Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Asus replaced the touchpad on its new ZenBook Pro with a 5.5-inch touchscreen

theverge.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 224 posts

Re: Asus replaced the touchpad on its new ZenBook Pro with a 5.5-inch touchscreen

#91

Post by Hamuko »

_hardwaregeek wrote: post #30

I was walking through a computer store recently and I couldn't help but notice how tacky all the computers looked. The Touch Bar may be frivolous, pretty useless and a waste of money, but it blends into the design of the laptop and most importantly, is subtle. Now, Asus could certainly prove me wrong and implement some beautiful, understated software for the touchpad, but judging by the demo photos, that isn't the ca…

>At least the Touch Bar took away features that most consumers (i.e. non professional computer users) won't miss.

Too bad it's on a computer that is called the MacBook Pro. For those not in the know, Pro stands for "Professional".

Re: Asus replaced the touchpad on its new ZenBook Pro with a 5.5-inch touchscreen

#92

Post by meuk »

Maybe I'm a bit conservative and/or sour, but I think this is a bad idea for two reasons.

1. It will require a lot of developer effort and testing on this specific device. I regard this as a move in the bad direction: Computer interfaces should be more unified, not less.

2. You're giving the touchpad two functions which are not compatible (and the second function is not necessary: we already have a screen!). If you're happily clicking your way through stuff and some menu suddenly shows up, you will click a bunch of random stuff.

Re: Asus replaced the touchpad on its new ZenBook Pro with a 5.5-inch touchscreen

#94

Post by gambiting »

mgiannopoulos wrote: post #84
_hardwaregeek wrote: post #30

I was walking through a computer store recently and I couldn't help but notice how tacky all the computers looked. The Touch Bar may be frivolous, pretty useless and a waste of money, but it blends into the design of the laptop and most importantly, is subtle. Now, Asus could certainly prove me wrong and implement some beautiful, understated software for the touchpad, but judging by the demo photos, that isn't the ca…

I’ve been trying to find a cheaper MBP replacement after 10 years with 3 MBP. Everything else is ugly. Some decent choices end up at the or worse price point as Apple.

After nearly a decade with MBP, I finally decided to replace it with a brand new, top-spec 13" dell XPS. Initially I was super happy with the choice, but after more than a year with it I would not recommend going that route to anyone, it's just full of little problems that don't exist with Apple hardware. The coil whine is insane and a known problem with those, from time to time the computer goes to sleep but isn't actually off - the fan is off but something is still running, and when you pull it out of your bag it's literally hot to touch(it's also a known problem with loads of threads on Dell forums about this). It happened to me once at an airport and when I pulled it out of the bag I was certain someone was going to stop me, the computer was literally boiling. I've had the motherboard replaced with dell 3 times now, both coil whine and spontaneous staying on when in sleep still happen. Plus the touchpad is actually crap, when you press down the cursor sometimes jumps a little bit resulting in you clicking on something else, and the screen while gorgeous has a stupid amount of backlight bleed near the edges. At first glance, the computer is as nice as any MacBook - but after living with it for a while I'm seriously considering going back to MBP again.

Re: Asus replaced the touchpad on its new ZenBook Pro with a 5.5-inch touchscreen

#95

Post by alluro2 »

npunt wrote: post #59

The Zenbook is a decent looking computer, and this completely cheapens the look of it. The trackpad display is trash - it's a low-contrast LCD with bad backlight bleed and aggressive matte finish... something out of the parts bin of cheap phones and old car infotainment systems. When compared to the higher quality main display it looks totally out of place. If they fixed that, there'd still be the issue of usability…

https://www.asus.com/Project-Precog/

Re: Asus replaced the touchpad on its new ZenBook Pro with a 5.5-inch touchscreen

#96

Post by carlob »

mgiannopoulos wrote: post #84
_hardwaregeek wrote: post #30

I was walking through a computer store recently and I couldn't help but notice how tacky all the computers looked. The Touch Bar may be frivolous, pretty useless and a waste of money, but it blends into the design of the laptop and most importantly, is subtle. Now, Asus could certainly prove me wrong and implement some beautiful, understated software for the touchpad, but judging by the demo photos, that isn't the ca…

I’ve been trying to find a cheaper MBP replacement after 10 years with 3 MBP. Everything else is ugly. Some decent choices end up at the or worse price point as Apple.

I got myself a Thinkpad T480s. I ended up spending around 2.5k for a machine that has 24GB of RAM, 1TB of PCIe SSD and weights a pound less than a MBP. The keyboard is stellar, the screen is matte, and it has HDMI, both old and new USB ports, ethernet, and an SD card slot.

Re: Asus replaced the touchpad on its new ZenBook Pro with a 5.5-inch touchscreen

#97

Post by pmontra »

We'll see if the touchscreen gets any traction. I'd like to point out that this is perhaps the only non Mac laptop that has a 15" screen and doesn't have a number pad. The keyboard is aligned with the center of the screen and the space bar is almost there too. Joy!

I could buy this laptop only for that, even if with Linux I'll probably have to wait the next laptop before the touchscreen is of any use. But no, the RAM is capped at 16 GB and I'm using 32 GB on my HP laptop (several projects for several customers, each one with a different language and environment.)

However my 15" laptop has a useless (for me) number pad with the result that I have to shift it half to the right to be able to keep my hands in front of me and not skewed to the left, which would probably do nasty things to all my upper body. This is the norm for all 15" laptops and I wonder if their designers stopped at the cover page of Norman's "The Design of Everyday Things", with the famous teapot for masochists, and deluded themselves into believing that this is the right way to build stuff.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Design-Everyday-Things-Donald-Norman/...

Re: Asus replaced the touchpad on its new ZenBook Pro with a 5.5-inch touchscreen

#98

Post by sheerun »

meuk wrote: post #92

Maybe I'm a bit conservative and/or sour, but I think this is a bad idea for two reasons. 1. It will require a lot of developer effort and testing on this specific device. I regard this as a move in the bad direction: Computer interfaces should be more unified, not less. 2. You're giving the touchpad two functions which are not compatible (and the second function is not necessary: we already have a screen!). If you'r…

You can just display what's on main screen and have nice touch support without having your fingerprints visible on screen and wiggling laptop.

Re: Asus replaced the touchpad on its new ZenBook Pro with a 5.5-inch touchscreen

#99

Post by lloeki »

pmontra wrote: post #97

We'll see if the touchscreen gets any traction. I'd like to point out that this is perhaps the only non Mac laptop that has a 15" screen and doesn't have a number pad. The keyboard is aligned with the center of the screen and the space bar is almost there too. Joy! I could buy this laptop only for that, even if with Linux I'll probably have to wait the next laptop before the touchscreen is of any use. But no, the RAM…

> The keyboard is aligned with the center of the screen and the space bar is almost there too. Joy!

Oh the keypad hell, it's been such a RSI inducer on my back for years. What nonsense is this to put a keypad on the right side of keyboards which results, being right handed, in either the mouse being too far right or the keyboard being off center.

Re: Asus replaced the touchpad on its new ZenBook Pro with a 5.5-inch touchscreen

#100

Post by lloeki »

tambourine_man wrote: post #54

>Unlike Apple’s limited and unhelpful MacBook Pro Touch Bar… I’m not big fan of the touch bar either, but to state an opinion as fact is just bad journalism.

This[0] almost made me finally accept the idea of possibly having the TouchBar on my next laptop.

[0]: http://vas3k.com/blog/touchbar/

Post reply on HN