Lenovo is experimenting with a twist on a Netbook–in this design, the display folds around so that you can write on it.
Like the Sony VAIO P this concept unit has an extra, extra wide screen leaving more room for a wider keyboard. However, vertical reading space is compromised. Call this design a victim of wide screens on steroids.
I tried out the Sony VAIO at CES and there’s no doubt it feels good in your hands, but I’m not so sure it would win out over let’s say a 10″ Netbook after use day in and day out.
Adding pen input, however, does catch my interest. In fact, I hope to see more Netbooks with Tablet features. Hopefully, the OEMs are not simply thinking in terms of low performance touch digitizers. To support a quality touch and handwriting experience we need more than that. Whether the technology is resisitive or capacitive or whatever, that doesn’t matter. The quality of the experience does.
Take smooth touch scrolling for instance. If the device supports a low end touch digitizer and doesn’t enable a smooth Windows 7 touch experience, I think the whole device is in question–that is, unless it’s going to run some other OS.
Windows 7 touch is going to be a challenge for the OEMs. As the market migrates to smaller and under $1000 devices, I can’t help but wonder if Tablet features like Windows 7 touch aren’t going to get sacrificed. This is going to be interesting to see how it plays out.