Cisco reboots PC with $1500 'Scandafornian' Android fondleslab In the face of some tough quarters, Cisco has used its Cisco Live event to show its bold vision for the future: a $US1,500 big-screen Android tablet with webcam, noise-cancelling audio, apps, and multi-user logins. No, really, that's the Borg's new pitch. As we all know, Cisco's business is hardly buoyant at present. So with …
I'm not sure that's a real problem for the majority of people, although it's become a common argument against touch-PCs. Touch isn't mainstream in the consumer world but touch-screens are used by some people all day in specific jobs - mostly factory-based I'd guess.
As a student I had a job as a checkout-dolly in Tesco. You spend 8 hours sitting on a chair sticking your arms out in front of you to pick up items and move them over the scanner, and interacting with a touch-screen checkout. Arguably, having to pick things up is even worse than having to stick your arms out to tap a screen, but people don't have special harnesses or whatever and you see people in their 50s who do this day in day out.
So I don't think the automatic "it's bad for you" response can be taken as gospel, any more than a chair manufacturer telling you that standing up all day is bad for you!
Personally, I don't know if it's any worse for you than (say) typing at a keyboard for 8 hours a day (which is, admittedly, bad for you).
I don't, however, think it's that comfortable to use (especially at first), which is a major consideration for a consumer when buying a new piece of tech. Remember, as a checkout operator, you are paid (probably minimum wage, based on my experience of working in Sainsburys) to be sitting at that machine 8 hours a day. A consumer would be paying to use this tablet.
Plus the photo makes the device look, to put it bluntly, fugly. Something which some computers get away with because they are insanely powerful, but this being a (admittedly large) tablet, I suspect it's not insanely powerful.
Touch screens and mouse control are different interfaces that allow different tasks to be performed, and both have validity. Each have their own advantages and disadvantages depending on the intended use-case scenario.
I don't get this "touch is new and mouse is old so touch must replace mouse everywhere" mentality. There's a reason we use handlebars on motorcycles and steering wheels in cars, and not the other way around.
For example, I do a lot of 3D modelling and graphic work as a hobby (and sometimes for work) A couple of years ago I got a Samsung Slate with Windows 7 and installed Blender (3D modelling software) on it. Since the Slate treats touch as a mouse event it was possible to use it thus, but trying to build 3D models in Blender using touch is an exercise in rage and frustration that would drive even Ghandi batshit crazy. Likewise trying to use Gimp or Photoshop with a touch interface. It's like trying to drive a car with a joystick. Forget. It.
Then there's typing up documentation and code for work. You need a keyboard. Not a picture of a keyboard on a screen. You need buttons that move, that are far enough part that my fat fingers don't end up tapping out shit like "SWKECT namw, addtess, phone FROM users WJERE joindate > 20130701".
Mouse gives you precision that touch simply cannot match. Of course you can use a touch pen (the Slate even came with one), but while drawing in Photoshop is nice with a pen, 3D modelling is a different story. Some things just need to be done with a mouse and keyboard.
Could not agree more. I have a nifty Lenovo Yoga thingy with an excellent touch screen.
But I use a the keyboard, mouse and Ancient desktop. The only time I actually use the
touchscreen is when my effing expensive and useless blue tooth mouse is arguing with the wireless card and not responding.
As JDX pointed out, in situations like POS where the computer interaction is in-between handling other things, touch can be handy.
Also in industrial operation scenarios where the operator is mostly monitoring what is going on, and only occasionally needs to interact with the system.
"... is that they never include wrist-wrests on counter-balanced multi-degree-of-freedom-moving levers to compensate for having to have to lift your arms up all the time to interact with the system.
4 0"
Perhaps if they were to invent a human to computer interface whereby one could input data and perhaps move cursors arround the screen. Ohhh, hang on, hmmmm.
I for one am awaiting the scratch and sniff screen that would extend my user experience and empower me as a user (1). Porn would never be the same again.
(1) Ferrous alert
is that people mess up the screen. I still wait for the USB powered wiper or the dishwasher-safe screen.
But seriously, touchscreens rarely improve productivity and they should not be the first choice of user interface if there is room for alternatives.
I notice most people defending 'touch' are citing non-desktop cases (checkout, factory floor, hand-held). Well yes, I did specify "on the desktop" for a reason - namely that for a phone or tablet touch is quite easily arguably the best interface and for specialised uses all bets are off. For doing any sort of serious content creation, though, touch is unlikely to be helpful.
Unless you can watch it slide slowly out of your hands and shatter on the floor like Intel's effort then there's no way that Cisco can compete.
The fact is that touch doesn't work well on a desktop as Steve Jobs repeatedly, and correctly, pointed out.
