Netbooks and touch screens: A good marriage?
Netbooks are helping boost the PC market as it continues to slide with the economy, but it's only a matter of time before something precipitates a market upturn.
Thanks to the announcement of the Archos 9 PC Tablet on Wednesday, there's even more evidence helping fuel speculation that touch screens can transform the Netbook experience from basic computing into multitouch bliss.
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Touch screens are undoubtedly popular in the mobile market, but they have yet to break through in the computing space. Will they be as revolutionary for PCs as they have thus far been for smartphones?
Some Netbooks already have a touch screen. At the Demo conference this year, CNET's Rafe Needleman got an early preview of Always Innovating's Touch Book. It sports a detachable keyboard, runs Linux, and features 10 to 15 hours of battery life. The product will retail for $299 without the keyboard, or $399 with a keyboard, when it ships later this month.
Asus also offers a Netbook with a touch screen, called the Eee PC T91. It delivers the touch technology through its TouchSuite software. It runs Windows XP, has a 9-inch display, and enables up to five hours of battery life.
Advantages
Without a doubt, there are some advantages to a touch-screen Netbook. For one, it's more intuitive. Users can simply drag their fingers around the display, making tasks simpler.
Just a few years ago, touch technology was practically nonexistent in the smartphone space. Most folks didn't consider it an option. And then, with the help of the iPhone's instant popularity, using touch-screen technology practically became a requirement for any company wanting to perform relatively well in the mobile-phone space.
Some might believe that the technology is a fad, but based on my experience with touch-screen mobile devices, it's anything but.
The Always Innovating Netbook is one of possibly many Netbooks to sport touch screens.
(Credit: Rafe Needleman/CNET)Since Netbooks are more similar to smartphones than full-fledged notebooks, the Netbook market might experience a similar touch-screen boom. Netbooks simply aren't powerful enough to provide a full computing experience. They are designed to give you access to e-mail, the Web, and some basic productivity elements to tag along while you're on-the-go. A touch screen might fit well with that aim.
Disadvantages
Or maybe not. After you stick your hand into that bag of chips and touch your Netbook's display, it will get smudged. And since some Netbooks might not even come with a keyboard, it would be extremely difficult to type out a long e-mail or a Word document with the touch-screen display. Unless some drastic changes are made to virtual-keyboard technology, typing on a touch-screen-equipped Netbook might be more trouble than it's worth.
We also can't forget that although Windows 7 will be more touch-friendly, Windows developers have yet to fully capture the technology. Since there are so few touch-enabled products on the market, most developers have decided against creating applications for touch screens. So if a Netbook sports a touch display, most programs will still require the tried-and-true keyboard and mouse combination.
Worst of all, Microsoft is offering touch technology only in Windows 7 Home Premium, Professional, and Ultimate editors. Windows 7 Starter edition--the version of the software Microsoft is pushing on Netbook makers--won't have touch technology included.
Perhaps that's why Acer's recent announcement of an Android-based Netbook is so important. The technology is built for touch screens, and the Android Marketplace sports a slew of apps that work beautifully with touch technology. That might be Google's "in." And it could be the platform to popularize touch screens in the Netbook space.
But the only way for touch-screen Netbooks to really become popular, naturally, is if consumers buy them. Do you plan to buy a Netbook with a touch screen, or stick with a keyboard-equipped laptop? Let us know in the poll above and in the comments below.
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Don Reisinger is a technology columnist who has written about everything from HDTVs to computers to Flowbee Haircut Systems. Don is a member of the CNET Blog Network, and posts at The Digital Home. He is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.
-dr. karl
Such a touchscreen netbook also needs a keyboard, but it should have a tablet mode -- which is how I would generally use it, as a quick and convenient notebook, information and media retrieval and access device, and centralized communications device. People don't complain about carrying a steno notebook, day-timer or mid-sized trade paperback; I envision something that size only vastly more capable.
The applications really need to be designed to take advantage of capacitive touchscreens and multi-touch input. Simply recognizing the fingertip as a mouse cursor isn't good enough. The classic example would be image resizing on the iPhone/iPod touch by squishing/unsquishing your fingers, or swiping pages.
The fingerprint issue is not a showstopper these days, plus the iPhone 3GS has an oleophobic display. Have you tried it? I have (at a nearby Apple Store) and it does an excellent job at resisting smudging. I expect future screens to do an even better job.
I do however really like the detachable screen from the keyboard idea. Not only can this be convenient, but if companies start incorporating that whole e-ink/LCD hybrid thing, you then have the opportunity to use your notebook as an e-reader! If I developed products like this, my goal would be to make multipurpose devices. Notebook + E-reader + Mobile Phone + 13inch touch screen = the He-Man of devices (awesomeness).
Someone needs to make a touch screen tricorder.
A smartbook/netbook with an eReader-capable touchscreen (Pixel Qi??) and a detachable keyboard would be a GREAT combination. The touchscreen would make content consumption convenient (books, magazines, work documents, movies, etc.), while the physical keyboard would make content creation efficient (if compared to a touchscreen keyboard).
A "thin" OS like Android would provide additional benefits such as fast boot & runtime, always on operation, super long battery life, touch-optimized UI, cell phone calls/SMS/MMS, LBS, etc.
- by Inconnux July 4, 2009 1:05 PM PDT
- Just what I need... fingerprints all over my screen. Personally I have nothing against touch screens as long as you use some kind of stylus. I love my old palm TX. A netbook? hmmm If it also had a keyboard I would consider it.
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