touchpad

Unlike most of my colleagues, my recent Windows 8 experiences have been distinctly nontouch. As it turns out, the only two laptops I've reviewed with Microsoft's new operating system preinstalled both lacked touch screens: the Sony Vaio E17 and the Toshiba Satellite U845W. Both are what you'd consider "classic" laptops -- although the U845W has a unique, extra-wide screen.

Based on these early experiences with two "Windows 8-optimized" laptops, I'm not a fan of the nontouch Windows 8 world.… Read more

In the run-up to Windows 8, the one keyword you hear most often is "touch." That means touch-screen tablets and slates, touch panels added to traditional clamshell laptops, and touch-enabled all-in-one desktops. It also refers to Microsoft's new emphasis on touch gestures for touch pads, as well as the ambitious plans component companies such as Synaptics have for touch input in Windows 8.

While all this touch talk is going on, there's another trend gaining steam in the background. The standalone touch pad, once a very obscure computer accessory (even the Apple Magic Trackpad failed to … Read more

Gearing up for the shift to Windows 8, Synaptics wants PC makers to switch to an entirely new kind of touchpad, called the ForcePad. We recently met with the company in New York to take this new touch interface, which eliminates moving parts and adds pressure sensitivity, for a test drive.

Synaptics invented the touchpad in 1995, and since then, touch has become an increasingly important part of our interaction with technology (and the company now makes touch screens for phones, tablets, and laptops as well).

But laptop touchpads have also been a frequent pain point for consumers, with laggy … Read more

Installing the Windows 8 RTM (release-to-manufacturing) on my two laptops went smoothly yesterday except for one problem -- no gesture support.

Trying to navigate the Start screen and other areas of the new OS, I found that left and right clicking on the touch pad worked fine. But using two fingers or other gestures to scroll or move around had no effect.

A Web search discovered other testers and users bumping into the same obstacle. This is odd, because I ran into no such problems with the Windows 8 Release Preview. So why doesn't Windows 8 RTM handle touch-pad … Read more

Apple has filed for a patent on a touch pad that both lights up and responds to varying pressure.

Dubbed "Illuminated Touchpad," the patent, which was applied for in April but published today, describes a technology that will deliver "improved feedback mechanisms for touch pads." A key component in that mechanism is backlighting, which illuminates the touch pad when a user interacts with it. Apple's technology also appears to allow for illumination when the person is not interacting with the respective device.

"One aspect relates to devices capable of illuminating the touch sensitive surface … Read more

I may have saved my mother's sanity with this tip. She was enjoying her new Dell laptop except for the fact that it would suddenly zoom in and out when she was browsing the Web or using Outlook, sometimes deleting a half-penned e-mail in the process. (Not helping matters was the fact that my dad was not experiencing such mousing behaviors.) During my last visit, I discovered the problem: pinch zoom.

One of the many multitouch gestures on today's laptops is the ability to pinch two fingers to zoom in and out in a window. When viewing images … Read more

HP open sources WebOS as the fire sale on the TouchPad burns out in minutes; Apple announces that 100 million apps have been downloaded from the Mac App Store; and Amazon promises a software update to the Kindle Fire to alleviate some of the user interface issues.

Links from Monday's episode of Loaded:

Ugh. There's no worse first-world problem than having to wait for your food to come out of the microwave.

Thanks to a group of young developers, you can now watch YouTube videos on your microwave while you're waiting for those delicious little White Castle burgers. Mmmm.

The uWave is basically an HP TouchPad connected to a microwave, but its functionality is so much more than that.… Read more

Hewlett-Packard appears to have made the TouchPad available for sale a couple of times today--albeit, very briefly, according to a report. That would be the first time in more than a month that the tablet--liquidated back in August for $99--was offered for sale by HP.

The first instance happened this morning when the 32GB model was available for $249.99, according to a report at Precentral.net. And it went up again later in the day, Precentral said. In both instances it quickly became unavailable. Maybe more importantly, a number of commenters cited glitches when trying to purchase a TouchPad, … Read more