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Touchscreen Laptops, Whether You Like Them Or Not
An anonymous reader writes "With CES all wrapped up, an article at CNET discusses a definite trend in the laptops on display from various manufacturers this year: touchscreens. Intel and Microsoft are leading the way, and attempting to grab the industry's reins as well: '... just to make sure the touch message was crystal clear, Intel issued an edict to PC partners during its CES keynote: all next-generation ultrabooks based on its "Haswell" chip must be touch.' With tablets and detachable/convertible computers coming into the mainstream, it seems the manufacturers have something to gain by condensing their production options. The article says, 'What does that mean to consumers? Your next laptop will likely be touch, whether you like it or not.'"
To heLL mit touch-screen!
It's nice to have there as an option if you want it, if you don't care for it, don't use it.
Anonymity of the internet is responsible for the views expressed in my post.
Only touch-screen enabled notebooks here?
Sorry, no sale for you.
My money will go to the manufacturers who will provide "old school" displays.
Mastering the English language is fucking easy: all you have to do is to put an f* word in every fucking sentence.
From experience I haven't found anything worse than a desktop or laptop with a touch screen. They are ergonomically bad, after 10 minutes I get pain in my wrists and elbows. The only place I have found desktop sized touch screens to be useful is when stood up, for example at a point of sale.
Also, my desktop monitors are too far away to touch when sat down, the screen is a good 6-8 inches further than my reach so they have to be moved uncomfortably too close which doesn't just hurt my neck and eyes, but I have no room to fit my keyboard in front of the screen on my desk when bought closer. When lounging with my laptop the screen is either too close when sat down or when semi lying down too far to touch. Don't get me started on finger smudges.
What might make sense is if "monitors of the future" could be used either vertically or horizontally (or to basically generalize, 0 = degree = 90). Then you could place the monitor at 20 degrees and use touch for drawing things/poking screen on those applications that support touch, or for standing over the monitor to review a design of some kind (CAD, structural diagram, etc). Then put the monitor back upright when its time to crank out a document or write some code.
It does not have to be an "either/or" situation. A monitor flat on the desk with touch has some practical uses But at 90 degrees touch is useless.
The anti-touch commenters here echo the comments of anti-mousers decades ago -- "Not for me." We know how that worked out.
1. Until you work with a touch enabled laptop, you have no basis for comment about touch enabled laptops.
2. Until you work with a touch enabled desktop, you have no basis for comment about touch enabled laptops.
3. After experiencing touch enabled laptops and desktops, different people will have different opinions but nobody should feel obligated to force their opinions on others.
4. I have two months experience using a touch enabled laptop computer and I love it. Your mileage may vary.
5. I have no experience with using a touch enabled desktop computer so I have no comment.
People are different and different people use computers in different ways. Some are amenable to touch and some are not.
You can just not use the touchpad. The real problem is the disappearance of matte screens. I hate glossy.
I want a touch monitor on my desktop at work. I want to program the computer to play a loud "stop touching me" every time one of my cow orkers touches it. Maybe I can finally stop having fingerprints all over my screen.
My company would rather go to Lenovo or Toshiba and pay them more for custom built machines that have stripped down functionality to give to the drones than hand out laptops that could be perceived as having features that directors and executives have. Like the 'pilot project' we're running for iPads for higher middle managers and executives while Corporate has ALREADY announced that iPads don't meet Corporate security standards.
Starting in 1984, I worked at Digital Techniques, who made the TouchCom series of "public access" touch-screen computers. Touch-screens are intuitive for accessing information, but for creating anything we generally used a Summagraphics tablet.
Could you get much work done if someone were holding their hand in front of your screen, and their finger utterly obscuring everything around your cursor? Even if that someone is you...
Keeping up the price of the final product. If the production cost gets to the point where it's totally dominated by the CPU and operating system, the competitive advantage for ARM or other processors running Linux becomes compelling. Therefore, load up the basic system with enough other high-cost features to hide the "Microsoft tax" and "Intel tax."
Those of us who remember netbooks will recognize the intended series of events.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
a) You don't have to use it.
b) It actually works in some situations. Especially when you'd normally only have a touchpad.
The reasoning on Intel's part seems to be that unless the laptop gains as much usability and "coolness" factor as the recent tablets have, Intel will be looking at a considerable laptop market shrinkage. And since Intel is by far better positioned in the laptop as oppose to tablet market, it is as critical for them as it is for Microsoft.
On the other hand, what Intel seems to be missing is that the screen resolution also plays a significant role in user's device appreciation. Microsoft does not seem to have as much say about this (strangely), but Intel could have added minimum resolution to the list of their requirements.
