We’re still busy taking the Onkyo TW317 for a spin and have put together a little video to show you a bit about what Windows 7 life is like without a keyboard or standard mouse. After a somewhat heated comment debate in a recent article, I’m interested to see people’s thoughts on the usability of this device, lets hear what your thoughts are in the comments below.
Onkyo TW317 Overview Video
Posted on 05 January 2011, Last updated on 05 January 2011 by Steve Paine
Onkyo TW317 Overview Video http://www.umpcportal.com/?p=22994
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http://bit.ly/hv04Ns
This looks wrong.
First of all, it’s not Onkyo’s fault or Microsoft’s fault that you’re using Chrome on a slate, and it’s not their fault that Chrome WASN’T PROGRAMMED CORRECTLY TO BRING UP THE TABLET INPUT PANEL WHEN YOU FOCUSED ON A TEXT EDIT BOX. For a while, IE was the only browser that got this right on Windows. Later, Firefox joined the party. If you’re going to use that as a source of complaining, then submit a bug report to Google. Otherwise, don’t use Chrome. It’s a bad browser anyways. Also, if you call up TIP manually because the program that you’re trying to use the TIP with wasn’t programmed the right way to know that you need it then the TIP won’t know that you’re done with it just because you’ve hit enter. That’s a good behavior and a good assumption, even though it was less than ideal in your context. Once again, did you try a better browser? For that matter, if you’re using IE you won’t need to use the on screen keyboard. You can just use speech recognition.
Also, I’m wondering why you think that zooming in and out in a browser is slow because of “shoehorning” a touch screen into the computer. That can be pretty slow on netbooks. Have you tried to zoom something simpler, like a picture?
I have a Vaio P with a 1600×786 resolution LCD that’s only 8 inches big. Somebody over at Gottabemobile was saying that the default Dots Per Inch in Windows gives you a lot of workspace, but on small screens and touch screens you should compute the Pixels Per Inch of your actual display and set the Dots Per Inch in Windows to the same value. It made a big difference when my old eyes tried to do things like use the menus in Windows on such a small screen. I also like that the letters on my documents look so crisp and clean now. When I first read the tip I thought “that’s pretty stupid that I have to go in and manually configure my DPI to the correct setting”. However, I soon realized that I having to go in and turn on my wireless to connect to the Internet or turn off my wireless to save battery, but I only had to set the DPI up once. In fact, sometimes I bring the DPI back down to have a little bigger workspace, and I find that being able to change the setting is more of a convenience than it is a burden.
I looked up that your tablet has an 11.6 inch screen with a 1366×768 resolution. Thus, your screen has 135.09 PPI. In Windows, the default setting is 96 DPI. If that’s the value that you used, then you’ve done it wrong. You let Windows assume that it only needed to send out 96 pixels worth of information in order to display an inch worth of graphics, but on your LCD those 96 pixels are only 71% of an actual inch on the screen. In other words, everything on your screen is 70% of the size that it should be. If your screen is correctly setup, everything would be about %30 bigger.
Anyways, you seem to have made your mind up about this and found lots of things that validate your opinion. I would recommend using software that’s optimizing for touch on Windows 7, like Firefox and IE and setting your screen up correctly. Otherwise, if you’re going to find things to complain about, trying wearing the slate as a pair of underwear so that you can whine about how uncomfortable it is.
The reason that my opinion is the way it is is that this device, and others like it will NOT see mainstream adoption, yet they are marketed toward that area. It feels like a waste of time. A slate can fit very well in certain scenarios if it has good input (ie: an active digitizer for digital ink input), this one does not and it suffers in many more ways from that fact than it benefits. But no matter how hard Windows tries to be like the iOS and Android, it can’t. It saddens me to see companies tossing the strengths of Windows out the window (no pun intended) in return for sub-par impersonations of operating systems that were designed from the ground up for finger input.
I’m fully aware that there are workarounds for these issues, I’ve been using UMPCs for years, my primary has a 4.5″ 1024×600 screen (264 DPI). But, a product is not going to take off if geeks like us are the only ones that are going to spend the time to get intimate with the system and customize it to be usable. And for that matter, no tool should REQUIRE that it be customized to be used effectively/productively. You don’t spend hours playing with settings and downloading programs to compensate for certain form-factor shortcomings on a hammer or a calculator or a car, and a computer shouldn’t be different.
The issue with Windows bootstrapping touch onto devices with no keyboard and no usable mice is that the incredible library of Windows software will never fully support these things. You say it’s Chrome fault because it doesn’t recognize the TIP — sure, I’ll bite — but then you are also asking that MILLIONS of other pieces of Windows software be updated to make sure they know when to pop up a little button. Sounds unrealistic, doesn’t it? It’s because all parts of Windows and all Windows software has been designed with the expectation that a usable floating mouse and keyboard (or some form of input with a reasonable pace) are present. In the case of the Onkyo tablet, they are not.
So far, I cannot think of anyone I would recommend this Onkyo slate to, not even my computer savvy friends. It makes too many compromises to try to be something it isn’t. If it had an active digitizer, it’d be a whole different story because suddenly we’d have a usable mouse that has all of the functions that are absolutely fundamental to the way that Windows works (ie: floating mouse).
Looks like you should have used this model as your example for what is wrong with Windows Slates instead of the Asus EP121, which has a digitizer and should be getting an accessory dock option to convert it into laptop form.
Though just the EP121 slate by itself though works pretty well, as far as Slates go, as this review shows…
http://windowsteamblog.com/windows/b/windowsexperience/archive/2011/01/04/hands-on-with-the-asus-ep121slate-pc.aspx
You’ll get a whole lot less “heated discussion” if your target example actually fits what you’re complaining about… Otherwise even people who would otherwise agree with you will be arguing against you.
But I agree, these systems should be usable out of the box without need to go out of your way to customize for every user if they ever expect these systems to ever have a real impact on the market.
I did originally think that the EP121 would lack an active digitizer. I stand corrected, but my points remain with Onkyo and similar slates.
Onkyo TW317 Overview Video http://bit.ly/fJHDLw
Also forgot to add that the vast majority of Windows programs have quantized zooming, so they’ll never support zooming as smooth as we see on iOS or Android devices, this includes the built-in photo viewer. I tried to see if this was the case with Google Earth, but like 99% of Windows programs, it doesn’t support the pinch-zoom gesture.
And that parts of the BIOS don’t support the touchscreen (I was surprised than any of it did) so if you end up at one of those menus from a bad shutdown, you’re SOL if you don’t have a USB keyboard. This sort of thing doesn’t scream “usability”.
And just for fun, I’ll leave you with an image of the device’s touchscreen calibration program. Be sure to note that there’s no physical keyboard attached to the device and that this screen would result in many people doing hard resets of their device — not to mention that it’s a great illustration of the fact that even Windows expects that a keyboard will be present on all devices running Windows:
http://oi51.tinypic.com/2jcu5xt.jpg
Or at least some dedicated keys on the Slate… Like some have dedicated button for the Ctrl+Alt+Del key combo. Not to mention a space for a optical mouse. So it’s not like the industry is unaware of the problem… just not really any practical solutions yet that don’t change the Slate into either a convertible or hybrid.