You know how the OLPC folks promised us a dual-screen netbook that would have a virtual keyboard that could pop up on one screen? It looks like we could be one step closer to getting that virtual keyboard. Synaptics, a company best known for making the touchpads used in millions of notebooks, is working on a new touchscreen technology called ClearPad 3000 that will support up to 10 inputs.

In other words, forget about 2-finger gestures like pinching, zooming, and rotating. You’ll be able to type away to your heart’s content on a virtual keyboard — albeit one without real tactile feedback. The touchscreen will also support a number of gestures, but that’ll be up to the software makers. Synaptics says the screens could be up to 8 inches. Larger screens are theoretically possible, but a 15 inch touchscreen capable of recognizing 10 fingers at once will probably kill your laptop’s battery in a matter of minutes.

In other words, we’ll probably see the ClearPad 3000 show up first in smaller touchscreen devices like cellphones and small netbooks. Now if only someone could figure out how to fit 10 fingers on an iPhone screen.

You can check out a video demo from Gizmodo after the break.

via Techmeme
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MSI appears to have changed suppliers for the touchpad in the MSI Wind notebook. Blogeee reports that newer Wind laptops are using hardware and software from Sentelic instead of Synaptics.The change presents a few problems for end users:

1. Synaptics touchpads are far more widely used, which means there’s much better support for them in the Linux community. There’s a better chance that a touchpad will work with your favorite Linux distro if it’s a Synaptics product.
2. The Sentelic software doesn’t seem to be updated very regularly.
3. The new touchpad doesn’t seem to support vertical page-scrolling by moving your finger over the right side of the touchpad.

Of course, you can always just plug in a mouse, but part of the appeal of an ulrtaportable laptop like the Wind is that it takes up little space in your bag. Once you start packing accessories like mice and power cords, your laptop becomes just a little less portable.