

10" GoNote - The Touchscreen Android 4 Notebook - yitchelle
http://www.ergoelectronics.com/products/10inch-gonote-touchscreen-android-4-netbook-gnt10#.UDS8gKDLkXk

======
marknutter
"Within minutes of using it, GoNote turns years of web browsing on its head,
and you intuitively touch, swipe and pinch the web rather than reaching for
your mouse. GoNote’s resistive touchscreen recognises 2 finger inputs so you
can pinch to zoom into webpages and get a close up with your digital photos."

This strikes me as incredibly naive. Since when is "reaching for your mouse" a
bad thing when using a laptop? If adding touch screens to laptops was all
anybody needed to do to improve our computing experience Microsoft would have
run away with the tablet market _years_ ago.

Pinching to zoom is a pattern that makes sense on tiny mobile devices, not
large laptop screens. If I have to zoom in on a webpage to make it usable on
my laptop, it's time to increase my font sizes. Zooming into a photo perhaps
makes more sense but why not simply support the pinch gesture on the trackpad
like Apple does on it's Macbooks? Instead I need to gorilla-arm it every time
I want to zoom into a photo?

Tacking multitouch screens onto traditional laptops does not a better computer
make.

~~~
klez
My arms already hurt just seeing that thing.

I don't get this 'stretch to reach the screen and swipe'. I agree with another
user below that a gesture-enabled touchpad would be a better idea.

That said, does anybody know of any usabiltiy study concerned with this kind
of interface?

~~~
dagw
I have no data or studies, but two people at work have Asus transformers and
they use the touch screen all the time even when in laptop mode, and they
don't seem to have any problems or complaints.

~~~
gagege
I can confirm this. I have a Transformer Infinity with the keyboard and have
almost no problem going back and forth between keyboard and screen. I usually
have the tablet/laptop sitting on my desk at a comfortable distance, so that I
can keep my right thumb on the screen for scrolling. I never pinch to zoom on
my tablet/laptop. Its screen is plenty big.

~~~
GrimSqueaker
So can I, if my transformer lost it's trackpad I don't think I'd notice,
reaching for the screen is much more natural and it feels much more responsive
than a trackpad mainly because you're not manipulating an arrow in to position
before you do anything. I'm not sure I'm ready to ditch the mouse on my
desktop yet but for most day to day tasks I find the touch screen to be king.

~~~
gagege
...and if I'm really feeling lazy I use the two finger gesture on the touchpad
to scroll.

------
ck2
It's $235 which will make people pause.

Another direction is the sub-$100 new generation of dual-core android desktops
- just add any cheap 1920x1080 monitor/keyboard/mouse.
[http://www.tgdaily.com/hardware-features/65596-this-dual-
cor...](http://www.tgdaily.com/hardware-features/65596-this-dual-core-android-
mini-pc-has-a-90-price-point)

Amazing what android has done for decent, cheap computers.

I expect any HDTV over 32 inches in a couple years will have a full android
computer built in for just a $40 premium.

~~~
podperson
Remains to be see whether any of them are _decent_. Cheap certainly, but they
could be just as cheap running some random Linux build.

Don't most HDTVs these days have built in Linux-based computers? My new TV
does (it shows ads on power-on, something not advertised on the box).

------
ams6110
At the bottom...

No GPS

No embedded 3G

No G Sensor – eg tilt racing games will not work.

No access to Buy or Stream Movies via Google Play

Also does not look like the screen will fold all the way back to make the
device useable in an exclusive tablet mode.

------
underlines
It's using the out-dated RockChip RK2918 SoC. This is a SoC from Shenzhen,
China. RockChip mainly build their RKxxxx Boards for OEM tablets. AFAIK the
RK2918 has a singlecore ARM Cortex A8 CPU with a max of 1.3GHz.

