Who saw this one coming? A multitouch display, much less on a non-convertible notebook? Crazier things have been done, like wrapping a laptop in leather. To make use of the multitouch features, Lenovo loaded a mostly-final version of Windows 7 on the T400s multitouch (MT) along with a new ThinkVantage utility: SimpleTap. TrackPoint enthusiasts will appreciate the homage paid within this application. Without further ado, let’s dive in.

Multitouch

For those not familiar with multitouch technology, it refers to an LCD that supports capacitive touch-sensing from multiple simultaneous inputs. Translation: you can use your fingers as you would on a regular old touchpad, and four of them at a time will be recognized. Capacitive touchscreens are nothing new and have been featured on other laptops, like Dell’s Latitude XT Tablet, and of course we are all familiar with the iPhone.

As I alluded to, capacitive touch-sensing is actually a feature of your touchpad and is the basis of how it operates. The T400s touchpad and many others these days are multitouch, supporting two inputs at once. The ThinkPad T400s MT supports four inputs at any given time, although you really won’t find much of a use for that right now.

Windows 7 & Multitouch

So, you’ve got this fancy capacitive, multitouch screen. Wonderful. Now what do you do with it? Windows 7 has added a number of touch, and specifically multitouch, features over Vista. They also designed the system with touch interfaces in mind and made it a bit more user friendly in that regard. The taskbar is taller for easier switching between applications and touch functionality like flick gestures, scrolling, rotating, and zooming are natively built into the OS. I won’t belabor something that the Windows 7 themselves has already done justice for, so read more about the specific features Win7 offers for touch here.

Lenovo ThinkPad T400s multitouch (left) compared to regular T400s (right)

ThinkPad T400s MT

The T400s MT is visually identical to a standard T400s, except for the extra 3.3 mm (0.13 inches) of thickness added by the capacitive touch panel, as measured by my digital caliper. Battery life is expected to stay nearly the same, although we won’t be testing that today as the software is still not quite final.

Does the extra thickness inches make a big difference? Not in my eyes. The T400s weighs closer to that of a standard T400, although I am lacking the official weight at the moment, but still comes off as a more svelte than its brethren.

The multitouch display itself works well, as one would expect. It does have a special coating designed to repel fingerprints and keep the screen smudge free, which it does very well. The ThinkPad X61 Tablet SXGA+ screens in particular were horrible with smudges and it could be quite an annoyance, making this feature much appreciated.

For those who are considering this screen on the ThinkPad X200 Tablet, Lenovo also reports that they have optimized the system firmware to “to help compensate for slightly imprecise taps on the screen, such as when closing a window or navigating the Start menu, helping make navigation easier for Tablet users.” When asked about what exactly was done in the firmware, Lenovo representatives said only that it was rather technical. While it doesn’t appear this updated firmware is for use on the T400s, I didn’t have much trouble with tapping on the edge; even with my ham fingers.

SimpleTap

While many were likely disappointed over the final list of what ThinkVantage Technology software would be carried over into Windows 7 (I will miss Presentation Director dearly), Lenovo has ADDED functionality to Windows 7 instead of just taking it away. Enter: SimpleTap. The red dot, ala TrackPoint, at the top of the screen shown above is the trigger for SimpleTap. Tap it with your finger, or click it with the mouse.

As its name implies, you simply tap the red dot and the interface you see above appears. These tiles are inspired by the old “Classic 15″ puzzle game and control various functions; read more about the design on David Hill’s blog. Some tiles trigger the function directly, like turning on the ThinkLight, and change color indicate status. Others pop up a slider, as shown below, and allow you to adjust the volume or brightness to your liking.

Included in the default interface are all the system functions you could ever want to control:

• Volume, Mic, & Webcam mute
• Volume & Screen Brightness adjustment
• System lock
• Webcam preview
• Wireless radio control
• Sleep (requires two taps to activate)
• ThinkLight

Not enough for you? You can add a tile for any application or web page you want, as shown in the interface above. Notice the black tile below the main group in my screen shot. This is a tile I created that takes me straight to ThinkPads.com. You can specify a range of colors for added tiles, and when linking to a website you can even pull in the site’s favicon. VERY nice touch.

