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A ‘Touch’ can work wonders! A mother’s tender touch makes the child feel the warmth of her love and care. A friend’s supportive and reassuring touch on the shoulder, during rough times in life, makes one feel strong from within. When two people are in love, a touch can convey so much more than words can do. A mere touch of King Midas had even turned his beloved daughter into gold. Not only human beings, even animals and plants respond to touch. The touch-me-not plant, closes its leaves to protect the moisture content in it, when touched. This touch has found its way to the screens of laptops and netbooks too. These touchscreen mobile computers allow people to work on them with finger-tips or devices like the pen or stylus.
HP TouchSmart TX2 Notebook PC and Asus EEE PC T101H 10″ Netbook are two of the most recent touchscreen laptops seen in the market. The touchscreen technology has advanced so much, that natural gestures can be used to perform various operations on the displays. For example, if you want to increase the font size or expand the view of a page, you just have to move two fingers apart on the touchscreen. Moving to the next page can be done, with the finger moving like flipping a real book page. Drag and drop can be done with the finger as well.
How does the portable PC understand these touches? Well, one can consider these touches to be equivalent to the mouse clicks. Just like how the mouse movements and clicks are processed by the computer, so is a touch. There is a software driver that understands these click signals. If there is a touch sensor, which senses the touch on the screen and converts this data into a format that is understood by the software driver, our touch-sensitive screen is ready to go. Hence there are 3 essential parts in a touchscreen set-up. A sensor, a converter and a software driver. The sensor, as mentioned above, senses the touch and gets its exact location on the monitor. The converter converts this touch-data to signals that can be understood by the software driver, which in-turn interacts with the operating system to execute the task.
A number of methods are employed to accomplish the sensing of the touch. Either a mild electric current or infrared rays or ultrasonic waves are used for this purpose. For example, a matrix of infrared rays is made just above the screen. There are light sensors located on the sides of the screen. When a particular spot on the display is touched, the infrared rays at that spot get blocked for an instant. The light sensors sense this and the exact location of the touch is processed. This data is fed to the converter which produces an output that can be understood by the software driver. Similar is the case with ultrasonic waves. When electric signals are employed, 2 conducting plates, which carry current are placed very close to each other. A thin film is placed above these plates. When the surface of the film is touched, it makes the 2 plates come into contact at that spot, causing a change in the electric field there. This can be used to determine the location of the touch. Another touch sensing method involves the use of a charged plate. When touched with a finger, some charge flows from the plate into the finger. The location of depleted charge gives the location of the touch.
Touchscreen laptops come in different sizes to suit the needs of different users. While HTC Shift Ultra-Mobile PC has a 7″ screen, the Fujitsu Lifebook B6110D Touchscreen Notebook has a 12″ display.
Laptop manufacturers constantly keep their grey cells busy, to make touchscreen laptops most ergonomical for users. Most of these portable PCs have swivel screens which can rotate about a central hinge, and fold over the keyboard. Such laptops which can be used as regular laptops as well as tablets, are generally referred to as convertible netbooks. The Gigabyte M1028 10″ Touch Notebook and the ones mentioned above have such form factors. There are others like the Samsung Q1EX-71G ultra-mobile PC which have the tablet form factor itself. They come with a dock having a keyboard. The tablet can be fitted into the dock for using as a regular laptop.
The power of ‘touch’ brings a whole wide virtual world at one’s finger tip. Touchscreen laptops definitely seem to be rocking the laptop market today. Considering the ease of use and popularity of such devices, this technology surely seems like it is here to stay.
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