In Depth: Best pre-Windows 7 touchscreen laptops
Touch computing is one of those eternal promises in technology. The idea has been around since at least the 1980s, but has rarely showed up in legitimate products. This year, however, new touch computing devices from Dell, HP, Asus and others have shown the true potential of the technology.
Of course, Apple got the ball rolling when it released the iPhone, which supports two-fingered multi-touch gestures. The idea makes sense because, once the software has been fine-tuned, you simply use your fingers to control the device.
Microsoft has followed suit with technologies like Surface, and has decided to make touch one of the cornerstones of Windows 7. And of the future? When ubiquitous computing finally arrives – the idea that your bathroom mirror or a wall in your entryway will hold a computer display – touch will be the only viable input method.
"The opportunity for PCs is to play a role in less traditional environments, such as kiosks and booths where the PC powers larger multi-touch displays," says Agnieszka Girling, director of project strategy at Artefact, a company that works on next-generation computer interfaces. "This reduces the cost of creating such displays by eliminating the need to develop proprietary technologies to do so."
Here, rather than covering prototypes or products that may never be released, we have tested existing products to see how the touch interfaces work, how the screens respond to touch, and if the devices will actually help you in your daily work.
HP TouchSmart TX2
HP is one of the leading companies in the world of touch computing. Having done its homework at HP Labs in India on touch interfaces, it has discovered that people in different parts of the world have a 'touch language' and will, in some countries, drag out with their fingers to zoom in, instead of the more natural UK and US action of dragging in to zoom.
The Misto Coffee Table PC (which HP unveiled in 2006) and the HP Obscura Multi-Touch Video Wall (showcased at the D5 conference in 2007) were early examples of HP touch computing. Last year, the company released the TouchSmart IQ506 all-in-one desktop, and now it has taken that touch interface and put it into its first touch laptop, the TouchSmart TX2.
In a hands-on test, the first thing we noticed is that the multi-touch screen acts a bit like a single touchscreen. Meaning that even though the screen itself supports gestures, you generally just click on options on the screen to use them.
The one place where you can use two fingers is the main interface screen, where you can adjust the size of the thumbnails using a click and drag movement. You can also zoom in on photos easily enough, and to browse a website you can just flick up or down.
We would have preferred a few extra controls, such as the click and rotate gesture on the Dell Latitude XT2. However, the good news here is that HP has continued to tweak the touch software included on this laptop and the desktop line and may add more gestures in the coming year.
Some of the controls we'd like to see include a way to minimise a window (maybe it's a diagonal swipe) and a better paint program that supports more pen sizes and brushes.
Another interesting perk for TouchSmart TX2 users is that developers are starting to release new apps. They are available at the TouchSmart community, along with the support forums and news.
Now, to be clear: the TX2 is a Windows Vista laptop that, for the most part, runs Vista applications. The HP TouchSmart interface runs as another application for Vista. Within that HP interface, you can run touch-enabled apps, such as a YouTube viewer and a nifty kitchen egg-timer app.
It's great to see these extensions of the touch interface – the same community support for touch interfaces is starting to happen with the Windows 7 Public Beta as well, as developers are starting to create touch apps for the upcoming OS. Unfortunately, Windows 7 does not yet run on HP TouchSmart computers because, according to HP, the company does not release drivers for Beta software.
Dell Latitude XT2
The successor to the Dell Latitude XT convertible-tablet laptop, the Latitude XT2, adds a few interesting twists to the original XT model in terms of touch computing. For starters, the drivers that work with N-Trig multi-touch capabilities are included with the laptop, not as a separate download.
Here, multi-touch means you can use two fingers to zoom in on a photo (by moving your index fingers closer together) or zoom out (by separating them). You can click and hold down with a finger, and then swipe in a circle to rotate a photo.
To browse through a PowerPoint slideshow, you can just flick from one slide to the other in a very intuitive fashion. The capacitive touchscreen, truth be told, works a bit like the older Tablet PC models that support a stylus, in that they feel a bit, well, touchy.
For example, when your finger touches the screen, there's not an immediate response like there is with an iPhone or the HP TouchSmart desktop models, which use two cameras on top of the display to track your finger movements.
Sabrina Boler, a design director at Artefact, says touch interfaces must advance before a laptop computer becomes as intuitive and fluid to use as pen and paper or a GPS touchscreen in your car.
