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

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

#142
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At first sight the thing is terrifying, but it seems a rather quite reasonable alternative play on the touchbar that does not mess with the ability to sell the device. Two massive benefits: the tactile response of the keyboard is totally preserved, and the feature can be entirely disabled for conservative users who cannot think of an immediate use for the display. Clearly it will appeal to gadgeteers (as much as I ex…

I like my touchbar and I think I'd probably like a touchscreen trackpad too. The key in my opinion is the programability of the 'buttons'. They don't need to be just buttons, you can have sliders, video scrubbers, button hierarchies (button menus) and so on. I'm also up for dual display laptops where the clamshell of a laptop is two touchscreens. It would help water proof the device, simplify the mechanics (lower cos…

A TouchPad has too many negatives.

It costs additional power (with no clear benefit).

Its another point of failure.

It has a big learning curve.

It requires one to look away from the screen (pro users needn't to look at their keyboard).

It replaced something which worked very well: esc key and function keys (who also had F-keys with "fn" combo).

IMO it is an interesting usability concept from an R&D PoV, but not something to be shoved in the throat of users. Unfortunately, Apple decided it is the way forward for MBP users with no option to turn back except for legacy products or switching ship.

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

#143
post #120

I'm never ever going to buy another ZenBook again. I got one for my girlfriend and another one for my dad, around the same time one of my dev friends also decided to move to ZenBook from rMBP. Compared to Macbooks it looks, feels and works cheap (the trackpad, d'oh), but that's not the major issue as almost everything is that way excepting Surafaces/XPSes. But the real issue here is this: hinges. They're horrible. Th…

Yeah, Asus has a knack for making apparently-great devices for a fantastic price but then giving them one critical problem that makes the device worthless. Remember the first Nexus 7 with its dying nand memory?

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

#144
post #13

I think this is a wonderful idea, given that touchscreen responsiveness and power optimization have been a focus of research over the last decade. At worst it's a touch pad, at best it's so much more. Of course a lot depends on how software developers will embrace it - and I hope Linux users get some love. (I wish Asus and reviewers will stay away from gimmicks like watching movies on it.) In any case, far better tha…

Pretty good point, Mac OS is already using the touch pad to input signatures (you use the touch pad as paper and your finger as a pencil) which works extremely well but currently has no visual feedback, there is probably space for much more useful applications when that becomes available. I just really has to be an OLED display though.

> which works extremely well but currently has no visual feedback

Why isn't that plus haptic feedback good enough for the examples you mentioned?

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

#145
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC touchpads and capacitive touchscreens use the exact same technology, so there shouldn't be any difference.

Yes, but touchpads aren't constrained by the necessity of having an integrated high tech light source and a transparent layer on top of it.

Do phone screen noticeably lag these days? I don’t see why there would be a difference.

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

#146

I think Asus's Project Precog[0] deserves more interests than this. We programmers always complain about display size , ratio and amount. Using this dual screen laptop vertically with your beloved external keyboard could be sublime. It's like having two Surface Pro tablets right in front of you, or a dual screens desktop setup that fits in a backpack. As long as my way to interpret this product works, I don't care wh…

Looks awesome... but what does that have to do with AI? I guess “optimized for blockchain” was already taken?

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

#147
post #120

I'm never ever going to buy another ZenBook again. I got one for my girlfriend and another one for my dad, around the same time one of my dev friends also decided to move to ZenBook from rMBP. Compared to Macbooks it looks, feels and works cheap (the trackpad, d'oh), but that's not the major issue as almost everything is that way excepting Surafaces/XPSes. But the real issue here is this: hinges. They're horrible. Th…

I moved to macbook when my ASUS laptop's hinges broke about 4 years ago because it's ~50% of the cost to fix it. The macbook's capacitor died earlier this year (funny enough it doesn't complete kill it, just makes it run extremely slow, without EE background it gave me a hard time to figure this out), I went to back to PC because it cost ~80% of the cost to fix it, and, touchbar. But you're right, it's been so many y…

What do you mean by really slow? My old MacBook is also running slowly, and I hadn't thought of the capacitor as being a possible culprit.

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

#148
Dave 2D had a great video review on this product.

What makes this totally different from the touch bar is with the touch bar, you have to wait for developers to add support in their products (or as a dev, write your own tooling). Apple has the muscle to simply make everyone support their crappy bar.

The ZenBook screen is usable right away by anybody. You can just drag any window there. It can be your Steam chat while playing a game, it can be a browser with a Twitch stream or soccer game running in the background while your program, it can be your color pallet for Resolve while editing video ...

It can be used for a lot of things the end user can take advantage of immediately without waiting for a developer to make explicit use of it.

I wonder if it will work on Linux.

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

#149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I moved to macbook when my ASUS laptop's hinges broke about 4 years ago because it's ~50% of the cost to fix it. The macbook's capacitor died earlier this year (funny enough it doesn't complete kill it, just makes it run extremely slow, without EE background it gave me a hard time to figure this out), I went to back to PC because it cost ~80% of the cost to fix it, and, touchbar. But you're right, it's been so many y…

What do you mean by really slow? My old MacBook is also running slowly, and I hadn't thought of the capacitor as being a possible culprit.

Exactly, there're many reasons for it to run slow. If yours is still usable it's unlikely, mine takes minutes to boot up, and it shuts itself down.

It's been a while and I got rid of it but IIRC it still provided power but was under watt, you can confirm by comparing the normal level for you model.

BTW once you've confirmed you can pretty much dump it, won't be easy to find fix other than getting a replacement motherboard, which is pretty much everything.

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

#150
post #121

So you PC/windows guys, wasn't having a touchscreen on your laptop the be-all and end-all? Didn't work out? Wasn't gimmicky enough?

I've been using touch screen laptops for so long now that when I use a mac I instinctively touch the screen to do certain things (usually scrolling) and am surprised / disappointed when nothing happens.

I'm really surprised that Apple haven't combined the mac and the ipad yet.

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