Covert a laptop to touchscreen

[allan gould]

Thought that I would mention a conversion I did to my laptop which really has made a difference as to how you use a laptop either in the field or the observatory.
As usual I was surfing the internet and came across this site.
http://www.cyclotouch.com.au/index.p...4f27ebdf8921c3
I bought a 15.4" touch screen seen here
http://www.cyclotouch.com.au/index.p...4f27ebdf8921c3
and set it up on my laptop.
It attaches to your normal screen with double sided tape which leaves enough room to slide a red screen (plastic sheet) between the normal and touch screen if you need red lighting. If not, leave it out and it can be slid in later.
Only downside is that on some PC screen you may not be able to fully close the laptop. As mine is permanently in the observatory this is not a problem.
I found that using a touch sreen speeds up the use of my time at the screen as Im not using a mouse or the keyboard. My planetarium program ECU Pro5 when doing an object search has all the NGC, M. IC etc etc headings set out in a table that you touch/click with a mouse and next to it is an numeric pad, thus entering objects to slew to is very fast. All my programs now run without a mouse or keypad except for entering in the name of files to save when imaging.
Really fast and useful so I thought I would pass it on.
Cyclotouch in Adelaide were quick and responsive to questions and great on delivery.

[Screwdriverone (Chris)]

That is sexy cool Allan,

Might have to grab one of those, simple yet VERY handy, especially if you want to sit an older laptop next to say a home theatre screen and use the windows MCE as a 15.4" touch screen interface for your home theatre, sweet!.

Funky, thanks for the info.

Cheers

Chris

[netwolf]

Great find lots of pottential for this device and its fairly cheap.

I saw something similar recently, was looking at ARC computers webpage and came accors a Tablo pen system that converts your screen into a tablet. It can be had for about the same price as the touch screen you have found.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ip8Lp34e5Y

[allan gould]

The reason I went for the R series of touch screen is that it works with XP and you can do a 4 touch or 9 touch calibration to get really accurate touching on the screen. If you dont re-calibrate each time you boot up, it remembers the last calibration done and you are away.
Really great to use and happy with it.