"One of the key factors of success for touch and other natural interfaces is responsiveness – in order to feel natural, the interface needs to respond instantly and through a seamless connection with a user's movements, the way physical objects in the real world do," says Boler.
"A user's expectations are drastically heightened when using touch, both visually and in terms of how natural the interaction should feel. The system's response to user actions needs to be natural, with the principle that the system should always respond to the user, even if the user takes an 'invalid' action.
"Take the example where you are flipping through photos on an iPhone. When you reach the end of the list, if you try to continue, the iPhone provides a natural feedback that makes you realise you are at the end of the list (basically, it shows the last photo moving, as if to make room for the next one, only to bounce back). This is certainly more elegant than a no system response or an error dialogue box."
Fujitsu LifeBook U820 mini laptop
By far the smallest convertible-style Tablet PC we've ever seen, although currently only available in the US, the Fujitsu Lifebook U820 supports touch input on its capacitive screen. There's no multi-touch control here, but Fujitsu does include a small applet that you can use in full-screen mode that works with finger input.
Like most Tablet PCs, you can also use a stylus, and there's even a unique mouse controller with a rubber knob on one side of the display and left/right mouse buttons to the left. The U820 screen turns and folds, so you can use it like a slate tablet.
Normally, touching the screen is a bit of a problem on the U820 because a mouse icon keeps showing up that is meant more for the stylus to left or right-click. However, in the full-screen touch program, which is Microsoft Origami, the touch interface really shines.
We were able to see weather information, jot down notes and check a schedule. There's also a music, movie and photo browser. We missed the multi-touch swipe gestures of the Apple iPhone, but with the U820 flipped in slate tablet mode, Origami becomes a genuine touch application.
It meant we could leave the laptop on a coffee table and grab it almost like an MP3 player and start up a new audio file (playback through the internal speakers is not that great, but through headphones the U820 sounds just as good as an iPod) or show a friend some photos. You can also touch the screen to move through photos.
Overall, the U820 showed promise as a touch device because it is a full-fledged laptop computer that's about twice the size of a smartphone. It's mobile, fast enough for most general tasks, and gives you the freedom to control your apps with just a finger touch.
Asus Eee PC T91
Asus has embraced the world of touch computing with a full line of laptops and all-in-one desktop computers. The surprise is that they are making touch available through Linux and a series of touch enabled Linux applications.
We tested the Asus Eee PC T91 laptop extensively at CES 2009 (it is not available for purchase until late spring) and were quite impressed – the buttons in each app are large and easy to find, and you don't think about reaching for a mouse every time you use one.
The T91 does not support multi-touch, however, so you can't flick and browse through photos. It is strictly just meant to control the interface by clicking on buttons to start apps, or drawing in a paint program with your fingers.
Also, Asus reminded us recently that the Linux interface is just a prototype. We saw a demo of an updated interface (called 3Doorway) for the T91 that features a circular finger-touch browser that you flick through and select icons, view photos, and control music playback. It works like the Microsoft Surface table in that you can array a series of photos across the table and move them around with your fingers – an interesting idea for laptop use.
One of the issues we noticed is that, because the device uses an Intel Atom processor, it tends to lag behind on touches. For example, there's a slight delay after you click an icon to start the web browser. Where Asus scores high marks is with the plethora of extra apps it includes beyond just simple document writing and web browsing – more than the HP TouchSmart TX2 and Dell Latitude XT2.
We especially liked the media apps and those for painting on the screen. The convertible-style, 900g laptop is also a good match for artists, business users, and kids because it is flexible enough to be a note-taking machine or a fully-functioning netbook – since it has a QWERTY keyboard.
Asus seems intent on being a leader in touch computing – the Eee Top is another small desktop model that supports touch through a Linux interface. Processing capability aside, these touch computers show that Linux and a capacitive touchscreen are legitimate and viable.
So what will happen?
Touch laptops will continue to evolve. In fact, Jackie Fenn, a Gartner analyst who studies alternative interfaces for computers, says that 2009 will be a year of even more evolution as companies explore new paradigms of controlling a computer. "We are seeing a flurry of activity in camera-based gesture interfaces [think Minority Report] – for example from Oblong, Gesturetek, PrimeSense, eyesight, Softkinetic, and others. However, it will be a while before the software/OS levels of the user interface catch up to take advantage of the new capabilities," she says.
In the end, it's a major win for laptop users because it will mean enjoying the computer in a more visceral and physical way, and will break the boredom of the mouse. Who knows? Maybe the very definition of a laptop will change in the next few years.
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