We’re starting to see netbook makers pack touchscreens into netbooks like the Asus Eee PC T91, Gigabyte Touch Note, and Intel Classmate PC 3. For the most part these mini-laptops use resistive touch screens, which are cheaper and less clear than pricier capacitive touchscreen displays. And that makes sense, since netbooks are low price computers. But if you want a display that’s capable of recognizing multi-touch gestures (like pinching your fingers together), you’re going to want one of those capacitative doohickeys. And since Windows 7 is supposed to offer advanced support for multitouch, you probably do want a display that can handle it.

Now it looks like Taiwanese touch panel controller company EETI is expected to start shipping 7 and 12 inch capacitive panels for use in notebooks later this year. I’d be more convinced that these panels were destined for netbooks if there were 9 and 10 inch displays in there too. It seems like most of the companies producing 7 inch mini-laptops are phasing out those models to focus on larger screens. And while some computer makers are starting to position 12 inch laptops as netbooks, to me they just look like relatively small computers that are still too big and heavy to throw in your bag every time you leave the house.

But if EETI can produce 7 and 12 inch panels at reasonable prices, there’s no reason we couldn’t start to see capacitive displays showing up in high end netbooks by the end of the year.

via SlashGear

An eBay seller is accepting preorders for a $96 solderless Acer Aspire One touchscreen kit. While that’s not exactly cheap when you consider the fact that you can pick up an Aspire One netbook for around $300, the fact that you won’t need to pull out the old soldering gun makes the price a bit more attractive.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen netbook touchscreen kits for sale. There’s already a 7 inch touchscreen kit for the Eee PC 701, and another kit for an 8.9 inch screen that will fit in an Eee PC 900.

The latest kit is a bit on the pricy side. But in addition to promising solderless installation, it adds 3 USB ports to make it easier to add modifications to your netbook. And it has Windows, Mac, and Linux drivers. It may be described as an Acer Aspire One kit, but there’s a decent chance you’ll be able to get it to work with similarly sized netbooks. I’ll leave it to someone more familliar with netbook innards than I am to determine whether you’ll need to pull out that soldering gun or other gear if you want to cram it in an Eee PC 901 or Dell Inspiron Mini 9.

It’s also worth noting that this touchscreen kit is from EETI, a company that we already know is working on multi-touch panels for netbooks. While there’s no indication that this particular kit supports multi-touch, it might not be too long before we see a netbook touchscreen that can take full advantage of the multi-touch features of Windows 7.

via Engadget

Computer maker EETI is reportedly working on 7 and 12 inch touch panels with multi-touch capabilities. What does that mean? It means that the next generation of netbooks (and 12 inch laptops) could include models that not only recognize screen taps, but recognize multiple simultaneous screen taps. Think iPhone, but all over your netbook screen.

Multi-touch panels offer a bunch of advantages over single touch. For example, you can simulate right and left-clicks if you can use more than one finger on the screen. You can also quickly and easily resize or rotate images by pinching, pulling, or spinning your fingers.

There’s no word on which netbook makers will utilize these multi-touch screens. But Asus CEO Jerry Shen has said that some upcoming Eee PC models will support multi-touch.

via jkkmobile