like they are finally going to be affordable to the masses.
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
You basically have 2 choices as a "PC" OEM
1 sell with Vista and chuck in a voucher for Win7
2 sell with Linux
any other combo and your system is considered "defective when sold"
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
I've had several touchscreens/tablets over the years, starting with a Fujitsu B series. While I really like the concept and for some apps it's a lot nicer to use, I just ordered an expensive non touch screen computer. The main reason is while the touchscreen is nice, it's not a big breakthrough, and there are always compromises in other areas - keyboard, screen size, computing power, weight, etc. Ultimately, with those compromises, it's just not worth it until there is a large breakthrough in a universal approach to touch interface. For some people who find it effective to hand write notes or need to make freehand diagrams, it can be worth it, but for everyone else it's better to focus on more important features. (For those who talk about One Note's consolidation features, well guess what, the world outside of MS Office has moved on in terms of general consolidation of data).
A slimmed down version of Vista with aero disabled and alot of clutter removed can run on pretty much any old system with enough hard drive space.
I think the reason touchscreen laptops have yet to take is that the average user isn't ready to make that leap. Mouse and Keyboard have been the setup of choice for personal computing since practically it's invention. How can you expect a user who trembles at the prospect of switching Microsoft Office 2003 to 07 to say, "Oh, this piece of technology will completely redefine the way I look at computing and input. Let's give it the ole' college try!" instead, users are taking baby steps towards input revolution, specifically by embracing the iphone and it's followers. It's an input revolution on a much smaller scale. When people start to realize how much better their computing lives will be after touchscreen becomes standard operating procedure, they'll fly off the shelves. We just need to have patience with user, that's all. http://ruleroftheinterwebs.blogspot.com/
Unless... unless parent is some kind of brilliant satire that went right over my head...
Oh, won't I look quite the fool then.
I'm a really big Apple fan, but I find it quite sad you felt it necessary to post as AC because you said something *good* about Microsoft. I wish we could all just have an adult conversation about any/all OSs here at Slashdot.
Last time I tried a pen to sketch stuff with on a tablet (not a tablet PC, a desk-mounted tablet with a pen), I could never get used to it because, unlike a real pen, the cursor started to respond just before the tip of the pen hit the pad. I persevered, but it was just too difficult for me. I needed the damn thing to respond when the pen hit the pad, and not before.
"And the meaning of words; when they cease to function; when will it start worrying you?"
Handwriting recognition will be really good for most people, but for people like me it still presents major problems. This is because the handwriting recognition is based on HOW you form the letters, not the appearance of the letters themselves. So if you form your letters different from the majority of people (personally I write most of my letters from the bottom up), it will take a significant amount of extra training before windows gets it right. This has been my experience in Vista at least, I just found out today that I can get a copy of Win7 through msdnaa.
Steve
Why am I not surprised to hear about a Microsoft product initiating combustion?
When it suited Microsoft and IBM to steal Apple's GUI, they wrote the CUA standards document which codified what what was good about the Apple GUI paradigm. WIndows, NT, and OS/2 were primarily CUA compliant. These standards held for many years until Microsoft lost their minds and invented the ribbon. User's comfort went right out the window(tm) and people had to completely retrain as the software became instantly mysterious and unusable. Perhaps something similar will happen now about the tablet paradigm.
"Timing is everything, and so is quality. MS-DOS sucked, as did its predecessors-- all based on a rewrite of DEC's RT11 called CP/M. UCSD p-System sucked worse although a nice learning platform. Even PICK on the original PC SUCKED. That Apple used 6502s, then 68Ks, etc, was a war that they ultimately lost when they switched to Intel processor families." The brilliance of CP/M was not about if it looked or felt like RT-11, it was that the OS was layered with an invariant part and a BIOS so that the OS could be transported. This leap allowed it to be ported to a multitude of non-PC compatible machines that never could or would run DOS That was Gary's contribution and it has improved OS design ever since.
In some ways it helped, but in other was the BIOS layer used for transportability was also an achilles heel in design. The design of the original IBM XT was the motherboard that carried the standard (and it was oddly NOT copyrighted and IBM published the BIOS).
The design flaws of that motherboard have dogged us ever since. Only at 64-bit CPU designs does some of that madness end.
Gary's contributions are significant. pip rdr:=pun: and other cyptozoa. Yet I'll agree his method was far ahead of others.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
I was not talking about the ROM BIOS of the IBM-PC. But rather the BIOS part of the operatin system linked at gen time. Whether it was Tim Patterson or Microsoft, the DOS ended up with two boot files, IBMDOS, and IBMBIOS as I remember, and the IBMBIOS made calls to the ROM BIOS. The separation of the invariant from the hardware specific into layers was the crucial aspect.