
Image courtesy Crave
The folks at Crave got a few hours to play with the upcoming ARCHOS 9 UMPC recently. The ARCHOS 9 is a slate UMPC with a 9-inch screen that will be the first UMPC type device released with Windows 7 under the hood. The Crave hands-on test found that the touchscreen, while now known to be the resistive type, was light-touch enough to fool them into thinking it was the expensive capacitive type like that on the iPhone.
This is newsworthy for a couple of reasons. Most resistive digitizers used in UMPCs require a heavier touch to operate than the capacitive type, and that is not a bad thing, as it means that the ARCHOS 9 can be operated with a stylus. This would make the ARCHOS 9 a little Tablet, as inking could be done in addition to operating the interface with the fingers. Windows 7 includes all of the Tablet bits (most versions), so this could be a real slate tablet when used with a stylus. Of course, the super-light touch nature of this digitizer might preclude that possibility, as a 9-inch screen would likely require resting the palm on the screen to ink. This would result in vectoring and likely make inking very difficult to do.
The other interesting deduction to be gleaned about the use of a resistive digitizer is that most likely, multi-touch would not work. Windows 7 includes special touch optimizations for devices that are touch-certified by Microsoft that provide additional interface benefits, but these usually wouldn’t be activated for resistive digitizers.
Any way you slice it, the ARCHOS 9 is looking to be a very capable UMPC, and Windows 7 should make this thing a real joy to use. Pricing may still not final, but the 9 is expected to retail for £450 to £500 in the UK.
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