DELL ANNOUNCES STUDIO 17 TOUCH NOTEBOOK

Dell has announced a Studio 17 Touch laptop with multi-touch capabilities. The 17.3 inch notebook is packed with features and comes pre-loaded with Windows 7 operating system.

The Studio 17 Touch can be configured with a variety of processors ranging from the Intel Pentium Dual Core T4300 2.1GHz processor to the Intel Core i7 Quad Core processor.

Up to 8GB of DDR3 RAM can be installed. The 7200 rpm hard drive comes with 1TB of storage capacity. If you tend to play a lot of games you can configure the notebook with a discrete GPU. For those of you who aren’t really into gaming, the integrated Intel GMA X4500 MHD should be more than enough. The LED backlit display comes with 1600 x 900 pixels native resolution.

There are 4 USB 2.0ports, WiFi b/g/n, FireWire, Bluetooth, HDMI and VGA ports. Optional features include Blu-ray. The notebook weighs 7.08 lbs with the 6-cell battery. Prices start at $899.

TOSHIBA ANNOUNCES TOUCH SCREEN NOTEBOOKS SATELLITE M505 AND U505

Toshiba has announced the launch of two touch screen notebooks. These devices will run on Windows 7.

The new touch screen notebooks will be called Satellite M505 and Satellite U505. Both notebooks will feature the Toshiba LifeSpace software package which provides users with a ‘Bulletin Board’ full of ‘touch’ features. Another useful feature is the ‘ReelTime’ software which gives a visual history with which users can find files based on when they were opened.

The M505 comes with a 14 inch display. It is due to be released on October 22nd. It will be powered by an Intel Core 2 Duo T6600 2.2GHz processor, integrated 4500MHD graphics, 4GB RAM and a 500GB HDD. The U505 is due to be released on November 1. It will have a 13.3 inch display with similar specifications.

The M505 is expected to cost around $949.99, while the U505 will sell for $1,049.99.

ACER LAUNCHES PACKARD BELL BUTTERFLY TOUCH

Acer has introduced another laptop identical to the just-launched Aspire Timeline 1810TZ under the Packard Bell name. The Aspire 1810TZ is a convertible tablet with an 11.6 inch touch screen display and a high capacity battery.

Like the 1810TZ, the Packard Bell Butterfly Touch has an 11.6 inch touch screen display with 1366x768 pixels and runs on the Windows 7 Home Premium. It reportedly has an 8 cell battery. Other specifications of both laptops are more or less the same. The Butterfly Touch is expected to be available in Europe for 599 Euros from October 22nd.

GIGABYTE UNVEILS TOUCH NOTE M1028 TOUCHSCREEN TABLET

Gigabyte has unveiled a convertible touchscreen tablet – the Touch Note M1028. The device is equipped with a 10.1 inch touchscreen display.

Sources reveal that the Touch Note M1028 will be available in four different configurations. While two models feature displays with 1024x600 pixels, the other two will have higher resolution displays with 1366x768 pixels. All models will come pre-loaded with 1 GB of RAM which can be upgraded to 2GB. The storage capacity is 160GB. The tablets are likely to run on the new 1.66GHz Intel Atom N280 processor. While three models will have the integrated Intel 945GSE GRAPHICS chipset, the Touch Note M1028P (one of the two models with higher resolution) will have the Intel GN40 chipset which is expected to improve HD video performance.

Other features include Wi-Fi 802.11a/b/g and Bluetooth. All models will run on Windows XP. Some models will also have 3G mobile broadband and WiMax.

LENOVO THINKPAD T400S TOUCH REVIEW

The new Lenovo ThinkPad T400s Touch is the first standard notebook to feature a touchscreen panel. It doesn’t come cheap: buyers have to shell out an additional $400 to buy the touchscreen version.

Specifications
Operating System: Windows 7 Professional
Display: 1440 x 900 WXGA+ with MultiTouch LED Backlit (Matte finish)
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo SP9600 (2.53GHz, 1066MHz FSB, 6MB Cache)
Memory: 4GB DDR3 RAM (2GB x 2)
Storage: 128GB Toshiba SSD

Build and Design
The new ThinkPad T400s is slimmer and lighter than the original T400. Lenovo has coated the exterior of the notebook with a rubberized black paint. Build quality is excellent. The chassis shows absolutely no sign of flex at all.

The hard drive is now 1.8 inch instead of the 2.5 inch found on T400. Upgrading this notebook is really easy, as the chassis provides easy access panels to all user-replaceable components.

Screen and Speakers
The T400s Touch has more or less the same panel as the regular T400s with the only difference being the addition of a multi-touch surface. The touch surface allows you to manipulate screen objects without using a mouse or a touchpad. The display is OK, but it does have those minor flaws associated with all touch-screens. For instance touch-screens appear to be hazy, but the problem is not that apparent on T400s Touch.

