Acer Iconia 6120 Virtual Keyboard Software 11
Latrina Cobbett
As you can see from the image above, the virtual keyboard and track pad occupy the entire lower screen. This means the key size and key spacing are the same as a "real" keyboard, which makes it easier to type on. Only the function keys are shrunk to make room for some extra controls at the top of the keyboard. At the upper left are controls for switching between the virtual keyboard and the handwriting input panel, enabling and disabling the track pad and the T9 predictive text feature, and opening the keyboard control panel. At the upper right are media playback controls and the keyboard close button (a large "X").
With a touch-sensitive keyboard, Acer had to deal with the problem of parts of your hand resting on the glass. You don't want this to enter characters you didn't type! Their solution is to only register a keystroke when you stop touching a key, and only if less than a certain amount of time has elapsed. If you touch a key too long, removing your finger doesn't cause a character to be typed. This works well but lends a certain, subtle cognitive dissonance to using the keyboard: the key click sound is played when you touch a key, but the character isn't entered until you stop touching a key. I found the disconnect between the time of the sound and the time when the character appeared to be slightly unnerving, but it's something you can get used to. After a few days' experience, I can type on the Iconia's virtual keyboard about 70 percent as fast, overall, as I can on a physical keyboard. In fact, much of this review was typed directly on the Iconia.
But the handwriting panel isn't really very useful. In my opinion, handwriting input only really makes sense when you can write anywhere on the screen. Since the handwriting input panel occupies the entire lower screen, there's no space advantage over using the virtual keyboard, which will provide much faster text entry for most applications.
The text input methods described in the previous section aren't advantages of the Iconia 6120's dual screen configuration, but rather attempts to work around the disadvantage of having no physical keyboard. But Acer does provide a lot of software designed to exploit the extra display area the Iconia provides.
Acer provides their "Acer Ring" utility, which you invoke by placing five fingers on the screen in a grab gesture (look at the illustration on the front of the box for an example). One limitation is that this grab gesture cannot be made on top of the virtual keyboard.
Good day, I lost my hard drive, so I had to reinstall the operating system. The problem is that now I can not find the software on the virtual keyboard, acer ring, newspaper ... On page to download the drivers and applications Iconia also not found.
The Acer Iconia 6120 has a fairly sophisticated look. The lid and bottom are both a champagne-colored metal. The bottom, one solid panel, has two rows of small square cutouts for ventilation and speakers, and can be removed easily with two sliding latches. There are only two physical buttons on the Iconia: The right hinge has a power button, and the left hinge activates the virtual keyboard. The Iconia's two touchscreens are each 14 inches, surrounded by a glossy black bezel.
For a virtual keyboard, the Acer Iconia's was fairly easy to type on, though not perfect. Aside from using the physical button on the left hinge to turn on the keyboard, we could also activate it by pressing our palms down simultaneously on the lower display; a neat shortcut.
The keyboard extends almost the entire width of the screen, and the Iconia 6120 presents the keys in a chiclet-style layout. On the upper right is a set of shortcuts that can be switched between media controls and editing tools (i.e., save, cut, paste, and print). When you press a key, the Iconia 6120 makes a click, not unlike a typewriter. You can adjust the volume or turn off the sound completely in the settings, as well as set skins and even calibrate the key pitch to best suit your typing. The keyboard also comes with a predictive text option (XT9), but we found that it was easier to type without this feature activated.
While we weren't able to type as fast on the Iconia 6120 as with a real keyboard, we did manage a fairly quick rate after about half an hour of practice, so much so that a fair amount of this review was written using the virtual keyboard. We had to be much more careful with what we did with our non-typing fingers, though. Any errant grazing of the screen, and we'd end up with a wrong letter. Overall, we made many more mistakes compared to a traditional keyboard, but it worked.
After playing a Hulu video for 15 minutes at full screen on the Iconia 6120, the area around the virtual touchpad measured 87 degrees Fahrenheit, the space between the G and H keys was 90 degrees, and the middle of the underside was 95 degrees. That last measurement is on the border of what we consider uncomfortable.
