The Touch Book | Hacker News Reader

The Touch Book

alwaysinnovating.com

44 pointssmokinn25 comments

I bought the beta version of this and let me just say...DO NOT BUY IT. I know what I got was in beta, but its hard to improving to the point where its actually something desirable. Its slow, heavy, and the touch screen is just quite poor.

A horrible horrible device. Agreed. It's basically unusable.

After watching the videos it basically looks like a great idea poorly executed. The device itself is so thick and bulky.

If Apple had decided to make basically the same device but with the typical Apple finish, now that would've been a product worth buying.

> The device itself is so thick and bulky.

Lenovo's IdeaPad S10-3t, introduced at CES 2010. Capacitive multitouch too.

http://gizmodo.com/5440207/netbook-tablets-get-capacitive-mu...

They really ought to get rid of the microscopic trackpad on that thing and replace it with a trackpoint, or do a Thinkpad-branded version so-configured.

They did. The typical Apple Finish got rid of the extendability by making it so you can't take the back off to get a shiny shell. They removed the 7 USB ports and squashed everything inside so there's no room for the "GPS USB Dongle" or anything else, to make it slimmer.

They got rid of the need for a stylus by getting rid of tiny menus like the right click -> full screen the guy demonstrates, and to make that work they rewrote their software to have cut out the more advanced, less common functionality such that it can be controlled with a few touch gestures.

Then they made the keyboard a standard small Apple dock so it can be a picture-frame style device when docked without a keyboard...

The Apple finish isn't magic, you can't say "I want that much room inside and that many ports and also for it to be thin and have a very smooth slick case" or "I want completely normal software but also for it to be as tailored to the task as highly customised software".

If you don't want "The Apple Finish" then look at the Lenovo link below - basically the same device but done well, but not Apple style.

http://www.alwaysinnovating.com/wiki/index.php/Faqs#Does_the...

> Does the Touch Book support multitouch?

> No. And we don't think that it's an issue. Multitouch is interesting when you want to zoom in / zoom out. At 1024×600, the Touch Book screen is big enough so that you don't need to zoom all the time as you have to do it on the iPhone.

Hmm, that seems to be missing the point a little bit... It's like saying, "Does this laptop have a trackpad?" "No. The mouse is great and all when you want to highlight text, but we find that using shift and an arrow key works just fine. And now you won't have to worry about accidentally moving the pointer like on some _other_ computers."

Isn't multitouch patented by Apple?

Multi-touch support is a necessity if you want a screen keyboard.

Why? Most phones other than the iPhone don't support true multi-touch and it hasn't been an issue for them. The only major use case where I've seen it be a problem is with games that have controls that need to be pushed at the same time.

Double tapping to zoom works fine... in fact I can't tell you the last time I pinched on my iPhone, I always double tap.

Typing on mono-touch displays has not been historically a problem because until now you had to type with one finger or a stylus. If you want to type with both hands and more than one finger, mono-touch will be an ocean of pain.

the best part of my macbook is scrolling on the mousepad with two fingers. both vertical and horizontal scrolling works. i find other computers (and git gui, which is the only app on my mac that doesn't handle mouse pad scroll touches) virtually unusable because i have to do something special to scroll. scrolling is key to internet browsing and coding.

so....can it rock scrolling without multitouch? i doubt it (since it would be confused with moving the mouse somewhere)

X11 supports that type of scrolling on my Eee running Arch (I don't remember if it was there by default or if I had to turn it on, though), albeit only vertically. Note that the Eee's trackpad doesn't have multitouch; thus, I see no reason that this couldn't manage it. Of course, I don't use it much, because the trackpad is a bit too small for it to be useful, but still.

I have multi-touch scroll on one of my notebooks under Ubuntu. The other's trackpad, unfortunately, doesn't support multi-touch.

Imagine my surprise when finding out my old, cheap notebook knew how to work such magic...

"Opened at 180 degres"

Millions of dollars go into designing and manufacturing a product, then some jackass misspells something on the front page.

I don't think millions of dollars went in to the design of this thing. It's a Beagleboard and an off-the-shelf touchscreen.

It's slow (watch the video) and ugly. The guy demonstrating it even had to use a stylus, which is a sure sign of failure.

I do not think it's a sign of failure. I have watched 3 of his video and the product need a stylus just to be more accurate on small menu not all the time.

The idea is great and it has a battery on the back of the screen to be able to use it as a tablet this is why it's not very slim. I really love the idea and this product is real. Keep in mind that most of what we see on the web are just speculation or prototype. This is a step beyond dreaming... Of course it has not the style of the iPad but at least it can multi-task, have a real keyboard, etc etc... Might not be perfect but it seems very cool for the price!

Multitask? It can't even run one program fluidly!

How so? If you feel like taking notes it's pretty much required.

Yes, but I don't think you could use this thing to take notes - high latency interface and all.

The software is really important, and these guys didn't write any, or if they did, it wouldn't be any good. This kind of thing takes a lot of effort to get right.

3 pounds. Eek. Netbook elbow.

I wonder where the weight comes from. I imagine it's mostly from the batteries since there are 2, one in the keyboard base and the other in the tablet screen.

I have read numerous extremely poor reviews of the Touch Book. The OS is apparently quite buggy and slow. I wouldn't buy it.

Linux Journal (2010-02) did an overall positive review of the device, well, a least for the technical-savy geeks who like to tinker with their machine. The software part, still in beta, seems a little bugy.

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