Last time we saw the 10-inch EROS tablet it was powered down and pouting about its two hours of battery life, but the tablet's pulled itself together and powered up to show off its skills. The performance is pretty much what you would expect of an Intel Atom-powered Windows 7 Home Premium netbook with its keyboard chopped off, and from what we've been able to glean from the 11 minute video below the touchscreen seems responsive to writing with a stylus and to flicks of photos and pages in a comic book. You'll notice, however the reviewer only uses his fingers a few times, though he's actually quite good at typing on the on-screen keyboard. The rest of the time he uses the stylus to move through those far-from-finger-friendly Windows 7 menus. If you're wondering why Windows 7 still needs additional software tweaks to work on a purely finger-driven tablet device, spend 10 minutes watching the video below. Or just listen to The Weepies' awesome "Gotta Have You" -- which perhaps not coincidentally ends when the tablet's done booting.
1) Yes a Stylus is more accurate and precise, this is the nature of a big finger jamming on a screen and pen point touching the screen. People are surprised? Really? This is part of the angst against the iPad is there is no real Pen interface, which is what DEFINES a tablet.
2) Win7's multitouch support 50 input points, and even the virtual keyboard works well with someone typing because it support the multi-touch ability to type more normally. Compare the Virtual Win7 to the OS X one or the iPad one, no comparison.
3) Why do people assume that because things like digging through folders in Explorer is harder with a Finger has anything to do with how usable the computer will be, especially when they can default back to a stylus.
In reference to #3 here, people do realize that there are a lot of applications that are desiged around a touch inteface and when using these on Win7 are even more 'touch friendly' than similar applications written for the iPhone.
If you are using the device in a touch only mode, stick to the Touch Friendly applications, which is something the Win7 new SDKs and WPF concepts were DESIGNED for.
In example, using this device with Media Center running full screen, it would be a great device if all you ran was Media Center, and it is EXTREMELY touch friendly, even more friendly than doing media on the iPhone.
There are also tons of third party applications that are designed for touch devices from the suite of softwre from HP and their TouchSmart series to even simple WPF applications written by BettyCrocker.com that work without touch, but really shine with touch features.
4) Win7 already does true 'tablet' interface concepts well, so even the people that don't like the keyboard and just use the stylus and write on the screen with virtually 100% handwriting recognition accuracy. Go to YouTube and look at Vista or Win7 and handwriting clips, it is hard to make the OS miss anything you write, even your handwriting looks like a Doctor's and you are entering arbitraty things like passwords and URLs.
An OS is a PLATFORM to run applications, and right now NOTHING compares to Win7 for Tablet or Touch based application support. So for writting touch applications, Win7 is a rich and vast platform as many applications already demonstrate.
I think the argument that Win7's basic Ui is cumbersome for touch is both a stretch of the truth and a flat out mis-understanding that users will HAVE to use Win7's basic UI for anything. (Again go look at the HP TouchSmart applications and people using these computers without even seeing the Win7 destkop.)
So you have:
1) Complete OS platform that can be stictly used for just touch applications, has the richest touch input API sets and users can even use the OS without ever seeing the basic OS screen, and this is bad how?
2) A iPhone OS that has a highly limited SDK for what applications can do and support and very limited touch API system, where the basic OS is less advanced than WinCE introduced in 1996, and because it lacks the 'richness' of features for developing applications people think it is better? How is this better? Should Mircrosoft just make a version of Win7 that rips out 99% of its features, so it can compete equally with the iPhone OS? Really?
Ok i know im going to be accused as one of those fannoys but i dont really care so... WHY ARE PEOPLE CALLING ENGADGET BIASED ON THIS ONE. if they had made an article insulting the ipad all you haters would have loved it, but when they see a video of a device with medeocre touchscreen abilities, a momumental boot time and small battery life and they think its bad a heap of people call them biased. the ipad (not even sure why it really came up in this articles comments) doesnt try to be a full on computer, because alot of the time poeple dont want a full on OS, instead it runs an OS designed for touchscreen, and with thousands of applications already available. trying to pack a desktop OS into a device like this is unnecesary. i know engadget have posted alot of ipad stuff, thats because (and see if you can follow this) THE IPAD WAS A BIG RELEASE AND THE MAJORITY OF PEOPLE WANT TO READ ABOUT IT. if your a windows fanboy so be it but that doesnt mean you should own every tech site, nor does it neccesarily mean your right about all things computer related.
