How Touchscreens should be

[ghot]

TOUCHSCREENS THE WAY THEY SHOULD BE:

1. Touchscreens = dumb....figerprints etc.
2. Touch keyboards = smart..... noone cares if they get fingerprints, no dust in keys!
3. Entire base of Laptop / Notebook / Netbook is touch screen and user programmable!
4. Far left of touch base for user programmable macros or w/e.
5. Mouse touchpad on far right where it should be, mouse left/right on top is better.
6. Touchscreen base area by hinge...for whatever the users wants to move with fingers.
7. Touchkeyboard user re-arrangable
8. Touchpad 10 keypad, again, user configurable.
9. Whole Touch base, more or less user configurable.


Why would anyone do this?

The problem with the new Touchscreen net/lap/notebooks is that no matter how you "coat" the surface, it will get messed up with fingerprints etc., in no time at all. Also, even for short periods of time, holding arms up in the air to "touch" a normal touch screen is stupid!

The Touchbase / keyboard version however, lets the user keep his arms where he normally does, allows for fingerprints all over w/o disturbing the viewing screen, AND eliminates: dust, doritos, cigarette ashes et al, from getting IN the keyboard. The Touchbase / keyboard would also be totally user configurable. This would offer a multitude of choices for disabled folks, left handed or right handed people, and even key size (for children), etc could easily be accomplished.

Lastly, its high time manufacturers put the motherboard and its associated "hot components" in/behind the upper normal viewing only screen, as they are light weight and could be much more easily cooled. Leave the heavier / cooler components (PSU, DVD Rom, SSD or HD's) in the BASE of the Laptop (so it wouldn't tip over with the screen open). Even better....the base could also contain a much larger (lets say 18 cell battery) for longer battery runtime.

Since manufacturers are already moving towards the "touch" market, why not do it right the 1st time? Even all the touch controls on Star Trek were located on the consoles rather than the viewing screen portion! Further, this same reasoning could be applied to the mobile phone/PDA world as well. There is absolutely no need or reason to have touch controls ON THE VIEWING SCREEN !!! We now have slide out / flip open / even one piece aka iPhone, cellular phone. They too would benfit from separation of the viewing area and the actual "touch controls" area.

Picture:

 

[Peaks]

TOUCHSCREENS THE WAY THEY SHOULD BE:

Lastly, its high time manufacturers put the motherboard and its associated "hot components" in/behind the upper normal viewing only screen, as they are light weight and could be much more easily cooled. Leave the heavier / cooler components (PSU, DVD Rom, SSD or HD's) in the BASE of the Laptop (so it wouldn't tip over with the screen open). Even better....the base could also contain a much larger (lets say 18 cell battery) for longer battery runtime.

This is such a good idea, would make the base of a laptop so much cooler, and would distribute weight a lot better, can't believe it hasn't been done. If this was the case, so many heavyduty laptops like alienware's would be improved because they wouldn't get so dam hot!

In regards to the touch keyboard, the only way this is going to work is if it has the response of a qwerty keyboard. From touch screens that i have used on othe laptops, desktops, mobiles, etc this isn't the case, with response times being pretty poor and useability being quite clumbsy. If a manufactuer released a touch keyboard which wasn't as responsive and a s easy to use as a qwery keyboard it would destroy sales of that model, no matter how much user could program the functionality themselves.

 

[frozenlead]

I hate touch crap. I don't know if I press something or not, the response is generally slow, and if it breaks, I'm screwed. For me, nothing will replace the good old keyboard.

The idea of sticking the components of a notebook in the screen is interesting...but that would place a lot of dependency on the hinges in between. They'd be carrying a high load (and would break, i think, rather easy). Also, you have the whole cabling issue - if your disks, drives, power, input devices, ports of all kinds, etc are all on the base of the laptop...that's a heck of a lot of cables to fit through that hinge, and exposes them all to wear and tear. I think it's a good idea, but if there were cheaper models made of them, they'd suffer from hardware issues rather fast.

 

[Peaks]

You have good points. Infact thinking about this more it would be really hard to make the idea of having some components installed behnd the screen really hard to implement. Its a good idea but essentially you are just transfering weight from one part of the laptop to the other. I knw what your going to say.....you would only habe the mobo, cpu, etc behind the screen and the heavier components would remain in the base. This is all well and good but as frozenlead said perfectly, there would be so many cables that the hinges would have to massive and if there was any problem with a connection it would be a b**** to fix. Plus the screen part of the case would be bigger which might cause balance issues.

Finally, most of the components that get hot are staying in the same place so i dont really see how this would improve any heat issues.