TouchSmarter: Touch Screen Gadgets

ASUS has touted the multi-touch trackpads of its Eee PCs, but every time I have gone to test the multi-touch controls on the pad I can’t do much more than zoom in on a picture by pinching the pad. I are happy to report that finally Eee PC users are able to do more with their fingers.

Its nothing like the N-Trig multi-touch drivers for the Dell XT, but ElanTech, the company responsible for the smartpad on the Eee PCs, has updated the drivers for the touchpad to enable more multi-touch gestures (you can find the drivers here). Thanks to JKKMobile for tipping us off on the new drivers.

I downloaded the drivers to the Eee PC 1000H running Windows Vista and they worked right away (they should work for XP as well; there is no Linux driver version). In the mouse properties window, an extra ElanTech tab allows for tweaking the different multi-touch gestures.

I was then able to create commands that go along with different gestures. For instance, I configured a two finger tap on the trackpad to launch Firefox. Swiping three fingers down will bring up an ALT+Tab command that allows for moving through windows. Swiping three fingers up will launch My Computer.

You can also do more in a photo gallery program. In Windows Photo Gallery, I was able to pinch to zoom, but also able to rotate the picture with a swipe. It is all very MacBook Air like.

I like the gestures the best in the browser. A three finger swipe will move forward or backward between Web pages and two fingers up and down will scroll through the page.

Eee PC 1000H Updated with New Multi-Touch.