Jeff Atwood writes, <i>The screen bounces when you touch it</i> and for me this just brings up all the reasons I don't want a touchscreen except on a tablet. There is gorilla arms, screen bounces, and screen smudges. Jeez, I hate when people touch my screens.<p>But I am wondering if a reasonable or even better solution is an appropriate touchpad or even Android or iPad touchpad app.<p>Right now there are two (maybe three) touchpads quasi made for Windows 8 that I would like to try.<p>* The Logitech Wireless Rechargeable Touchpad T650 -- a huge touchpad with Windows 8 gesture support<p>* Splashtop Win8 Metro Testbed for Android and iPad<p>* Unified Remote for Android and Windows Phones<p>I haven't used Windows 8 more than three minutes, and I haven't used these alternatives to a touchscreen monitor, but I like the idea of having a 4" to 7" phone or tablet screen that mirrors the Windows 8 screen but lets me keep my finger flat on the table, pointing to a smaller screen now in remote touchscreen mode and able to get feedback to where my finger is either by seeing a "mouse pointer" move on the screen, or just by looking at the phone or tablet my finger is on and seeing the screen there.
Ok I know this is nitpicking but...<p><i>I'm not sure I would want a 13.3" tablet on my lap or in my hands. There must be a reason the standard letter page size is 8½ × 11", right?</i><p>The diagonal on the standard letter is 13.9". The evidence Jeff cites completely undermines his point.<p>I'll just assume it must have been a really long time since he actually held a piece of paper.
I bought a new Asus laptop with Win8 specifically because it has a touchscreen. The touchscreen solves my long standing problem with using laptops - I find touchpads nearly unusable. It's soo much easier to scroll with the touchscreen, especially with the small laptop screens.<p>All non-touchscreen laptops are, to my mind, instantly and sadly obsolete.<p>Note that for a desktop, I see no advantage to a touchscreen, as the mouse is just fine.
This got me thinking about the whole Windows ARM port and x86 compatibility. I'm sure it's been mentioned before, but, why the hell didn't Microsoft make use of .NET for cross-platform compatibility?<p>Have developers write applications in C# or any other language supported by the CLR and let .NET work out the x86/ARM differences.<p>I'm sure there are valid technical and possibly political reasons this didn't happen, but I still find it very strange that Microsoft went to the trouble of developing this entire platform/framework/ecosystem just to ignore it when the opportunity arises to actually make good use of it.
<i>> And Intel's long neglected Atom line, thanks to years of institutional crippling to avoid cannibalizing Pentium sales, is poorly positioned to compete with ARM today.</i><p>Apple was ready to have new products that cannibalized the old ones. If Intel had the same courage, they'd be in a far better position today.
I'm surprised he likes photo passwords. What's the point of a password if you give it away to everyone around you every time you unlock? (Maybe Jeff has never had co-workers who like to play pranks...)
I can only imagine borderline use cases where touch screen interfaces might be faster than a lenovo track point. those use cases might be more common for an average user, but when I'm spending most of my time inside office products, R studio and ssh terminals (and of course the browser) it seems unlikely that it would be more convenient - and I'm wondering, what is jeff atwood actually using this touch laptop for?
I find it annoying when I have to move my hands from the keyboard to the mouse. I imagine it would be infinitely more irritating and far less comfortable moving my hands from the keyboard to touch a vertical screen in front of me.
Kudos to this guy for trying out a lot of new gear, but these things are a lot more puzzling through the eyes of an average consumer. I was at Best Buy this weekend and the shiny new "Windows 8" section, complete with a handful of touch laptops, was a ghost town. Even spending a few minutes reading this article doesn't really sell me on why I should want to touch a laptop - if it's not immediately obvious to consumers, they're just going to walk by to the tablet tables.<p>Touch is great because it enables extremely mobile computing devices - anything built without that in mind might as well not have touch. The Yoga is within eyeshot of dozens of comparatively razor-thin tablets at Best Buy, so even attempting to pitch it as a "PC plus a tablet!" seems like a stretch when you've just palmed an iPad mini. This stuff is kind of cool, but I don't think it's going to make anyone I know upgrade their PC any quicker, which is the measure of MS's success.
With win8 I thought for the first time about using a touchscreen for work or at home and my conclusion was:<p>Don't want to do it.<p>Maybe I'm to old or something but It just don't feel right fingering around on my monitor. Even if it would be flat and part of my desk (which would also be horrible because I eat, drink and smoke at my desk at home). I want to have my head up, look straight and don't have the screen right before my nose.<p>There are tabs and smartphones. I have those. Touching their screens feels right. It's the small thing you do on the road, in the plane, do small things or have fun. But I just don't feel like I could work with that at work or at home.
Can't see it working with a 15" laptop, which is my preferred size.<p>But if it gets to the point where all laptops have touch screens then I won't complain - it might work well with some UIs (like XBMC). I'm just not willing to pay extra for it.
If he's right that touch is here to stay, we're going to see a major split between workstations and consumer devices. This is novel. Until recently, the workstation has been the anchor-point by how close they come to being as effective as the workstation. The workstation isn't going to go away, but neither is it going to support touch - multiple screens and comfortable posture are features for that setting.
And this is exactly why I wonder who decided 16:9 was better than 16:10 for laptops/tablets/etc... Even just that little bit of extra vertical space makes it so much more comfortable in portrait mode (when I rotate my computer monitor, which is an old TN LCD panel since low response 16:10 monitors are pretty much non-existent now).
I use Air Display (app that lets you use an iPad as an external monitor, and to control that monitor w/ touch or the mouse) on a regular basis, mostly just as a chat window next to my MacBook so Adium isn't taking up valuable screen real estate, and I often find myself touching the iPad to move windows around, close pop-up notifications, etc... and then I find myself trying to touch my MacBook screen without thinking to do the same thing, and disappointed when it doesn't work. So I can totally see usecases for a touch laptop - it feels like the natural next step, plus you could do things like draw directly (with a stylus) in Photoshop instead of using a graphics tablet.
It's extremely disappointing that the majority of (or is it all?) Android tablets do not have screens with a 4:3 aspect ratio. 16:10 is awkward and silly; 16:9 is something I won't even bother trying.
The Lenovo Yoga 13 is an unsung hero of the Windows 8 wave. I tried it at a Best Buy as was very impressed with the build quality, specs and price. The story that's not being told though is that it's sold out everywhere and the order time on Lenovo.com is <i>4 weeks</i>!<p><a href="http://www.lenovo.com/products/us/laptop/ideapad/yoga/yoga-13/" rel="nofollow">http://www.lenovo.com/products/us/laptop/ideapad/yoga/yoga-1...</a>
I don't really get his point #2 "A giant touchpad makes the keyboard area too large"<p>Isn't the distance the screen is away pretty much dependent on the height of the screen? I know I don't see many laptops that the base is larger than the screen. Occasionally the back sticks out a bit for a larger battery but I've never seen a laptop where the keyboard/trackpad were not completely covered by the screen when closed.
His complaints about widescreen tablets not being very natural in portrait mode speaks volumes about his lack of experience with Android tablets, which all comes in this form.<p>It may feel a bit weird at first, but really, it's sorta like reading webpages of a normal A4 sheet of paper. And we should be pretty used to that. The iPad haven't been around for so long.
Am I the only one that prefers my widescreen monitors flipped to portrait mode? I have it both in the office and at home, I only flip them when watching a movie.