While 3D laptops are slowly making waves, touchscreen machines are becoming rife thanks to Windows 7’s support for multitouch gestures and prods. The Toshiba Satellite U500-1EX is the latest effort to get the touchscreen treatment. So how does it stack up to our probing digits? Read our Toshiba Satellite U500-1EX multitouch screen review now and find out.
Read the rest of our Toshiba Satellite U500-1EX review:
Toshiba Satellite U500-1EX review: overall verdict
Toshiba Satellite U500-1EX review: design and build
Toshiba Satellite U500-1EX review: speed and performance
It’s taken as read that in order to have an exhilarating touch screen experience, you need a good quality screen to begin with. Unfortunately, the Toshiba Satellite U500-1EX’s display is a 13.3” TruBrite WXGA TFT High Brightness screen. No issue there, except when you discover that the highest resolution this supposedly high brightness screen can muster is a Scrooge-worthy 1280 x 800, which no amount of cranking up can improve.
Beyond that somewhat dingy number though, there is some killer tech just screaming to get noticed. At the core of the system is N-trig’s DuoSense which lets you use either a pen or a fingertip to control the action on your desktop. It’s capacitive like the iPhone, so you only require the lightest of touches, as opposed to the resistive method which needs tougher pressure to get a result.
As a way of illustrating how it works, the Toshiba Satellite U500-1EX comes bundled with Microsoft Touch Pack for Windows 7. The six programmes here include Garden Pond where you manoeuvre paper boats by causing ripples, Surface Collage where photos can be rotated, expanded and repositioned using one to four fingers and Surface Globe (Microsoft’s version of Google Earth where you can zoom in and move the Earth on its axis, etc.
This all works extremely well on the Toshiba Satellite U500-1EX, mainly because the objects you are dealing with are mostly large and therefore easy to access. Similarly, Sticky Notes can be written using a pen or fingernail and then whizzed round the screen, photo albums skimmed through (again like the iPhone) and Web pages scrolled up and down with very little effort. Dragging and dropping into folders is also a breeze and from a business perspective will dramatically cut the time needed to sort and store data.
The touch screen technology on the Toshiba Satellite U500-1EX is less impressive is when you’re dealing with small icons and edges of objects. Sometimes it’s tricky to catch the corners of photos or to isolate an object on a crowded page that you want to expand or reposition but much of this frustration is due to the limitations of a laptop’s dimensions.
Ultimately you come back to the essential question – is this just plain gimmickry or does the multi-touch wizardry of the Toshiba Satellite U500-1EX serve any useful purpose? The short answer is yes, it can be a quick and efficient way at using graphics, storing and shaping data and photos and zapping through the web. Hey, it can also be fun for the sake of it, despite a few obvious shortcomings, but for much better screen quality you should also be looking at the Acer Aspire 5738PG.
Read the rest of our Toshiba Satellite U500-1EX review:
Toshiba Satellite U500-1EX review: overall verdict
Toshiba Satellite U500-1EX review: design and build
Toshiba Satellite U500-1EX review: speed and performance
