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

131–140 of 224 posts

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

#131

Post by damon_c »

Larrikin wrote: post #61
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.

The most stressful thing about starting my next job is that I've got to choose a new laptop only for work. I've only used a Mac for years and this is the first time I've ever considered switching because there are no computers they make that I actually want. Apple has really dropped the ball on their entire line and the touchbar eliminating a lot of useful keys is a pretty bad idea compared to replacing the touchpad.

My company gave us all brand new MacBook Pros with the touchpad and new terrible keyboard.

It is amazingly fast and the speakers sound great, but overall I cannot approach the productivity of my 2015 model given the increased typos and accidental Touch Bar inputs that cause weird things to happen.

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

#132

Post by codedokode »

mbel wrote: post #126
codedokode wrote: post #122

A screen in a touchpad can be useful because it can help users to understand how to use different features like side scrolling or drag-and-drop. Also it can be used to display some useless information, like time, current keyboard layout or CPU load. Putting buttons on a touchpad is not the best idea because they would interfere with its normal usage. And by the way, why nobody makes separate keys for layout switching…

> Seriously, why didn't anyone invented it yet? Perhaps the user demand is not so big or even noticeable? It starts to make sense when you type in more than two languages regularly. I would argue that there are only couple of percents of bilingual users and people using three and more languages are even less common.

But laptops often have useless keys like Caps Lock or even Scroll Lock (who uses that?) or Pause that doesn't pause anything. Replacing them with language switch keys makes more sense.

You have to switch to Latin to type things like emails, URLs, foreign band names etc. And if you are writing a code then you have to switch constantly to type comments and messages in your naive language. So inconvenient.

Bilingual users are not that rare, at least at school most people in my country study some foreign language. Of course it doesn't mean they are going to use it after graduation, but anyway.

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

#133

Post by sannee »

codedokode wrote: post #123
TomK32 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to run a terminal output on the touchscreen. Launcher sounds okay, but the one I have with Enlightenment 22 is just so much faster with the keyboard than any pointer device ever could be.

Isn't it too small?

It's Full-HD on 5.5 inches, so you can likely fit fairly dense text on there.

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

#134

Post by jeremejevs »

deniska wrote: post #66
kjeetgill wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think this is a wonderful idea, given that touchscreen responsiveness and power optimization have been a focus of research over the last decade. Are you familiar with the state of the art? Is this thing going to be as responsive as a regular touchpad?

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.

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

#135

Post by ljm »

jeswin wrote: 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…

I'm actually surprised it hasn't been tried before. It sounds super cool but I wonder if it's still a bit of a gimmick (and you end up just using it in touch pad mode all the time).

It still has the problem where you have to take your eyes off your screen in order to interact with it, so I imagine there'd be some effort involved in getting used to actually looking at the touch pad while you poke at it. That said, if there are good app integrations that are intuitive and turn the thing into more than a pointing device (and not just a Spotify controller or some such), then I'm interested to see what those could be.

It'd be quite nice, for example, if it allowed notifications to pop up on a part of the touchpad instead of obscuring what you're working on, allowing you to tap that part of the touchpad to open it up instead of moving the pointer to the corner of the screen.

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

#136

Post by chiefalchemist »

_wmd wrote: post #36
jeswin wrote: 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…

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…

Is there a way to "attach" a tablet to a W10 laptop as an extra monitor? It makes sense but don't think I've been able to find a viable solution.

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

#137

Post by meikos »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #136
_wmd wrote: 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…

Is there a way to "attach" a tablet to a W10 laptop as an extra monitor? It makes sense but don't think I've been able to find a viable solution.

yeah if you have an iOS tablet, check out duet. works well on my ipad pro

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

#138

Post by chiefalchemist »

I think I'd rather keep a standard touchpad and instead be able to add a small tablet-sized second (or third) monitor. A screen for small things I need to see - especially when I'm working somewhere without my usual at-my-desk setup.

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

#139

Post by utbabya »

b212 wrote: 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 years and ASUS still haven't figured out hinges that don't break? Don't think they deserve the benefit of the doubt.

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

#140

Post by Fnoord »

jeswin wrote: 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…

You're forgetting that a screen costs power.

Besides, at best, your touchpad has little fingerprints, at worst it has a lot. With a normal touchpad this doesn't matter, but with a touchscreen (or touchpad-touchscreen) it suddenly does. Furthermore, it is a spot where your hands are, so in order to see it, you gotta move your hands. Both are not very useful features. If I want a tablet, I'll get one instead. Furthermore, the touchpad is pretty small (compared to Apple's latest) and doesn't have the haptic feedback the latest have. Though mine doesn't have that either on the MBP 2015, but that's because I don't want butterfly keyboard or TouchBar.

I'll put this one in the category of the TouchBar (which has already been discussed to death): with all honesty a very interesting research product indeed but don't put in your flagship product please. TYVM /bow.

Post reply on HN