SimpleTap is a very neat utility, but will truly show its usefulness on something like the tablet where you don’t have a keyboard & mouse handy in slate mode. Check out the video below for a demonstration of its features. I love playing with the slingshot effect – watch the video and see what I mean.

Real World Usage

As you could maybe tell from my opening line, myself and others are likely skeptical as to what a multitouch display does for a notebook that doesn’t convert into slate mode, i.e. no keyboard/mouse. I personally found myself minimizing windows via the taskbar and scrolling web pages. The two finger scrolling is very nice and smooth.

I found the flick gestures a bit sloppier, but they are really something that just needs some practice. Flicks can be rather precise depending on how you activate the gesture, from a small bump on the page to a large, flying scroll. Windows 7 even simulates reaching the end of the document and bumps the window, to signify the scrolling reaching the end. Very slick.

Lenovo’s Access Connections and Power Manager utilities are by default setup as their own little tab on the taskbar, making for easy access via touch. While it would be nice if the icons in Access Connections itself were a bit bigger, tablet or other touch users shouldn’t have much trouble accessing these utilities via finger touch. Kudos to Lenovo on a slick Windows 7 integration, even if they did take away my favorite ThinkVantage utility.

So when you get beyond interacting with Windows, there is always zooming in on photos/text and rotating photos. That’s neat, but you could also just do that on the touchpad. What else is there? Games.

Microsoft Windows 7 multitouch Garden Pond game - the object is to move your little origami boats around

Microsoft includes several neat touch interactive games with the Touch Pack. Two of them can be two player, involving causing water rippled to move little origami boats in one and a complex version of pong involving forcefields. There is also a little puzzle game, which tells you what to do and thus defeats the puzzle aspect, and a nifty screen saver that lets you cause ripples in a pond and scare little fishies away. Click here for a good overview of the Touch Pack applications.

What can someone REALLY do with this?

Is there anything else you could use it for? If you have a specific application that is designed around touch, or is well suited to touch input, then the T400s would give you that capability without the compromises of a smaller tablet model. That could mean a lot to a specific industry or group within a company that would benefit from touch input, but needs the full featured capabilities in a notebook like the T400s. And let’s face it, performance, size, and quality don’t get much better than the ThinkPad T400s.

However both myself and Lenovo recognize that the touch app market is relatively small. Think of the T400s MT as almost a proof of concept: it can be done, done well, and hopefully open the doors to new uses. In fact, Lenovo pointed out one of those potential new uses to us. Check out the YouTube video below of a new CAD program that extensively uses multitouch input.

I talked to a mechanical engineer friend of mine and he added that while touch input would not be useful creating the baseline design and wireframe, being able to model and modify a design as shown in the video would be very cool. I’m not sure how much added value you would really get out of it, but there is value.

Should you buy it?

So it’s really cool, but is it for you? I think we’ve covered that while a multitouch screen on a non-tablet computer has some neat uses, it’s not exactly a practical purchase. The ThinkPad T400s with multitouch display is priced at $1,999, which near as I can tell would compare against the standard “sale” price of the T400s at $1,599. $400 is a lot of coin to swallow for a neat, if not excessively useful feature that adds a bit of heft to a truly thin & light notebook.

If you’re a developer working on multitouch applications, then the T400s MT would make perfect sense. You can do everything you need to, on the go, and test all your apps whenever you want. But how many of those customers are out there today? Not that many.

SimpleTap is a very cool feature that adds leaps and bounds of functionality for a multitouch display, especially one on a tablet. Not only that, but it is very customizable as all Lenovo ThinkVantage utilities generally are. Keep up the good work Lenovo.

In the end, the multitouch display is an excellent piece of technology, but one better suited for the X200 Tablet that also announced today. If I were shopping I couldn’t justify the $400 for the MT display on the T400s, but you bet I would buy it in a heart beat on the X200 Tablet. It adds a ton of usability to a tablet in slate mode, especially with Lenovo’s very cool SimpleTap software. It’s like that old commercial: “Multitouch – don’t leave home without it.”