The display itself is good. Colors are bright and vivid. Contrast is also good. Viewing angles are average. Lenovo has also added new software to take advantage of the multi-touch features. Speaker performance was far from being perfect, but this is a problem with most business notebooks.

Keyboard and Touchpad
The keyboard on this notebook looks and feels different from the keyboards on previous models. But the changes are mostly for the better. The T400s Touch has relatively larger ‘escape’ and ‘delete’ keys. The keyboard is comfortable to type on.

The touchpad is different too. The T400s Touch has a raised touchpad with a softer texture. It seems less sensitive than the touchpad on T400s.

Ports and Features
Port selection is good. There are 2 USB 2.0 ports, 1 eSATA/USB combo port, VGA port, DisplayPort out, built-in web camera, Bluetooth, DVD+/-RW

Performance
Performance is quite satisfactory. Boot times and application load times are fast. The machine can handle most tasks. Despite this being a business notebook with no discrete GPUs, it can easily decode HD movies.

Battery Life
At about 6 hours, the battery life is quite good.

Conclusion
With T400s Lenovo has brought a Touch-screen interface to a standard notebook. The notebook performs reasonably well with its touch interface. The only problem is its prize. The T400s Touch starts at around $2000.

Pros:
First standard notebook to feature a multi-touch screen
Good battery life

Cons:
Pricey

GIGABYTE LAUNCHES THIN NOTE S1024, TOUCH NOTE T1028 AND BOOKTOP M1022

Gigabyte announced the specifications of its three new netbooks the Thin Note S1024, Touch Note T1028 and Booktop M1022 at a pre-CeBit event. Though we have seen some pictures of these notebooks already, the latest details on their specifications are as follows.

The Gigabyte Thin Note S1024 is powered by a 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270 CPU with 1GB of RAM, Intel 945 GSE chipset and up to 80GB of Hard Drive. It sports a 10.1-inch LED-backlit display with 1024 x 576 pixels, Bluetooth 2.1, WiFi 802.11a/b/g and 3.5G connectivity. The Thin Note weighs just 890 g including a 6-cell 3400 mAh battery which makes it the lightest among the three notebooks. The Thin Note S1024 is priced at about $615.



The Touch Note T1028 packs either a 1.66GHz N280 or a N270 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor with Intel GN40 or Intel 945 GSE chipset, up to 2GB RAM and 2.5-inch 160GB Hard Drive. It also includes 3 USB ports, ExpressCard slot and an optional WiMAX. The Touch Note has a 10.1-inch LED-backlit display with either 1366 x 768 or 1024 x 600 pixel resolution. The T1028 has options for a 6-cell or 4-cell battery and will weigh 1.48Kg or 1.3Kg respectively. The Touch Note T1028 is tagged for about $610.

The Booktop M1022 is powered by Intel Atom N270 1.6GHz CPU with Intel 945 GSE or Intel GN40 chipset, 1GB RAM and a 2.5-inch 160 GB Hard Drive. It will also include WiFi 802.11a/b/g, Bluetooth 2.1, 3.5G HSDPA, 4G WiMAX, ExpressCard slot and has a 10.1-inch display with 1024 x 600 pixel resolution. The Booktop will weigh 1.3Kg with a included 6-cell battery. This Booktop can be vertically docked to be used in a desktop PC form factor and is priced about $580.

TOUCH SCREEN INEVITABLY COMES TO MINI 9

Touchscreen is old news to the Asus Eee PC and quite a few other netbooks out there but as for Dell no one has modded it with that cool (but impractical) screen (until now). Deldotb of the myDellMini forums has done just that loading Ubantu on his Mini 9 with a cool touch screen.

All this did come at a small cost (which is the use of one USB port) but other than that everything elese seems to be AOK. But if you must see proof check the video below.

MICROSOFT DEVELOPING THE ALL NEW TOUCH SENSITIVE TECHNOLOGY

Microsoft plans to take multi touch to a fresh level with Side Sight, a hands-off 'touch screen' permitting users to control their doohickeys without leaving muddled fingerprints. The principal complaint about touch screens are the fingerprints - the larger the screen, the more prints there are, and it seems like no matter how often you clean the device, there's always fingerprints left over. Microsoft's Side Sight multi touch development will eradicate that issue by permitting users to control a 'touch screen' without essentially having to touch the screen. Side Sight works by mounting sensors along the length of the sides of a thingamabob, which will become aware of your finger movements up to a full 10cm away from the apparatus. A sharp jerk in the direction of the device can be employed to click, which circular motions can be employed to rotate. Microsoft presently has a working replica using an HTC Touch and sensors associated to a computer via USB, which broadcasts the signals via Bluetooth. Incorporating the sensors into the piece of equipment is the next footstep, and Microsoft asserts that one day the system could permit users to exploit multi-touch on very diminutive devices that otherwise wouldn't be talented to exploit a touch screen.

