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Toshiba Demos Dual-Touchscreen Netbook
Lanxon writes "Toshiba has announced a trio of new devices that it's hoping will shake up the somewhat stagnant notebook PC market. The most interesting is the Libretto W100 — a clamshell device that comes with two screens in place of a screen and a keyboard. Both screens are identical, measuring 7-inches diagonally, and are touch-sensitive. An onboard accelerometer allows you to use it in landscape or portrait configuration, and Toshiba's pre-loaded a boatload of specialist software that'll let you get the most from the device — including a range of virtual keyboards. It runs Windows 7, is powered by an Intel U5400 processor, and comes with 2GB of DDR3 RAM, a 62GB SSD, and the usual array of connectivity options, including 3G."
Touch interface with a non-touch OS GUI. I don't think this is gonna fly, fellas.
A what?
I cant wait till they make this pocket sized. It would do nicely as a smart phone form factor.
Sure reminds me of what it was supposed to be, minus the stylus.
But for a netbook it's somewhat puzzling. Nobody wants to do that much input with a virtual keyboard. On the other hand, adding touch to an ordinary netbook form factor running Android would make a lot of sense. HP has announced one as a Compaq but I don't know if it's hit the channel yet, and further, I will never give HP my money again after the nightmare I had with an EliteBook (We're talking a $2500 machine here) with a defective GPU and a service contract (apparently also defective)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I don't know what "usual" means where the author comes from, but I certainly don't see RJ11 anywhere in the specs.
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USE the Force.
Look you can't compete with the iPad at the same price points. You have to undercut the iPad. The iPad is a reasonable tablet device with a lot slickness and though put into it. Unless you are truly better than the iPad you cannot charge the same price.
You have to be 1 order of magnitude cheaper (base 2 is fine). You need to be half the cost of the an iPad. This means that a competitive tablet has to be $350 USD or less.
If you're not even close to an iPad, your upper bound is $200 USD.
I have an EKEN M001, it is a $100 tablet and with the latest firmware it isn't bad but thing can't play videos very well and is a little non-responsive. But the point was that the $100 price point was enough to make me buy a tablet when I had little interest in the iPad (it is so closed). On the 2nd day of ownership I programmed an app for the M001 and put it on there :)
Great.
Now we can recreate a complete ZX80/ZX81/Atari 400 experience with an emulator. And now I can have a Symbolics keyboard for programming.
Seriously: A virtual keyboard for extended usage is something that remains to be tested. It will require some clever mechanisms to compensate for fat fingers and some feedback for touch typists. I would not discard it as impossible.
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
Sadly lacking the Microsoft Courier OS. Oh well. Any Nintendo DS emulators out there for Windows 7?
An onboard accelerometer allows you to use it in landscape or portrait configuration
What about Battleship(R) configuration? It would be interesting if it can be used by two people simultaneously. And there had better be an off-switch for that accelerometer. The thing I have hated most about my iPhone is that I can't read anything when laying down on my side.
but I'd rather have one large screen as opposed to two smaller screens. But then I guess I'd have an iPad, wouldn't I?
No yesterday, no tomorrow, and no today.
Anyone else read that as a buttload?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
7" touch sensitive screens and the best thing they can think to put on it is a flat, non-feedback QWERTY keyboard that was originally designed to avoid keys sticking on typewriters and has caused millions of cases of RSI. The new input device has to be:
It's notable that Wii has done remarkably well with an obvious yet new input device, in spite of going backwards a generation in graphics capability.
Swype and SlideIT look pretty cool, especially if they allowed optimised keyboard layouts. What else is possible?
What's that I hear? Two screens aren't enough for you.
Well we're giving you three screens. That's right three! A tertiary screen on the back of your screen so everyone can that you're only browsing the hippest websites around.
What's that? Three screens not enough? Well we've put a revolutionary new fourth screen on the bottom. So your wang can instant message your friends too!
Shit, you want screens, we'll install them in your colon! Just please buy our gadget! I need the allowance to buy my soul back.
QWERTY doesn't cause RSI. Using a keyboard badly, or the wrong kind of keyboard, causes RSI - as well as carrying on when something hurts.
QWERTY was supposedly designed to slow down typists (though finding *definitive* references to that reasoning is tricky). However, it doesn't mean that it's any more difficult to type on once you've been trained. As always, a 100wpm typist could jam up any typewriter anyway, and even in the computer age QWERTY doesn't slow a professional typist down (The Dvorak stuff is dubious - check any sources for their actual data / reasoning because often it stems from Dvorak-performed research and there is other, independent, research that suggests it's no different to QWERTY once you've used both for a while).
And few other input devices are used by approximately 100's of millions of users yet, and yet dozens if not hundreds of alternate input devices have existed for decades. Sticking one into a product you want to sell as anything other than an option is a REALLY bad idea, commercially speaking. The Wii was a toy used specifically to be general purpose and work well in lots of physical-simulation activities. The keyboard is *still* the best input device in terms of ubiquity, security, speed, accuracy and time-to-learn in a modern "real-world" environment. And for your argument to work, you'd have to do about 10 years of study into the others to determine if they make RSI incidences worse when you use them every day for 8 hours a day. Alternative inputs are fine for occasional use but after a while, they will make anybody tire.
Seems honestly like they copied the courier minus the only thing that actually made the courier work. The active digitizer.
Have fun taking notes with your fingers. Sadness.
The dual digital screens for reading a novel are not an advantage at all. They actually make it more cumbersome to deal with.
You have dual open pages in a paper book because of the way pages are bound, there is no advantage to carrying over this paper artifact to digital except in rare cases.
