2 weeks ago
While the 10.1” ASUS Eee PC T101MT has yet to go official or become available, ASUS has published a video showing off some touch screen features built into Windows 7 Home Premium along with a look at ASUS’ custom touchscreen interface that we saw back on the T91 series. Not seeing anything new with their GUI apart from possible cosmetic changes but I don’t recall the original one that well anyway.
There’s a button on the T101MT bezel to flip through orientations so I guess that means no accelerometer still.
Video demo below:
Last we heard, the T101 was coming to Taiwan in February and probably soon in the US as it has already arrived at the FCC. Hoping it comes with a capacitive touch screen instead of resistive as seen at CES 2010.
Source: Netbooknews.de
From that demo its resistive (screen bends only resistive has pressure sensitivity - on digitisers its on the pen - read later).
The problem is if you add a capacitive layer on the screen you can’t use a stylus as its not pressure based. If you want a stylus and capacitive then a separate digitiser is required, with a special pen, which of course significantly adds to the cost. A good example of this technology is the new HP TM2, which I hope to get the second it comes out in the UK.
Whilst many people have the preconception that resistive is always worse its not the case. It all depends on how it is implemented (both software and hardware). By the looks of the demo you should have noting to worry about.
I woudn’t count on not being able to use a stylus for a capacitive screen. The technology is sure to be introduced soon. Possibly something as simple as a magnet tip.
There is talk of a stylus for the ipad which should work on other capacitive screens but it definitely won’t be as accurate as an active digitiser.
I’m not too familiar with the technology, why wouldn’t it be as accurate? I just saw saw a patent filing for a magnetic tipped stylus, btw. Company was called HTC or something similar.
Because the digitiser actually ‘talks’ to the pen, it knows the position on the pen before it even touches the screen. The capacitive method would mean a large tip in order to activate the touch mechanism and it would be hard to implement pressure sensitivity. To sum up its quite hard to explain without fully understanding the technology that the two methods use.
It makes sense that HTC is looking into this as that is for a mobile phone and therefore won’t be designed for text input but for simple touches on the screen (selecting an icon for example).