This is cool. The forthcoming Sharp Mebius netbook is shipping with an LCD trackpad that supports muti-touch. The 4″, 854×480 pixel LCD is kind of like having an iPhone’s touch built right into a PC. No idea if the display can be used as a true secondary display or if there’s some additional magic going on here. Either way it looks quite interesting.
Check out this DailyMotion video to see it in action:
My first thought is: Does the device work with Windows 7’s multi-touch? I don’t know. I have a question out to Microsoft. I’ll update this post when I find out.
Second, the handwriting appears to be a little facetted.
This suggests that the sample rate isn’t very high, though that’s just a guess. It could be the software isn’t up to par. I’m also assuming that there’s no pressure sensitivity here, though, that again is a guess.
I do like the fact that the trackpad is multi-touch, however. This offers a lot of interesting possibilities here, such as controlling sliders or playing a virtual keyboard:
What’s interesting about a configuration like this is that for a classic formed notebook, the trackpad is easier and more convient to use for manipulating content. There’s no need to reach up to the display, for instance, to peck at an onscreen calculator.