WATCH TV Commercials, it is how the designer envisions their products to be used. Take cars. Have you seen a single car ad where the advertised car is in a traffic jam? No? Then that car SUCKS at it. Isn't shown in a crowded city with LOADS of other cars, cyclists and pedestrians leaping out of the way for the advertised car? Then it SUCKS at city driving. Doesn't talk about safety or road handling (as in sticking to the road as opposed to speeding) then said car will kill you.
Now look at Intel and even MS commercials for how they see their new products being used. Windows 8 is ALL about media CONSUMPTION, Intel is all about meetings, light choices, consumption, trivial work flows. That is how they envision their computers being used, not for just sitting down for 8 hours and getting some boring but necessary work done.
http://oldcomputers.net/oldads/old-computer-ads.html shows you how old ads pointed at the business applications of a PC, what it could do for your business. Look at modern PC ads... where is the productivity?
Well, it is there... if you world is like the world of "Friends" where a dozen white people spend about 5 second a day at work yet can afford spacious apartments in the heart of Manhattan, then the Intel/Windows ads reflect your work flow. Nice for you. The rest of us sit behind a computer screen, hopefully a big one and enter data all day long. Doesn't matter if that is actual data, code or image designs, we have to do a LOT of it to pay our bills. And then holding your hands up in the air HURTS. Not inconvenient, not different, not going against muscle memory, actually fucking bloody HURT.
Try it right now, READ JUST this story, holding your arms in front of you. If you manage it for longer then 5 minutes, you qualify for the navy seals. And that is not entirely a joke, part of military training is pain exercises like holding your arms up for a long time, they tend to add weights because it looks though but just holding your arms stretched for long enough hurts.
The reason Windows/Intel want you to work this way is because their marketeers LOVE the idea that using a computer is about making a few choices "that picture, that point on the presentation" and the rest is thinking sitting around work. It is NOT, Star Trek STILL isn't real, using a computer for most of us is barely different from sitting at an assembly line putting components in place. Just think about it, just typing this post is just sitting and hitting keys in the right order. Where do I need to touch the screen? What part of this work flow is improved by having a touch screen? Having to raise my hand to hit the preview button?
If you screen setup is right, the preview button is JUST under eye-height because the line you are typing on should be at eye height so you don't have to bend your head down. That means you have to lift you hand 20 centimeters on my setup. That is NOT convenient.
If you are thinking of buying a touchscreen, take your existing PC/laptop and just pretend but NOT for 5 minutes, for a month, day in day out, every working hour.
If you then still think it is a good idea, go ahead.
Want more proof? The Wii. Sold massively, then failed on selling games because hard core gamers do NOT want to swing their hands around for hours at end. It WORKS for casual use. Is your PC use casual? No? Then get a Wii Gamepad Pro and leave the touchscreens to the TV world were you can earn a living without ever going to work.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
touchscreens may be literally out of reach.
>"Your next laptop will likely be touch, whether you like it or not."
So all laptop/notebook/netbook/ultrabook/whatever-name-is-in-vogue models will:
1) Be more expensive
2) Be considerably heavier (glass is not light)
3) Be more fragile
4) Have lots of screen glare (yep- glass)
5) Have something else that can malfunction
6) Have a larger bezel (which is more wasted space)
Because that is what you get with touchscreen technology right now. Thanks again, Microsoft/Intel, for "leading the industry" because choice is a bad thing.
...after CES everyone was saying "Your next TV will likely be 3D, whether you like it or not", but this year everyone is classifying 3D TV as a passing fad, and an unimportand factor when it comes to consumer. I'm pretty sure that unless touchscreens enhance by a signifant degree the user experience, we'll see the same thing happening again.
Just because manufacturers have found a new gimmick to sell, don't mean that we have to follow them around like sheep
Maybe he's a serf.
I picked up a Windows 8 touch Samsung notebook. Very nice design. When I did this, Windows 8 was no longer the OS I disliked - quite the opposite. Many common things that I used to have to do, (like adjust network settings) were such a chore with the mouse or keyboard. .... Reminds me of when the mouse got real popular.
Nice try. On the second day of astroturf training you will learn to create a real user ID to give you more credibility than just some AC.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
On a big screen, i want a pen, not a finger
If you have a big screen, you'd better hope your pen is huge.
I thought that, like expensive cars or guns, guys got big screen laptops because of how small their pen is.
Is simply having a touch screen that bad? Just ignore it, even disable it if it offends you that much. No one is forcing you to use it, not even Windows 8.
I never use the Bluetooth on my laptop. It's mere existence was not a deal-breaker.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
So I assume touchscreen laptops will reduce battery life on all new devices?
