Fingerworks Touchstream LP
A little too touchy-feely for our tastes
T
he Touchstream is essentially a keyboard - size touchpad
that takes the place of both your keyboard and mouse.
Tthat takes the place of both your keyboard and mouse.
T To operate the device, you have to master a dizzying
array of finger- movement combinations—glides, touches,
squeezes, and other coordinated motions. For example,
tapping t wo fingers on the right side of the board results
in a “mouse click,” while touching t wo fingers on the lef t
side of the keyboard is equivalent to tapping the arrow
keys. Scrape four fingers up and down, and your page
scrolls. Get the idea? The scheme is kind of neat at first,
and works pret t y much as advertised, but the Touchstream
certainly isn’t the most effective keyboard /mouse combo we’ve
ever used. Far from it, actually.
During testing, we had no problem performing rudimentary mouse/
keyboard maneuvers, such as dragging the cursor around, surfing the web,
and highlighting text. However, the touch surface is extremely sensitive.
This has the benefit of lowering the amount of effort required to activate
keys (and fatigue, in the long run), but greatly increases the probability of
accidental key touches. So, for example, if you merely rest your fingers on
the keys, unwanted letters will appear in your document. Shift your fingers
across the surface in a weird way, and windows will minimize, along with
the occurrence of other unwanted anomalies.
The folks who sent us the Touchstream told us, “It takes a bit of prac-
tice,” which is a huge understatement. It takes a lot of practice. In fact, a
rep from Fingerworks told us it would take anywhere from one week to one
month of practice to type comfortably on the device. Maybe we’re addledto type again. It would take us all of a week just to write this review on the
Touchstream, and that’s a learning curve that’s just too steep.
Its fold-in-half design
makes it a decent travel key-
board, but we honestly found
it too frustrating to use either
as a keyboard or a mouse. The
Touchstream also has issues
with keyboard/video/mouse
ports (KVMs), but considering
its other issues, that’s the least
of its problems.
—JOSH NOREMArchos ARCDisk 20GB External
More light than might, but that’s alright
A
lthough we’ve been chanting, “The floppy is dead” (along with,
“She’s a witch!”) for quite a while now, we’re really, really serious
about it this time. The ancient floppy drive has already been given a
king-size wedgie by the fabulous USB key, and now the hard drive-based
ARCDisk has come along to pull the floppy’s undies all the way up over
its head.
Consider the specs: The ARCDisk holds 20GB (18.6GB format-
ted), has a footprint that’s smaller than a floppy, weighs just 2.7
ounces, supports USB 1.1 and USB 2.0, and is bus-powered. Heck,
the ARCDisk even gives USB keys a run for their money, boasting
20 times the capacity at just half the cost (assuming you’re pricing a
1GB USB key, that is). We suppose that in a perfect world, Duke Nukem
ForeverForeverForever would go gold, and the ARCDisk would offer FireWire support, but would go gold, and the ARCDisk would offer FireWire support, but
considering the drive’s small size, we’ll forgive Archos for leaving out the
extra interface connector.
Once plugged into a high-speed USB port, the 4200rpm ARCDisk offers
respectable performance. Not “mind-blowing” performance, just respect-
able. When compared with the last 4200rpm removable drive we tested—
the 20GB Pocketec Pockey—the ARCDisk comes up a tad short. Still, in its
defense, the ARCDisk is roughly half the size of the Pockey. In our 953MB
file transfer test over USB 2.0, the ARCDisk shuttled the test files back and
forth (read and write) in roughly 2:15 (min:sec). The Pockey, on the other
hand, finished the same tasks in 1:10 for each direction. When running the
ARCDisk through the moldy USB 1.1 interface, the same batch of test files
required a staggering 18 minutes to mosey through the cable.
The ARCDisk is a little slow, but we’re cutting it some slack because it’sso darned portable. If 20GB
doesn’t spike your heart rate,
Archos also sells a 40GB
version that’s a tad bigger
and— get this —less expensive
than the 20GB version.
—JOSH NOREMReviews
102 MAXIMUMPC DECEMBER 2003
Portable, very ergonomicTOUCH-TYPINGTOUCH FOOTBALL
Way too sensitive, learning curve is too
steep.
$340, http://www.fingerworks.comMAXIMUMPC VERDICT 4
Majorly portable and affordable.PORT-O-BILITYPORT-O-POTTY
File transfers are a bit slow.
$250, http://www.archos.comMAXIMUMPC VERDICT 9
“She’s a witch!”) for quite a while now, we’re really, really serious
about it this time. The ancient floppy drive has already been given a
king-size wedgie by the fabulous USB key, and now the hard drive-based
ARCDisk has come along to pull the floppy’s undies all the way up overDuke Nukem
would go gold, and the ARCDisk would offer FireWire support, but
considering the drive’s small size, we’ll forgive Archos for leaving out theThe ARCDisk is made
of material from Noah’s
ark. OK, maybe not.2.9”.35”3.0”he Touchstream is essentially a keyboard - size touchpad
that takes the place of both your keyboard and mouse.array of finger- movement combinations—glides, touches,and works pret t y much as advertised, but the Touchstream
certainly isn’t the most effective keyboard /mouse combo we’veDuring testing, we had no problem performing rudimentary mouse/by ADD, but we’re not spending a week—much less a month—learning how
to type again. It would take us all of a week just to write this review on theThe Touchstream rests
atop an ergonomic
frame that comes
included with the
keyboard.