Acer T230H multi-touch monitor Apple fans have been enjoying the advantages of multi-touch computing for some time, but Windows users are little late to arrive at the party. However, with Windows 7 billed as the first version of the operating system to “fully embrace multi-touch technology”, we’re starting to see notebook PCs and add-on tablets supporting the …
i was trying to consider buying two of these to replace my two 21" crt's as this is the largest toucjscreen i can find at the moment. But there are a few issues which stopped me,...
Firstly it's 16:9 not 16:10. 16:9 is ok if you just want to watch widescreen movies, but for professionals (or gamers) loosing almost 200 pixels from the bottom of your desktop is a major compromise on your desktop real estate, many applications need that height and i've been used to a 1200pixel screen height for the past 8 years. The few professionals i know who have bought one of the recent spate of 16:9 monitors have all had to return/sell them and find a 16:10 - this monitor is not professionals!
Secondly - it's made by Acer who have a well earned reputation for having crap Customer Support and unreliability. As a machine builder i only use quality parts. I honestly could never recommend any Acer product to a client, so to buy one for myself,... it's like preparing to stick your fingers in the mains socket, your know it's going to hurt.
If you really want a 16:9 for watching movies, consider the new Dell or Iiyama touchscreens. OK they're only 21.5" but they are reliable. OR wait, it seems inevetiable that some forward thinking company will come out with a 24" 16:10 touchscreen in the coming months.
If you want a monitor for games, or anything professional THIS IS NOT THE MONITOR YOUR LOOKING FOR (move along)
Thank goodness there's someone else recognising the widescreen lunacy for what it is. My wife sent back an Acer laptop because it had a 16:9 screen, thankfully managing to replace it with what turned out to be one of Toshiba's last 16:10 models before they too followed the idiot crowd.
This monitor is clearly only any good for watching movies on, so really even less point in touch-screen for it than one at a usable productivity ratio - and not much point there either really!
5:4 on the desktop here, and staying that way even if I have to pay over the odds in future.
i disagree with that part..... and with the original poster's bad take on acer.
I am an avid gamer, and my last 2 monitors were both 16:9 screens, 19inch. I've always enjoyed using them tbh, and only ever had problems on a few older games that didn't support wide(r)screen resolutions.... most of these I could force with command line switches.
secondly, the first 19" widescreen 16:9 monitor I got was from acer, and cost me something like £150 back in the day.... I've had it for about 6 years now, not even a dead pixel (touch wood). its a perfectly usable piece of kit and the aspect ratio is just not an issue for me.
I appreciate that some have a specific need for a certain pixel height, and I will be looking for a 16:10 screen in future (coincidentally, i'm really only looking for a bigger one) but really a monitor is just a monitor when it comes to details like this.
this aside, the reviewed monitor is close to what I want except from the touchscreen. Need HDMI so I can plug in an xbox too, beats using the crappy VGA cable you can get for it :(
"Apple fans have been enjoying the advantages of multi-touch computing for some time", let me count the number of apple laptops and desktops that have multi touch displays or even touch displays. Hmm, only a quick count is required - none! Comparing a phone to a multi touch monitor and saying windows is late to the party is totally disingenuous!
The article goes on "The T230H supports two touch points, so you’ll be able to perform the essential multi-touch operations outlined above, but is doesn’t come close to palette of sophisticated many-fingered gestures supported by the Mac." You are reviewing an monitor not an OS and while you can multi touch a track pad on a mac, this is totally different functionality to a monitor. The tone of this article comes across as "Humph! I want to review a mac device and instead have to review a PC multi touch monitor, so I'm going to pepper my article with snide and irrelevant digs because it makes me feel better and superior to mere windows users.
Come on El Reg, let’s start reviews with a open mind, all this Mac drivel makes what could have been an interesting review, feel more like a Fan Boi tantrum.
The Reg are talking about "multi-touch computing", not necessarily multi-touch displays. Macbooks have been coming with large multi-touch equipped trackpads for some time, so yes, Apple did get there first, even ignoring the iPhone.
Before you dismiss the mac trackpad, you should probably try one. The large number of gestures supported in the OS really do make a massive difference to everyday computing - and they don't get your screen all smeary either.
Apart from the comments about the number of vertical pixels, the quality of the displayed picture is very important.
Looking at the photographs, you may only be able to see what is displayed on half of the monitor, because the other half looks like a mirror - AGAIN!!!
And I haven't tried this one, but I've seen it's brother. In Excel (hardly a program requiring a large colour gamet!), the same colour box placed at the top and bottom of a diagram on page actually looked like it used two adjacent colours in the Excel colour choice, instead of the same colour!
Fingerprints will only add to the woes. People know around here that they may loose their fingers if they make contact with my screen :)
Is it just me that doesn't fancy holding their arms out in mid-air to control their computer for anything over a minute or two? I'm pretty sure it's an SAS stress position and in a grey area re: the Geneva Convention. Or something like that. A touch interface has to be down at desk level to be comfortable.
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