Dell loosing touch by focusing on it?

[TheAnimus]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18168198

Dell is pinning its hopes on new touchscreen products pegged to Windows 8's launch to boost the fortunes of its consumer products division.

This can ONLY go well.

[kalniel]

They need to.

Leisure use of a PC is outdated if it constrains itself to the old display-keyboard-mouse interface. People these days do not expect to have to go to a desk to do their internet/social media/shopping/video watching tasks, nor do they want to have to put a computer on something solid in order to use it comfortably.

Apple, Motorola, Asus, Acer etc. realised this long ago. Microsoft too. Dell would be signing their death warrant if they ignored the direction PCs are going in.

[Funkstar]

Dear Mr Dell,

Please make a W8 version of the Asus Transformer at a reasonable price point. I'll take one straight away.

Regards,
funkstar

[Jay]

I have to be honest about Dell, their servers and support (gold support only) are very very good these days. We recently got a few R910s, R210s and R710s and the only issue we had was that the memory was faulty on one of R910s, that was replaced within 2 hours of raising the fault.

The issue dell have is that they dont have anything decent to throw at the handheld market at the moment.

[peterb]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18168198

This can ONLY go well.

I find your enthusiasm for this article difficult to reconcile with your contempt for the tablet platform in this

http://forums.hexus.net/general-disc...-grown-up.html

[TheAnimus]

I find your enthusiasm for this article difficult to reconcile with your contempt for the tablet platform in this

http://forums.hexus.net/general-disc...-grown-up.html

the ONLY bit was ment to emphasis the sarcasam.

Now they can make the devices, and such, but please do not focus on them, not yet. Keyboards mean too much to me I suppose.

[peterb]

the ONLY bit was ment to emphasis the sarcasam.

Ah, my bad, too subtle for me

Now they can make the devices, and such, but please do not focus on them, not yet. Keyboards mean too much to me I suppose.

I agree, keyboards will (I hope) be around for a long time, particularly for entering text. Touch screens have their place though, but this rush by OS writers to embrace touch screens while seemingly ignore the more conservative desktop/keyboard paradiogm is scary - and perhaps evidence can be found in Gnome 3 and its derivatives on the Open Source platforms.

[Hicks12]

Agreed peter, touchscreen are useful especially in the phone market but for me personally i dont like marks on a screen for laptop/desktop , and typing on a proper keyboard not glass is unreplaceable for me I couldnt stand to write an essay on my phone!. The only way id love touchscreen outside of the phone area is things like kinect or that new leap, designing for touchscreens allows easy implementation of this interface and i cant wait for a very strong contender to this (hopefully leap is amazing ).

Dell have always been great for me with their support and quality of products, next day/same day service engineer out straight away replaces component job done in minutes , the way it should be!.

[DDY]

I'd like to see an improved and wider range of digitiser pen slates or convertible tablets from Dell, or any manufacturer for that matter. By improved I mean higher screen resolutions and better battery life.

My Latitude XT2 is getting a bit long in the tooth and Dell's newer Latitude XT3 doesn't cut it for me - mainly because of its 1366x768 screen.

[TooNice]

Re: Keyboard
Not sure if this is old news but have you guys seen this? http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/cellphone/e722/

[cptwhite_uk]

Re: Keyboard
Not sure if this is old news but have you guys seen this? http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/cellphone/e722/

Prime example of "just because you can do it, don't mean you should do it"

a) It's around 10 times the price of a reasonable keyboard
b) Battery lasts 2.5 hours...lol
c) You have to use it in the dark
d) It can't distinguish between a button press and just resting your hand on the key (like a real keyboard can)
e) There's no way you can type as fast on it, no tactile responce. I'm assuming you'll also be constantly looking at the desk, whereas I've typed all this without looking at the keyboard once. This is due for the need to "calibrate" your key strokes, which is done by tactile touch on a physical keyboard
f) It uses boothtooth, which is obviously really reliable
g) Completely needlessly cordless for the "cool" factor
h) Only works on solid surfaces

Once everyone realises touch is a fad, we'll all go back to tactile physical interfaces, or at least an mixture of the too.

Touch is perfectly acceptable on a phone (limited physical room), maybe even a Tablet. But let's not completely re-invent the desktop experience for the sake of appearing modern and "cool", completely pointless and a step in the wrong direction.

This, however, has real potential:
http://www.leapmotion.com/

[scaryjim]

I'd like to see an improved and wider range of digitiser pen slates ...

This. One way you can replace tactile keyboard input is with good handwriting recognition. Win XP tablet edition had this, when used in conjunction with a proper pen and digitiser (like on my trusty HP TC1100). It doesn't always work: I had a chance to mess with a Fujitsu Stylistic Q550 a few months ago and the digitiser was pretty poor on that (and the capacitive touchscreen was even worse, tbh), but a slate with a decent digitiser is a pleasure to use. Add to that something dockable - maybe with a choice between a keyboard dock and a desktop dock - and you could end up with a really nice device...

[aidanjt]

This, however, has real potention:
http://www.leapmotion.com/

And the best part is, no grubby little mits making contact to smear grease all over your precious monitor.