cepsipola Tracker

Re: Is R7-572 screen resistant to stylus pen scratches?

cepsipola — Wed, 08 Oct 2014 12:48:34 GMT

It's been well over a month since I've been using my R7-572 for drawing, so I thought I'd come back and share my thoughts on the screen.

I am happy to report that extensive drawing (I'm a professional artist) on the screen has not resulted in any scratches yet. I should also note that I do not use any screen protectors on my R7's display as those would interfere with my drawing.

So my experience so far is that the R7'-572's screen is durable and will not scratch with extensive use of the Acer stylus pen.

If anyone has any questions concerning this, or anything related to using the R7 for art creation, please feel free to ask!

Acer Aspire R7-572 N-Trig pen pressure curve configuration tool?

cepsipola — Wed, 08 Oct 2014 12:41:53 GMT

I bought my Aspire R7-572 about two months ago, after spending cosiderable time researching a new laptop to use as my primary art creation device. I nearly bought the Microsoft Surface Pro 3, but the R7's large display and the aweome EZEL hinge clinched it for me. I was also encouraged by the fact that both the R7 and Surface Pro 3 used the same N-Trig Duosense pen digitizer. My hope was that new drivers from N-Trig would appear more frequently now that Microsoft was throwing its support behind it in a big way. This has been true so far, with N-Trig's recent new WinTab driver release, which has greatly improved compatibility with more art software.

However, one of the things I've noticed (and also noticed by many SP3 owners) is that while drawing with N-Trig is a generally nice experience, the amount of pressure required to activate the various pressure levels is not very good. For example, trying to activate the higher pressure levels is either impossile of requires an extraordinary amount of physical force. Likewise, some of the pressure activation levels jump dramatically between light to medium levels. This can make drawing with the N-Trig system a frustrating experience at times. As a professional artist, I can get by with thr R7 to get my work done, but it can be a difficult experience after having used Wacom systems for so long.

This week, Microsoft announced a long awaited update ( http://surfaceproartist.com/blog/2014/10/7/control-panel ). A pressure config app will be made available in the Windows 8 app store. It will provide a means of configuring the pressure curve of the N-Trig pen. However, it will also require a firmware update for the SP3. This was discouraging to hear, because it's likely that the new app will not work with the R7-572. I had also contacted N-Trig earlier asking if the config tool would work with the R7. They replied that it was up to each indivual OEM to build and provide these tools.

My question to Acer: Will there be a similar firmware and software update for the R7-572 that will allow configuration of the N-Trig pressure curve? While our numbers may be small, there are many professional artists who use the R7 for production work, and such a tool would greatly enhance the drawing experience on the R7-572. I know it wouldn't be a trivial amount of work to develop this, but with Microsoft already laying down the groundwork, surely there must be some sharing of code available to make this possible for the R7?

Re: Is R7-572 screen resistant to stylus pen scratches?

cepsipola — Sat, 23 Aug 2014 18:11:07 GMT

Thanks for the feedback. I also haven't come across any reports of screen scratches caused by the pen stylus yet. My biggest concern is that the screen surface of the display models that I have seen appears to be plastic, and not glass. Pen pressure is really important to me as I am an illustrator and I've read that screen protectors can affect this.

Re: Is R7-572 screen resistant to stylus pen scratches?

cepsipola — Sat, 23 Aug 2014 18:06:23 GMT

In Canada, you can get the R7 572 from Future Shop. It's the 8GB + 750GB HD. Canada Computers also has the 8GB and the 7GB model.

Is R7-572 screen resistant to stylus pen scratches?

cepsipola — Fri, 22 Aug 2014 14:48:37 GMT

I'm considering buying the R7-572 primarily for its pen functionality.

I cannot find any information about the type of surface used on its display. I have a very old laptop which I used for years with a wacom pen. Its screen is heavily scratched and marred from years of pen use.

Does the R7-572 use gorilla glass or similar to protect its screen? I'm concerned that heavy pen use will damage or scratch the surface of the screen. I have also read that using a screen protector will reduce the sensitivity of the pen, something that would be a considerable negative for me.