Just coz this tablet runs a desktop OS does NOT make it good desktop OS's are not designed to be used with a touchscreen, and you can tweak it as much as you want it will NEVER be as good as an OS designed for use with touchscreen
Now that we've thrown 'em off the trail, use the form below to get in touch with the people at Engadget. Please fill in all of the required fields because they're required.
posted February 1st 2010 4:57PM
1) Yes a Stylus is more accurate and precise, this is the nature of a big finger jamming on a screen and pen point touching the screen. People are surprised? Really? This is part of the angst against the iPad is there is no real Pen interface, which is what DEFINES a tablet.
2) Win7's multitouch support 50 input points, and even the virtual keyboard works well with someone typing because it support the multi-touch ability to type more normally. Compare the Virtual Win7 to the OS X one or the iPad one, no comparison.
3) Why do people assume that because things like digging through folders in Explorer is harder with a Finger has anything to do with how usable the computer will be, especially when they can default back to a stylus.
In reference to #3 here, people do realize that there are a lot of applications that are desiged around a touch inteface and when using these on Win7 are even more 'touch friendly' than similar applications written for the iPhone.
If you are using the device in a touch only mode, stick to the Touch Friendly applications, which is something the Win7 new SDKs and WPF concepts were DESIGNED for.
In example, using this device with Media Center running full screen, it would be a great device if all you ran was Media Center, and it is EXTREMELY touch friendly, even more friendly than doing media on the iPhone.
There are also tons of third party applications that are designed for touch devices from the suite of softwre from HP and their TouchSmart series to even simple WPF applications written by BettyCrocker.com that work without touch, but really shine with touch features.
4) Win7 already does true 'tablet' interface concepts well, so even the people that don't like the keyboard and just use the stylus and write on the screen with virtually 100% handwriting recognition accuracy. Go to YouTube and look at Vista or Win7 and handwriting clips, it is hard to make the OS miss anything you write, even your handwriting looks like a Doctor's and you are entering arbitraty things like passwords and URLs.
An OS is a PLATFORM to run applications, and right now NOTHING compares to Win7 for Tablet or Touch based application support. So for writting touch applications, Win7 is a rich and vast platform as many applications already demonstrate.
I think the argument that Win7's basic Ui is cumbersome for touch is both a stretch of the truth and a flat out mis-understanding that users will HAVE to use Win7's basic UI for anything. (Again go look at the HP TouchSmart applications and people using these computers without even seeing the Win7 destkop.)
So you have:
1) Complete OS platform that can be stictly used for just touch applications, has the richest touch input API sets and users can even use the OS without ever seeing the basic OS screen, and this is bad how?
2) A iPhone OS that has a highly limited SDK for what applications can do and support and very limited touch API system, where the basic OS is less advanced than WinCE introduced in 1996, and because it lacks the 'richness' of features for developing applications people think it is better? How is this better? Should Mircrosoft just make a version of Win7 that rips out 99% of its features, so it can compete equally with the iPhone OS? Really?
Holy insanity...
@Kris91 Come on, a tablet called EROS and no-one mentions pron? You're going soft, Engadget!
Ok i know im going to be accused as one of those fannoys but i dont really care so...
WHY ARE PEOPLE CALLING ENGADGET BIASED ON THIS ONE. if they had made an article insulting the ipad all you haters would have loved it, but when they see a video of a device with medeocre touchscreen abilities, a momumental boot time and small battery life and they think its bad a heap of people call them biased. the ipad (not even sure why it really came up in this articles comments) doesnt try to be a full on computer, because alot of the time poeple dont want a full on OS, instead it runs an OS designed for touchscreen, and with thousands of applications already available. trying to pack a desktop OS into a device like this is unnecesary. i know engadget have posted alot of ipad stuff, thats because (and see if you can follow this) THE IPAD WAS A BIG RELEASE AND THE MAJORITY OF PEOPLE WANT TO READ ABOUT IT. if your a windows fanboy so be it but that doesnt mean you should own every tech site, nor does it neccesarily mean your right about all things computer related.
Just coz this tablet runs a desktop OS does NOT make it good desktop OS's are not designed to be used with a touchscreen, and you can tweak it as much as you want it will NEVER be as good as an OS designed for use with touchscreen
is there a reason why there are so many typos in the article? Could you guys try proofreading an article before you publish it?
Has anyone got another source for this Vid or can they download it and upload it to YouTube, I'm only getting that its been blocked in my region (UK)
@UncleBob1
No then?