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hotrodlincoln
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Joined: 08 Apr 2003
Posts: 1687
Location: Not in Austin anymore
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 Posted: Tue Jul 15, 2008 8:44 pm Post subject: Dell puts multitouch on notebooks |
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Gestures popular on the iPhone will work on full-size notebook screens and with a range of programs
By Dan Zehr
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Monday, July 14, 2008
Dell Inc. plans to launch a download on Tuesday that will add "multitouch" functions to its tablet notebook computers, bringing to laptop screens the fingertip gestures popular on Apple Inc.'s iPhone.
The update for the Latitude XT tablet computer will provide users four gestures that work in a wide range of programs, including Microsoft Corp.'s ubiquitous Office suite, the Firefox Internet browser and Google Earth.
As on the iPhone, a pinching motion will shrink contents on the screen, and the opposite motion will expand things.
But Dell also will include two additional multitouch options, including a two-fingered double-tap that users can custom-program as a shortcut for dozens of tasks, such as opening a Web browser or turning off the screen to save power.
The new functions are made possible by the Latitude XT's screen, which was developed by N-trig, an Israeli company with an office in Austin. Rather than relying on pressure, like many handheld touch-screen devices, N-trig's technology measures a finger's position with an electrical current that's affected by the conductivity of the human finger.
Other devices employ these "capacitive" touch screens as well, including the iPhone. But to date, mainstream use of capacitive-touch screens has been limited to smaller sizes. N-trig has focused on screens ranging from 7 inches to 22 inches, although its technology could work on larger panels as well, said Amichai Ben David, the company's chief executive.
N-trig's advantage is its ability to very accurately measure the location finger or stylus contact with a larger screen, but also it has the ability to simultaneously measure several fingers or pens. The company's screens are accurate enough to measure the surface area of a fingertip's touch, for example, allowing the computer to discriminate between a light tap and a solid push.
More popular among tablet PC enthusiasts has been the interchangeable use of pen and touch, which allows users to switch from one input to the other on a whim. And because of its accuracy, an N-trig-enabled computer can ignore incidental contact with the screen, such as the palm of a user's hand as he or she writes with a stylus.
"Our vision of the marketplace is moving away from indirect manipulation on the screen (keyboard and mouse) ... to hands-on computing," Ben David said in a telephone interview from Tel Aviv, where the company is based.
"Our goal in life is to allow users a very strong, familiar, personal way of manipulating what is becoming a quite complicated desktop," he said.
The limit isn't how many touches the screen can accurately read at once, said James Stewart, an N-trig field application engineer and one of its two employees in Austin. The limit is how many concurrent touches the computer, operating system and program can process.
As programmers develop more robust applications geared for multitouch inputs, N-trig intends to scale up and allow more touches, Stewart said. That could be enough to allow virtual keyboards, for example. Toddlers could finger paint, elementary school kids could practice piano and teenagers could play PC games in an entirely new way.
Gamers, typically among early adopters of high-end technologies, already are salivating over the possibility of manipulating characters or troops with the touch of the hand, Stewart said. But widespread adoption of full multitouch options — use that goes beyond merely moving, rotating or zooming in on objects — will take some time, he said.
"The biggest challenge to uptake on this is the learning curve," he said. "We're so used to the keyboard and mouse."
dzehr@statesman.com; 512-912-5932
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http://www.statesman.com/business/content/business/stories/technology/07/14/0714dell.html |
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Rocke_T_Sinetist
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Joined: 26 Aug 2005
Posts: 2590
Location: DFW airport
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| Posted: Tue Jul 15, 2008 8:58 pm Post subject: |
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Touchscreens should be a yawner by now. They've been commercially available about as long as CD audio has.
Nice to know, however, that Israel is producing something besides weapons of mass destruction. They're #2, behind the US. By comparison, Iraq was between #15 and #20, at their worst.
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Rocke T Sinetist
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