It just isn't comfortable to have to lift your arm up and stretch it out to the screen. Touch is great for a device that is close and more or less flat (i.e. parallel to the ground) but there is a reason why touch screen laptops never took off.
I wouldn't mind a horizontally-mounted touchscreen as a secondary display/control surface for a desktop or laptop PC... it would be somewhere to keep application toolbars, or perform file management. Some details would need working out (how would it handle cursor movement between screens, as with traditional dual-monitor set-ups?)
Ideally, though - this secondary display/control surface would double as a stand-alone Android tablet.
Oh? Someone has already made one, with a reputation for digitisers?
http://cintiqcompanion.wacom.com/CintiqCompanionHybrid/en/
Shame about the price tag!
"The obvious solution for that would seem to be to have a touch screen built into your desk (though a camera based solution might work as well)."
Hmmm, anybody for space invaders C. 1980's.
What we need to do is standardise the size of fingers and perhaps regulate the grease output, finger mobility and perhaps the haptic percussion rate. We could then declare an average user and then blame anybody that had issues with the system as being of the wrong physiological type.
And there you have it: A brilliant idea leaked like nothing else without any form of patents applied to it:
Do you remember those keyboards that did not exist, and you could just tap on the table, pretending there was a keyboard? A webcam thingy and some logic, and the computer could deduce what you were typing without actually needing a keyboard.
Surely, one can do the same with the screen... just pretend there's a fondleslab on the table, train a cam on it, and let some logic decide what the user is going to do.
Ok, admittedly, this is bad for people like me who listen to music and play airdrum every so often, but I guess you get out of that habit pretty quickly :)
There... for free... :D
Regards,
Guus
Re: ""eNSA" has a nice, easy-to-pronounce thing"
Enterprise Networked Storage Architecture.
Digital Equipment Co, late 1990s. OK it may have been CPQ by then, but the idea was DEC's.
May have been easy to pronounce, should have been easy to sell, but as usual nobody got to hear of it.
I'm not convinced by the "Touch Screen Devices just don't work" argument. I got one of those Asus T100 convertible tablet/netbook thingies back in November. It has a touch-pad AND a touch-screen and I find myself using both about the same amount of time, even when in standard laptop mode.
Okay, that doesn't really make or break the argument either way as it is a small device designed to be used very close to you (it only has a 10" screen so you can't really use it too far away).
HOWEVER, having used it for a good six months now I find the lack of a touch-screen on my large (17.6") development laptop hugely frustrating. I frequently find myself stabbing at buttons on the screen or trying to drag windows around etc. The development laptop runs windows 8.1 - the same as the netbook.
HOWEVER, I DON'T find myself trying to fondle the monitor on my Windows 7 based desktop PC - even though it sits on the same desk as the laptop. I would say the monitor on the desktop and the screen on the laptop are about the same distance away from me and are used pretty similarly. The main difference is the interface.
And yes, I realise 93.7% of you will instantly dismiss my opinion because I'm using windows 8.1 but you know what? It's actually pretty good. If it could just learn NOT to pop-up the on-screen keyboard all the freakin' time even though I have a perfectly good physical keyboard docked (and it knows about the physical keyboard because it appears in the connected devices list) then the list of gripes I had from about 2 years ago would be all ticked off.
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This post has been deleted by its author
Ok - disclaimer first - I work for Cisco in the Collaboration R&D group and have been using a DX80 for some time now.
A few things about the way these products are being portrayed is a little misleading IMHO... The DX 70 is a 14" touch interface and the DX80 is a 23" touch interface (both native 1920x1080) and supports full 1080p 30 video encode and decode (i.e. a standards based SIP video call). They are fully featured Cisco phones (multiple lines, bluetooth integration to make your smartphone a line as well, native Jabber IM and Presence, native WebEx client all built-in).
The DX80 also acts as your primary or secondary monitor if you choose to use it as such and can still be a high end personal telepresence system, a tool for accessing whatever apps make sense and a PC screen (touch enabled if you so desire) all at the same time.
These products are not consumer devices. These fit into the same sort of space we have been selling the EX60 and EX90 for a number of years - high-end personal TelePresence - but at a substantially lower price (less than one third of the EX90 price) and with significant new features.
Are execs going to use just the tablet features and throw away their laptops? No way. Not as far as I can tell. But the CxOs of Fortune 500 companies I have spoken to about these products all want them on their desk and for their entire management chain...
As for the Scandafornian thing... well, in 2009 Cisco did buy the company I worked for in Oslo, Norway (Tandberg) and that is where the DX80 Industrial Design was done - along with the US components as well - that kinda makes it work :-)
Of course - all my own opinions - flame me as required :-)
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