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Early Look At Acer's Iconia Dual Touchscreen Device
iONiUM sends in news of an early glimpse at Acer's upcoming Iconia laptop, on which they've replaced the keyboard area with a second 14" display that accepts multi-touch input. "The upright display acts as the primary display, while the display that remains parallel with the surface generally serves as a navigation panel, alternatively displaying a roomy on-screen keyboard, a touch-wheel and other on-screen touch controls, or even an extension of what's displayed on the primary display. The latter option effectively provides a dual-monitor mobile device for presentations or studying complex spreadsheets across both monitors, or viewing one document in one monitor, and another on the second monitor. The two monitors make the Iconia a hefty device — at 6.1 pounds it's unlikely to be the device you throw in your bag for your commute." Engadget has some pictures and a video of the device.
Great, like the iPad but with the awkwardness of a laptop.
wha'? where am i?
no more sticky keys
Btw - how's that flexible 'dual' screen laptop coming? You know, where you flip it open 180 degrees, to have a single screen surface.
Two groups of people that will definitely overlook this one; Unix admins, and coders.
.. that has had its steering wheel replaced by a pair of haptic gloves that lets you feel like you are holding a steering wheel and move your hands just like you are holding a steering wheel at only 3x the price of a car with a steering wheel.
Gaah what wimpy whiney weak-livered wusses!
The Acer Iconia is an giant Nintendo DS?
Proud member of the American Non Sequitur Society. We might not make much sense, but boy do we love pizza!
Besides:
1) The price
2) The OS / Software
3) The Weight
4) The Reputation of the Manufacturer
I'd say it is a pretty good product.
On a touchscreen like this that can be used for a keyboard, I wonder if they considered putting bumps on the glass panel where the F and J key go. It seems to me that that might help touch typing quite a bit on a touch keyboard, while not being terribly annoying when used for other purposes.
www.clarke.ca
The problem with them is also that most advanced typist type purely by touch. I never look at the keyboard when typing and having something that changes under my fingers or requires looking all the time is definitely not welcome.
It does not change "all the time" The keyboard for typing would remain fixed.
The thing is that touch typing does NOT involve feeling keys. You would be seriously slowed if that were the case, with any keyboard. Pay attention to how you type next time - are you really feeling for keys or are your fingers hitting the exact location of the key you are trying to type? Touch typing is way more about muscle memory than about feel. I can already touch type on an iPad screen pretty rapidly, because the key area is so large. It just needs to be stable so the screen is not moving out from under you.
What may bother some people more is the lack of give in the keys, but that doesn't bother me at all. You just learn to strike the surface more softly than you would otherwise. And it's not like you don't get feedback from watching the material you are typing.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It's about time someone tried this. The idea of using an onscreen keyboard is dumb though. Now that they have a touch screen big enough for both hands to spread out on they should of come up with a better way to do touch text input. I bet the end result will at least get within shooting distance of keyboard speed. For those times when you just have to sit down and type out some code there is always the USB port.
the iPad only has one screen
Even if you use the VGA cable?
I have to disagree. It might work for you, but for me, and probably for many others who have developed their own style over the years, a non-tactile keyboard is going to just be another source of errors.
I started with traditional touch typing, but because that is not really great for coding (which uses a lot of special keys) I also allow my hands to roam. I don't have any problems on an iPad keyboard, I can type really quickly - because your hands are just as informed by where the edges of something are, as they are individual keys.
You have a good point about typing when not looking at output, that may have issues as I don't tend to do that much. But again I would state that muscle memory is far more of a factor than most people think in ability to type quickly. I really do think kids used to typing on virtual surfaces from a young age will have no trouble typing just as fast as any traditional typist.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
is there a flexible display technology capable of providing a small bump per key dynamically when a virtual keyboard is loaded onto the screen. Perhaps a small physical keyboard hidden beneath the screen that gets raised mechanically when the keyboard is displayed, and for bonus points allows depression when the key is pressed.
The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.
Wish I had mod points
First of all, you can only find them on barren planets in the Neutral Zone - that alone will stir up a possible confrontation with the Romulan Star Empire. Second, every time you put another piece of technology near one, it'll zap the second gadget with a transmitter-probe that'll screw up the second gadget's OS.
I just hope that Acer has the good sense to allow manual closing of the probe launch bay doors. If there's no way to trigger a reactor explosion with backwash from the rockets, we're all doomed.
* Best tablet in 10 years: I challenge anyone to find a tablet in the last 10 years that has larger than a 1400x1050 screen -- much less a *touchscreen* tablet, with a *decent processor*. I would have been willing to pay $4000 for such a device, but with PC makers thinking they can get away with low resolutions, I have never had an opportunity to. But now it has come. At 1366x768 x2, it is about as good as the 1600x1200 touchscreen you could have hoped for (assuming use in dual-screen display mode). And as a bonus, you don't have to move your hands from the "keyboard" to the "screen" in order to touch a GUI element. Wait until some API is exposed on Linux, and then you'll get interesting gestures (e.g. smashing your palm) to toggle keyboard input on and off and/or temporarily mirror the top screen to the bottom screen, letting you quickly move between the display being a mouse and a keyboard. * Custom keyboard = godly: Want to replace your Caps Lock? Sure. Want a shorter spacebar? You got it. (I once searched for a month to find such a keyboard... finally found some type of oriental keyboard, but unfortunately it suffered from key ghosting and thus was useless.) Tired of checking screenshots before buying laptops, to make sure that the Fn key is not where the Ctrl key should be, that the backspace and enters keys are large enough, etc., etc., etc.? (Or perhaps annoyed at the lack of Lenovo BIOS options to switch the Ctrl and Fn key?) Your wish has been granted. * But you have to cut your nails if you're a fast typist: If the technology is not sensitive to touch (e.g. resistive) but rather (e.g.) to capacitance, you will need to make sure your nails are cut very short very often (unlike a physical keyboard where you have a bit more leeway), or you won't trigger an input event. Looking at it another way: this technology has the added benefit of forcing society to be more preened. A double win.
the ergonomics of a flat panel virtual keyboard with no resilience sounds great if you either do very little typing or always wanted to experience RSI for yourself.
However, this might have interesting uses for non-typing intensive applications. Imagine this as a substitute for a conventional control panel with the controls where the keyboard used to be and the system schematic on the top display.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Even the designer fail to use it correctly.