Many of you know this already. Restive screens don’t require a conductive path to register an object on the screen which means you can use plastic styli, nails and other objects to write on the screen. Capacitive screens require a conductive area, like a finger, in order to register anything on the screen making handwriting, annotations, mark-ups, photo editing, drawing, sketching, digital painting and the like almost impossible. You can’t use capacitive screens with gloves either so come the next ice age, the iPhone sales are going to suffer ;-)
What better way to see what I mean than by watching a video. Here’s a nice, jolly one from Maraderz that demonstrates the effects perfectly.
Of course there are other options. Digitiser screens use a special, active pen and can detect pressure and hovering and eliminate ‘vectoring.’ The LS800 tablet had one and is was cool to use. If you’re interested in this area, also check out multi-touch resistive screens (the Viliv S10 has one) and ‘palm rejection.’ Also remember that resistive layers on can get easily scratched because you can’t cover them with hard glass.
Screens are covered in detail in the Mobile Computing Buyers Guide.
New article: Resistive vs Capacitive screens for Writing. (Video demo) http://bit.ly/bALkqA
RT @umpcportal: New article: Resistive vs Capacitive screens for Writing. (Video demo) http://bit.ly/bALkqA
“restive” screens? Good typo
I prefer digitiser – I write with my right hand but like a left handed peron and so with the other options any touch with my hand etc sends the curor all over the place – I very really use the screen on my Q1 Ultra but do on my M200.
I prefer an active digitizer, the only workaable resistive one I’ve found is on the Fujitsu P16xx-series and they are ***costly**** Based on the video, anyone interested in productivity should know that they will be using their devices in laptop mode most of the time. If upcoming slates (like the HP) come out with capacitive touch, IMHO that will seriously limit their usefulness.
In my opinion anyone whose used a real Tablet PC knows the benefits from actually being able to write on the screen with a pen. The Fujitsu P16XX series used an interesting touch rejection algorithm, which although existed in the smaller U10XX series, didn’t work as well on the small screen.