With a digital reader you simply page instantly to the next page, no need to have two screens, look at one, then the other, then page them both.
This is one of those niche ideas that looks cool at first but in reality has very little to recommend it considering the rise in cost/complexity/weight to deliver its few marginal benefits.
Because that's a myth. QWERTY was the fastest design that was come up with based on the limitations of the existing hardware of the time. The funny key layout? That's to spread apart the commonly-used hammers so they wouldn't jam on the typewriter.
I didn't know DeVry offered an MBA. Who modded this pretentious drivel up?
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QWERTY doesn't cause RSI. Using a keyboard badly, or the wrong kind of keyboard, causes RSI - as well as carrying on when something hurts.
And what proportion of users of this new laptop do you think will be using the virtual keyboard 'well'?
QWERTY was supposedly designed to slow down typists (though finding *definitive* references to that reasoning is tricky).
This is a less credible point than the one I already made.
However, it doesn't mean that it's any more difficult to type on once you've been trained. As always, a 100wpm typist could jam up any typewriter anyway, and even in the computer age QWERTY doesn't slow a professional typist down (The Dvorak stuff is dubious - check any sources for their actual data / reasoning because often it stems from Dvorak-performed research and there is other, independent, research that suggests it's no different to QWERTY once you've used both for a while).
Funnily enough, this is exactly what is says in the page I linked to.
And few other input devices are used by approximately 100's of millions of users yet, and yet dozens if not hundreds of alternate input devices have existed for decades. Sticking one into a product you want to sell as anything other than an option is a REALLY bad idea, commercially speaking.
If you have a touchscreen then the new input device is going to be an option.
The keyboard is *still* the best input device in terms of ubiquity, security, speed, accuracy and time-to-learn in a modern "real-world" environment. And for your argument to work, you'd have to do about 10 years of study into the others to determine if they make RSI incidences worse when you use them every day for 8 hours a day.
I could use your argument against you: you'd have to do about 10 years study to prove the QWERTY keyboard is still the best, during which time we're almost certainly going to have something better.
For handheld computers, I'd guess that SlideIT is already better.
In sound-isolated environments, voice recognition software is better IMHO.
Swyper would be great on this.
I'm waiting for something like this, preferably a little bigger, to take notes in class. With a pen. And hopefully good hand-written equation to LaTeX conversion will come with it.
If you've ever had a remotely mathematical class you would know keyboards just don't cut it. And don't give me that Lyx-with-micros crap- I need diagrams too.
If they reduced it still to a wallet, with e-IDs and ability to swipe CCs, then it would get FAR more interesting. Of course, I would not bet that Toshiba could do this (more like Apple, HTC/Google or HP/Palm).
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
Forget touch specific OS, gestures, and ebook. I think the killer app for this is a device is app specific keyboards, ie. no more remembering hot keys. The hot keys are the keys that show and are labeled as such, no more ctrl alt shift or function keys. You would have a copy key, a paintbrush key, and a nurb key, etc. I wouldn't worry about no right click on touch screen, there is a virtual track pad with right click if you want it advertised for this device.
"Natural Keyboard" emulator I'm looking forward too. Perhaps you just bend it back on it's spine, like your dad told you not to do with books.
Nullius in verba
Big is all the rage now:
First, it was a hip-hop thing and Flava-Flav upsizing his watch to wear across his chest, then Apple upsized the iPhone to the iPad and now Toshiba upsizes the DSi.
What's next? Cars? Barbie action figures?
me. --a by-product of public education
This for $400 (or $300 without the keyboard) seems to fit the bill.
For someone that primarily uses a desktop and types a lot, a laptop keyboard is already one dimensional. When I needed to do a lot with a laptop, I plugged in an external keyboard. It is a much bigger deal than small screen size.
"-- including a range of virtual keyboards. It runs Windows 7,"
Yawn...
TFA says that the second screen can display different types of keyboards, included one designed for 2 thumbs when being held that way.
We're soooo close to the digital everything assitant (similar to what courier promised), but I expect it'll be 18 more months before we see really solid solutions in this area.
Still, I want a little thing I carry around (like my iphone) with a ton of apps that I can pop in and out of to take care of all those little things i need assistance with hour to hour.
However, when I want to hunker down and troubleshoot my network, I want to be able to flip over and use all my solid network tools that require a computer to act like a computer. I think in some ways thats the promise of android or windows 7 if it receive a solid UI refresh. However, the devices aren't there yet. You're either a phone/tablet focused at apps, (the mini-games of work). Or your a netbook and up (Full games from Portal up to Oblivion). I want both!
I do security
"Sir, Apple has released the iPad, it's eating into our sales what will we do?"
"Apple's selling a lot of iPads? Then we'll make a DOUBLE iPad!"
This sentence no verb.
The funny key layout? That's to spread apart the commonly-used hammers so they wouldn't jam on the typewriter.
That was a requirement of the key layout at the time. Which means that there's probably a more efficient keyboard layout out there, considering this requirement likely discourages certain layouts that are better.
For example, putting "ERT" on a non-home row tells you right off the bat there's a better layout out there. The ";/:" is a complete waste. Dvorak may or may not be a better layout (I'm not sure it's so great, having used it for a while), but QWERTY is by no means the ideal for today.
I'd really wish there was actual research (not the Dvorak propoganda) into this now that flexible key layouts are becoming a physical reality.
Guess how many years a workable os run on this magically device?
How many years a workable note taking program available?
How many years your I.T. department migrate the app to that un-magically-old-aged device?