Acer W700 capacitive stylus experience

radpilot

Since active digitizers in win 8 tablets (of course not Atom ones) are way more expensive,

how is the experience with the included stylus?

Can you take notes for example in onenote?

Has anyone made a video showing handwriting on the W700?

 

wmm

The stylus works great for selecting things, like dragging over text or ticking check boxes. It is not good for writing and drawing: small features are smoothed away by the driver. For example, a string of lower case e's ("eeeeee") comes out as a slightly wiggly line with no loops if you write at a normal size. You have to write quite large (letters 2-3 cm high) to get well-shaped characters. It's quite frustrating, and I haven't been able to tell whether Acer or Microsoft is to blame.

radpilot

Thanks very much.

That's what I needed to know. I was very tempted to buy the W700 but now I might wait until something cheaper with an active digitizer arrives.

wmm

This seems like a pretty stupid limitation -- that stylus works fine writing on my capacitive-touchscreen Android phone, and the manufacturer of the stylus has a video on their website showing its use with an iPad drawing and writing very accurately.  The fact that the stylus is so accurate for tapping and dragging shows that it's not a hardware problem with the touchscreen, so I'm hoping that there's a setting somewhere that can turn off the excessive smoothing.  No progress in finding such a setting yet, unforunately...

radpilot

I was hoping too because I have seen videos with the Ipad but not with the W700.

Anyway, I will wait...

Mucchan

What stylus are you using for the W700 wmm? I'm thinking about getting an Adonit Jot Pro for my W700.

wmm

I'm using the one that came with my W700P-6821, which you can see on the manufacturer's web site here.  (It would be really neat if we could do on our W700 what those videos show on an iPad!)  The Adonit Jot Pro looks pretty similar; I would imagine it would behave about the same as the one I have, which I'm quite happy with except for the smoothing issue.

ptrkhh

I bought the Adonit Jot Classic, which I believe is very similar to the Pro.

I have seen the video about the writing on the iPad, which makes me confident to buy it for my W700 since they both have capacitive touchscreen. However, the result is nowhere as good as the video. I have problems with it.

First, I have to push it hard to the screen until the touch registers. The Classic has neither dampening tip nor spring, so I cant tell exactly the pressure point when the touch registers. But Im sure that the pressure is beyond the my normal writing pressure, even though my writing pressure is already the hardest among my friends. Yes, Ive cleaned the screen.

Second, when I drag something, or draw a line, sometimes the Jot loses its track, leaving interrupted line or accidentally clicking something. This is related to the first point: the softer I push, the more intteruption I get.

Third, the tracking is horrible. I have to write a math equation big enough to fill the width of the screen (landscape mode) so that the ink result is readable.

Fourth, its more a Windows problem than Acer or Jot. In desktop edition of OneNote, whenever I stop the stroke for a little without lifting the ink, Windows reads it as a right-click.

 

So, I wouldnt recommend getting the Jot (especially Classic) for your W700. Ill find whether my Jot or W700 defect, but for the current condition, I wish I didnt buy it.