I like the form factor and the fact that the touchscreen eliminates the need for a touchpad
This is the fundamental design mistake that Microsoft has made which is what went wrong with Windows 8. A touchscreen and a touchpad are quite different and incompatible and one does not replace the other. One is suitable for tablet mode where you are interacting with the whole screen and picking it up, moving it into the correct ergonomic position for direct control. The other, which allows relative motion, is suitable for office / desk working situations where you want to manipulate a screen that should be some distance from you.
All touchscreen computers should have a second input device such as a mouse. In a laptop that means a touchpad equivalent.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
OK I guess it wouldn't be /. if it weren't for all the false dichotomies and people talking out their ass. But this just gets tiresome.
I have had a Tablet PC since about 2003 or 2004. Maybe longer, I can't remember. I will NEVER go back to a regular laptop. Never once have I gotten the dreaded "Gorilla Arm Syndrome." Why? Because no one in their right mind would actually use a touch screen in an entirely vertical mode and throw out their mouse, forcing them to do everything with the touch screen. That nonsense is just the ghost of Steve Jobs talking, in an attempt to discredit anything Apple hasn't (yet) been able to capitalize on.
Most of the time, when I use my Tablet PC, I tilt the screen way back like a drafter's table. I can then comfortably read the screen, type, use my finger to do quick, less-precise things (like scroll or hit a button), use the active-stylus for more-precise things (like selecting text or drop down menus or drawing curves in Illustrator or handwriting), and even occasionally use the mouse for even-more-precise things (like drafting or adjusting those curves in Illustrator). Sometimes, I will even use the track-pad, though I often turn it off. I move back and forth between all the tools at my disposal just like any other craftsman who actually has the wherewithal to learn how to use more than one tool at a time. I have watched people use the extra large track pad on Mac laptops, with all those handy finger gestures and I wouldn't mind adding that to the mix as well. Especially for times when I am trying to do a lot on a laptop-sized screen.
The point is that more options are better. Anyone who says otherwise is full of shit.
So, if all laptops will soon have touch-screens, then the price of those touch screens will come way down. Everyone will get used to using them however they work best for them and then it won't be new any more. GAWWD, I'm old enough to remember the frikkin mouse-vs-keyboard wars. Oh wait a minute... there are still some morons who keep claiming that they are the macho stud coder because they never touch a mouse. When you listen to them type it sounds as if they are typing a million characters a minute ... each key pounded like the fate of the world depends on it ... until you take a look and see that almost half of all those keystrokes are the freaking backspace key.
Holy crap people! Get over yourselves! You you are all computer nerds. You will never be macho except by comparison with some other computer nerd who is slightly less macho. Stop posturing over which tool or product is the absolute best, denigrating all the others lest someone see your preferred tool as less cool. Just use what works for you, give the others a try once in a while, and get the hell on with your lives. All this touch-screen vs mouse nonsense is like a bunch of carpenters arguing over which is better: a saw or a hammer.
This is the fundamental design mistake that Microsoft has made which is what went wrong with Windows 8. A touchscreen and a touchpad are quite different and incompatible and one does not replace the other. One is suitable for tablet mode where you are interacting with the whole screen and picking it up, moving it into the correct ergonomic position for direct control. The other, which allows relative motion, is suitable for office / desk working situations where you want to manipulate a screen that should be some distance from you.
All touchscreen computers should have a second input device such as a mouse. In a laptop that means a touchpad equivalent.
The Microsoft Surface RT comes with a cover/keypad that includes a touchpad; they offer both inputs. And with the USB port, I use a mouse all the time.
The Microsoft Surface RT comes with a cover/keypad that includes a touchpad; they offer both inputs. And with the USB port, I use a mouse all the time.
I really don't see anything wrong with that. The normal keyboard is crap but you could leave it at home so it doesn't take anything away. There have been Android tablets that come with keyboards for ages and they are perfect for certain strange niche markets. The difference here is that, 99.5% of the time you use the surface without its keyboard and so direct pointing works fine. On the 0.5% of the time when you a) want to use a keyboard b) have it with you and c) aren't sitting next to a PC anyway the inconvenience of getting gorilla arm from using direct touch on a device which is far from you is probably worth it to avoid having to carry a separate mouse with you.
The problem with touch comes only when you have a fixed screen separated from you by a keyboard such as a laptop or desktop monitor. You either mount the screen in a position which causes neck strain or you mount it in a position which causes ergonomic problems. Either way people are going to hate it. When this was tried last time, the solution developed was to separate the screen from the tablet interface (look up Wacom Bamboo). Those who don't know their history are doomed to repeat it, it seems.
As far as using a mouse with a surface RT, seems a bit perverse, but each to their own. How long did it take you to learn to avoid all the various gestures whilst dragging items around the screen?
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();