The successor is the RK3066 SOC with awesome specs: ARM Cortex A8 1.6GHz Dual
Core MALI-400 Quad Core GPU 1GB RAM HDMI@1080p out, USB-OTG support, 802.11n

I have 2 unbranded tablets with the RK3066 SoC: The "McPad N90" and the
"Window/Yuandao N101"

Why they don't use the RK3066? This SoC is about 90$ for OEMs. More info at:
<http://armdevices.net/> which is an US correspondant for chinese ARM based
SoC devices...

You can even buy 1000 RK3066 powered 10" tablets with android 4 for 150$ /
pcs. This GoNote is crazy compared to this price!

------
netcan
This is just close enough to what I want to be frustrating.

I want a Android/iOS-like notebook. Don't need touch. I need a browser,
facebook, youtube, email, malware resistance & an app store with a handful of
essential apps (eg google docs, games).

A substantial percentage of laptop owners can't reliably get a word doc in an
email, edit it & email it back. They used to be able when they used Firefox
which launched doc files in openoffice which had an "email as an attachment
button." Now they use chrome which launches Word where they can't find "email
as an attachment" and it wouldn't help anyway because it would launch
thunderbird which isn't configured to use their email address.

I want a laptop for them.

~~~
cjoh
Isn't this a chromebook?

~~~
netcan
I've never seen anyone in that category (bottom 30% on the "knows how to use a
computer scale") using one.

------
protonormal
"We thought about this years ago we have done tons of user interface testing
on this and it turns out it doesn't work" Steve Jobs - Back to the Mac 2010

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?list=ULZmlH59yKpqY&v=ZmlH59...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?list=ULZmlH59yKpqY&v=ZmlH59yKpqY&feature=player_detailpage#t=691s)

------
austinlyons
I like the idea of a tablet/laptop hybrid with a touch screen, but I would
want the "convertible" form factor.

~~~
ljf
Check out the Asus Transformer series, or the new range from Archos - a bit
more than this though

------
cnlwsu
I have a nexus 7 and love it. I absolutely love my netbook and this seems very
similar. I dont care about GPS, G or cell connection so this seems really
great for me. A lot cheaper then the Transformer too. I guess I am alone
though as the rest of HN seems personally offended by it.

------
s_henry_paulson
Interesting, but with all that marketing, they fail to mention any advantages
of actually having a touchscreen.

~~~
zalew
because there's no advantage of a vertical touchscreen. the lcd should rotate
so you can hold it like a tablet.

~~~
ljf
There is no tilt sensor on this device, so i don't think it will.

------
baggachipz
Two things immediately strike me about this: 1: Resistive Touchscreen? Really?
2: If the touchscreen is so great, then why does the device also have a
trackpad? I would think a touchscreen should alleviate the need for a
trackpad, freeing up space for a better keyboard.

------
Kilimanjaro
Yeah, yeah, cool and all, but... why so thick???

~~~
ljf
9000mah battery? A base heavy enough to allow the device to not tip over when
you touch the screen? To be able to offer it for £150?

------
roymabookie
How much?

~~~
wrath
At the bottom of the webpage there's this link:

[http://liliputing.com/2012/08/gonote-android-4-0-netbook-
hea...](http://liliputing.com/2012/08/gonote-android-4-0-netbook-heading-to-
the-uk-for-235.html)

which suggests it will seek for $235. If that's really the price I'd buy one
today for my son.

~~~
ljf
Being released in the UK first at £150 (which is $240ish) - so they might be
higher in the US at first with import costs. A great price though, and with
HDMI would also double as a media centre for me.

~~~
unwind
If it's a UK company, I'm doubly amazed at all the editing misses on the main
landing page. And I'm not a native speaker by far.

To be constructive:

    
    
        -Inch symbol missing in first sentence
        - Weird switch from "to work hard" to "and then relaxing"
        - Repeat of "to use" in first smaller paragraph (by the Android icon)
        - "its" instead of "it's" under Power and Portability
        - Weird ellipsis in the Play Store, should be "blah ..."/"... blah",
          not "... blah"/"... blah"
        - Missing opening parenthesis in the Ethernet port caption

