Touch Screen Laptop | Make Your Own

A touch screen laptop gives its users a way of interacting with the computer on a whole new level. And multi-touch technology just made it so much more practical because it is closer to natural movements of our hands and what we expect to be able to control using both hands. It use to be that add-on devices that turn your computer into a touch screen laptop did not have multi-touch capability or was not very good at it.

Thanks to the DuoSense™ by N-Trig, you can turn a standard laptop into a touch screen laptop with all the functionality of multi-touch capability. It does a great job of recognizing the pen, your finger, as well as multiple points of contact. It’s a well designed device that is minimal in bulk that I think is worth a try for many.

Touch Screen Systems

Have you ever wondered how touch screens work? Of course we don’t need to know the engineering details which can vary to some degree between specific products, but what is the basic mechanics that allows something like a touch screen laptop to recognize your finger or stylus? In my research there are three basic systems used, although some really cool stuff are being developed using futuristic recognition technology that we won’t go into today.

The first of technique is called the resistive system. It has two metallic sheets of that carries a charge and are separated ever so slightly. When some foreign object touches the screen and forces these two sheets to touch, the change in the electrical field where the contact is made can be calculated by the systems computer.

The second is the capacitive system in which a single sheet carrying a charge is used. When something conductive like your finger or an oppositely charged stylus touches the screen, some of the charge escapes through the contact. Where the charge is decreased is how the system determines the point of contact.

The surface acoustic wave system uses devices along the sides of the screen to reflect electrical current. When your finger interrupts the current, the computer calculates the exact point of contact using x-y coordinates from the sides of the screen.

And there you have it. Who cares right? As users we just want stuff that works well and looks good. Not really, some people have a need to at least have an idea about what is going on. If you are not one of those people, and have a touch screen laptop, then I’m sorry I wasted your time.

Touch Screen Laptops | Two Types

There is a distinction between two types of touch screen laptops. The first is the true to form tablet PC. These, also known as slate PCs, are less like your standard laptop and more like a giant etch-n-sketch. There is no keyboard or mouse but you do have the option of connecting a keyboard or mouse via USB or wirelessly. Otherwise, the human input is entirely done directly through the touch screen.

The other type is a hybrid of the tablet PC and your standard laptop. Its screen opens like a traditional laptop but the hinge is a swivel that allows it to turn 180 degrees and fold backwards onto itself and go into tablet mode.