Toshiba Gets in Touch With Multitouch

PC World - The Toshiba U505-S2980's main gimmick is a multitouch touchscreen. Outside of that, it is, for the most part, a decent laptop, even above average in many ways. But that one gimmick is the root of my issues with this 13-inch notebook--and helps raise its cost to a somewhat pricey $1050 (as of 11/24/09).

Because the panel is a touchscreen, the U505-S2980 suffers from grainy picture quality. This exacerbates a more basic problem of the screen just being dim. Viewing angles and backlighting are all right--the hinge actually sets the screen to the perfect angle when the unit is fully open--but the screen is really not bright enough. What you wind up with is a display that's made too many compromises for an idea that just doesn't work in practice. (In all fairness the touchscreen variant of the Lenovo ThinkPad T400s and the Dell Latitude TX2 were also a little dim--it's not something unique to Toshiba).

I suspect Toshiba wants you to use the touchscreen more than anything else, but I'm just not sold. The 13-inch screen runs at a resolution of 1280 by 800 pixels, far too fine for a proper touch interface without a stylus. Sure, you can up the font size, but it grossly reduces usable space on an already cramped resolution. Multitouch also seems silly, given how awkward it is to reach forward and manipulate the bundled multitouch application when the notebook is upright. That bundled app--software for posting notes and images like a blackboard--is in itself quite cute, but hardly practical. That said, with the touchscreen, it's a breeze to zoom in and out of images or Websites. And if you want to do some on-screen doodling in something like Photoshop, you can.

If the screen is problematic, the good news is that the mousing touchpad is pretty stellar (though a bit small), offering up multitouch capability, too. So if the using the display via touch turns you off, at least you have a reliable alternative.

Now if Toshiba could just get the keyboard part down. The glossy, flat-surfaced, backlit keyboard is a pain. The cheap plastic used for it squeaks and squeals when you slide your fingertips across it, and it's just not comfortable to use. But the touch-sensitive buttons above the keyboard are nice, and the visual styling with the white LED backlighting is really beautiful and a welcome change from the world of blue LEDs elsewhere in the market. Another user might find the keyboard style to their liking, but to me it remains a gaudy reminder of Toshiba's over-glossed yesteryear.