TOUCHPAD’S TOUCH GREAT HEIGHTS COURTESY SYNAPTICS

Synaptics Touchpad’s now shore up ChiralRotate & 2-finger flick gesticulations to bring some excitement back to notebooks. Synaptics has declared the accessibility of 2 new progressed gesticulations - ChiralRotate and 2-Finger Flick. These motions inflate gesture gratitude capabilities for Synaptics Touchpad’s utilized in admired laptops and even some tangential keyboards.

ChiralRotate allows users progress 1 finger in a globular motion to revolve images and graphics surrounded by requests, speedily and effortlessly. On the other hand, 2-Finger Flick facilitates customers, depending on the appliance, to either utilize 2 fingers to flick flat to navigate back-and-forth through images, documents and articles, or to flick upright to diminish and exploit an application. Users can evaluate images speedily with 2-Finger Flick and rotate them within admired Windows applications with ChiralRotate, all devoid of taking their fingers off the Touchpad. These gesticulations join supplementary gesture alternatives, such as Synaptics ChiralMotion expertise - an enhanced gesture that affords an inventive substitute to unadventurous scrolling. As an appended expediency, all Synaptics Touchpad settings, together with gesture functionality, can be crooked on or off with the exceedingly innate Synaptics Control Panel that is integrated into most OEM laptop systems. Both the new-fangled gestures are companionable with most submissions for Windows platform

TOUCH SCREEN IN MAC TOO

The world of touch screen have spread from your remote controls, to your phones and now touch sensitive screens are all set to be a reality on the laptops as the Touch-screen on the Mac is coming soon. The progressively more fashionable iPhone will no longer be the solitary Apple touch-screen apparatus. It's been established Apple lately filed a patent submission for touch-screen capabilities in what materializes to be a Mac tablet. The touch-screen submission emerges to look a lot like I-phone’s touch screen capabilities. According to the sources from the apple producers, the 52-page filing describes the tablet Mac with complete window crossing point to be inflamed, moved, and cycled.

TOUCH ENABLED LAPTOPS IS THE FUTURE

Touch enabled laptop computers will be approaching soon. HP reveals that it will be producing additional products utilizing touch screen expertise to deliver the future of the notebook world. HP's 1st touch-screen enabled creation incorporated the Pavilion tx2500z tablet notebook and most modern Touch Smart All-in-one PC. The corporation told it will get additional touch screen laptops out in the market contained by the next 18 months. Phil McKinney, the person in command technology officer for the company's notebook-making Personal Systems Group told "We're paying interest on recognizing the latent of touch now." He continues, "We see touch as the approximately preferred technique for nontechnical users."

TOUCH SCREEN USAGE TO GO ALL TIME HIGH

A number of recognized laptop vendors are anticipated to instigate new variants with built-in touch screen panels opening in June – a move that is to be expected to significantly stir up the requirement for touch panels, according to James Fang, president of Taiwan-based Abon Touch systems. The total number of tablet PCs and laptops with a built-in touch panels summed up to two million units in 2007, but the figure of such products are anticipated to top nine million units by 2012, Fang anticipated on the sidelines of the 2008 AsiaFPD held in Guangzhou from May 21-23. In the telephone segment, the quantity of mobile phones with a built-in touch panels is projected to go beyond 500 million units, accounting for over 30% of handsets sold all around the globe, Fang predicted. Citing data from various sources, Fang also distinguished that a total of 1.1 million UMPCs (ultra mobile PCs) will come planted with a built-in touch panel by 2012. By 2011, large-scale shipments of PNDs (portable navigation devices) are projected to reach 54 million units, with over 96% of models having a built-in touch board, Fang added. To muddle through with the greater than ever increase in demand, Abon Touch systems devices to set up a plant in southeast China, with the location for the plant to be determined later, Fang stated.

RUMOURS ALL AGAIN ON EEE PC- UPDATED VERSION EEE WITH TOUCH SCREEN

Rumors of EEE PC getting upgraded to the touch screen feature are as old as the EEE PC itself. In fact, these rumors even enkindled Jerry Shen, president of Asustek, to publicly turn down of any such development prior this year. Now, there's a fresh burst of rumor that the touch screen panel makers are indeed manufacturing a high tech resistive touch panel for next-generation EEE PCs. prelude reports suggest that such touch screen loaded EEE PCs are scheduled to be liberated in the 2nd quarter of 2008. It's fascinating to note that due to compressed size of EEE PCs, the resistive touch screen panel to be used in EEE PCs is to be enhanced than the touch screen technology for medium-size panel applications.