We've slammed a lot of Windows-based consumer tablets for not taking the touch experience seriously, so Acer deserves some credit for innovating here. The Acer Ring interface on the Iconia 6120 is a cool way to interact with the notebook; the touch keyboard is workable; and SocialJogger represents a fresh way to access social network information in a single place. Still, this notebook is heavy and its battery life is short. And while the apps are interesting, they take a while to load and don't truly take advantage of the unique design. What this notebook is crying out for is software that can better take advantage of the two displays when laid flat, especially games. Overall, the Iconia 6120 is a fresh take on the Windows tablet, but we'd like to see a slimmer design and a wider selection of touch apps.
The virtual touch pad that sits underneath the virtual keyboard also could have been better. It functions well for controlling the cursor on the top screen, but lacks multitouch gestures, and is surprisingly small. You'd think with a software-driven virtual touch pad, it could be as big as you wanted. The top screen allows for Windows tablet gestures, such as swiping down as a page-down command, but it's not as smooth as the tap-and-drag controls on an iPad (which is the large touch surface the Iconia is most likely to be compared to).
The hinge has a button on either side. On the right side is the power button, which requires you to hold it for a half a second before it will turn on, likely to prevent accidental presses in a backpack or similar. On the left side is the keyboard button, which will bring up a virtual keyboard on Windows 7. For driver fun, the keyboard button is the power button on Linux at a software level.
Depending on your taste for the unusual, the Acer Iconia 6120 ($1,199.99 street, 3 stars) is either teetering on the edge of madness or pushing the boundaries of innovation. It boasts two 14-inch widescreens that are hinged together like a traditional clamshell laptop, where the bottom screen replaces all the physical keys with virtual ones. Both screens are touch-enabled and are complemented by a hodgepodge of custom software from Acer, ranging from a full virtual keyboard experience to its own Web browser that utilizes both screens. Now we've seen dual screens like this in handhelds like the Nintendo 3DS and Toshiba Libretto W105 ($1,099 direct, 1.5 stars), but never one quite this big. If you do a lot of typing, the virtual keyboard will drive you absolutely mad. But if you consume tons of media and fancy a second display, the Iconia is a unique and innovative take on multitasking.
Touch Software
The Iconia is also a tablet because both screens are touch-enabled, though they aren't meant to be used with a stylus (since one is not included It behaves like a laptop, but you can't really use it without first understanding how to use the touch-enabled software first. That's mainly because of the virtual keyboard, a critical feature that makes or breaks this laptop. For most users, unfortunately, it's the latter. To bring up the keyboard, you put both palms on the bottom screen (tap the corner "X" to get rid of it). The concept is super neat. But then you start typing on it, and that's where the trouble starts. It's not a haptic keyboard, so there's no force feedback or buzzing noises coming from the keys. It's very similar to typing on an iPad 2: The keys make clicking sounds, but aren't enough to give you the resistance physical keys give you.
After having 10 of my colleagues try out the virtual keyboard, I found that the touch typists had the toughest time with it because the "feel" of the keys wasn't there. Those who hunt and peck, on the other hand, did better because they tend to look at the keyboard while they typed. And by "better," I mean that they were able to compose a paragraph without walking away in frustration. Since you're typing on a glass screen, any light above it will result in glare that will obliterate the view of the keyboard. Because it comes with Windows 7, you can also use its Touch Input Panel (TIP) for handwriting recognition, but doing so with your fingers (since it's touch only, not digitized) is almost laughable . The virtual touchpad and mouse buttons responded better than I expected: It felt relatively natural surfing the Web and navigating through a 30-page PDF file. At any point in time, of course, you can plug in an external keyboard and mouse and use it the old fashioned way.
Final Word
The Acer Iconia 6120 is a laptop experience like no other and aimed at tolerant, forward-thinking users. Its dual 14-inch widescreens are more for media consumption than office productivity, as the weakness of its keyboard and touch functionality are the result of early Acer software and Windows 7. It's not meant to be an iPad 2 or convertible tablet alternative. Rather, it's a laptop that utilizes a second screen instead of physical keys, which is not to say you can't plug in an external keyboard and mouse into its USB ports. A small battery and paltry battery life further limits its worth on the road. It's the kind of laptop that should find a fan base. All other users should go with a traditional laptop like the Asus U41JF-A1 or Dell XPS 15.