Hanwang's handwriting recognition mouse one-ups Chinese keyboard

It's tough enough to peck and hunt when you've only got 26 or so primary characters to fool around with, but trying to construct something meaningful in Chinese just has to be a tad more complex than we'd like to imagine. Hanwang's latest mouse is looking to ease the pain suffered while penning an email with wildly elaborate characters by offering a more natural approach to keying in text, as built-in top-mounted screen accepts handwritten input via the integrated stylus (seen after the jump). As expected, users can actually write characters on the LCD rather than typing it in, presumably making things a bit easier on those who'd rather handle a writing utensil than fight with a keyboard. No word on pricing or availability just yet, but we're still not entirely convinced a mouse-sized panel would be classified as "convenient" when trying to pen a dissertation.

[Via EverythingUSB]

[Paul D @ Mar 23rd 2007 6:07AM]

That's pretty neat. Though actually, I've long thought that they should make keyboards with a small stylus-input area for languages with lots of glyphs or characters. Really, our antiquated, typewriter-based Latin keyboards suck for many languages.

Another idea: put 9 touch-sensitive buttons on a mouse for Q9 (cellphone-style) Chinese input.

By the way, does anyone know why "remember me" doesn't work and browsers won't save my Engadget password? I really hate having to dig through my email every time I want to comment; funny that a tech blog would have the worst comment system I've ever seen.

[CL @ Mar 23rd 2007 7:21AM]

$55 isn't too bad I think, given that a nice writing pad will cost you at least $40ish...being able to tidy up my desk for $55 isn't too bad of a price :-)

@Paul
I am on Firefox 2.0(OSX) and the remember me function works fine for me.

[Jamar @ Mar 23rd 2007 7:02AM]

It's nice and everything, but it's been around for at least 6 months now and last time I was walking around it was $55 (of course, being China, everything's open to negotiation- probably it could have been $45 if I was a bit more strong-willed.

[Simon Tooke @ Mar 23rd 2007 9:52AM]

Uhh, there's no LCD screen - just an input pad with a prepainted dragon. I like the overall colour, but don't know how comfortable a mouse with a hole where I rest my palm would be.

[Andrew Fong @ Mar 23rd 2007 11:38AM]

Useful for some older folks I guess, but now that all Chinese students are being taught how to romanize Chinese characters, it's actually faster to use a regular keyboard than a stylus based input (i.e. four key presses vs. 13 handwritten strokes).

[cloud811 @ Mar 28th 2007 11:19PM]

i thought about how comfy it would be. but if i acculty look at how i hold my mouse...the only thing touching my mouse are my fingures..my palm don't touch ym mouse..barely. and the middle of my hand where the hole isn't isn't ever touching my mouse either..