Comments on: Netbook or Notbook?

By: technogeist

technogeist — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 20:44:33 +0000

Perhaps gesture control like the Wii controller could be adopted for general use.

Resizing windows is one reason why I avoid using trackpads. That, and tapping to simulate clicks, which invariably leads to the assumption that I’m trying to select a region of icons or text in a document. Grrr.

Has the CAPTCHA/RECAPTCHA been modified? Cos I couldn’t read 4 on the trot.

By: Steve Cassidy

Steve Cassidy — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 10:18:12 +0000

the Two-fingered rightclick is known at Schloss Cassidy as the “Vulcan neck-pinch”. I suppose that is a function of age… and while I think the Netbook is a brilliant idea, and bound to be a tiny glimmer of consumerism in the dark night that is 2009 – I ain’t got one. Mainly because I now have 2 sub-notebooks which do about a million times more than a NetBook: A Thinkpad X31 and a Tosh Satellite U200. Despite believing that the X31 should be in the Laptop Hall of Fame forever, I find the U200 a remarkably sensible bit of kit. It has a DVD drive in it, for one thing.

Two other things about NetBooks keep me away. One is that all the NetBooks I’ve seen in the Computer Exchange shop on Tottenham Court Road are mechancally broken in some way; the other is that the screen is too small. The font size I’m using to type this isn’t actually that much bigger, but the screen size has a much stronger impact on usabliity than I would have predicted.

By: petrev

petrev — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 10:17:33 +0000

Asus eeePC also has multi touch – scroll drag right click zoom etc.

By: JulesLt

JulesLt — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 09:39:55 +0000

Worth playing with the trackpad on one of the new Macbooks to see how the use of multi-finger gestures can really improve the experience (especially after you enable some of the ‘advanced’ features which are off by default, like tap to click, two-fingers=right-click, etc).

There are some special short-cuts in the default browser (3 fingers to the left = back, and the ‘zoom’ gesture also works) although they have also missed a trick by not having a ’show all tabs’ gesture.

But it is a significant improvement on a simple trackpad, and I’ve found that I have largely switched from using an external mouse to the trackpad, which is the first in a laptop. And it does indicate that you don’t necessarily need a touch screen, so long as you have a good (large) touch surface.