I've skimmed the topic to the limit of my patience (I have warm food waiting), but I use my stylus a lot when surfing.

You can make an app finger-friendly, but designed-for-huge-screens-and-mice websites will not work. In addition to drawing, writing, ported apps, apps where multiple touch points are needed (like CAD, Untangle), office apps (move cursor between letters, choose a cell in a spreadsheet), as well as any app ever to actually need the screen space.

E.g., a spreadsheet app is dead if it can only display 12 cells, and then make room for menu, changing sheets, scrollbars, function editing window, etc. Graphs. Wizards.

Basically anything that's complex in UI needs small controls. And precision. And the ability to see what you click, not everything has a "You sure you want to click button 32? Not 31? Not 33?".

Get a mouse cursor that's 1/8 the size of your screen and where the actual touch point randomly jumps about half that, add some screen calibration errors and see how that works for your productivity.

My finger fits without touching about 5 times wide and 3+ times narrow side. This translates on my actual PC screen to 1920/5 (~400 px) and 1200/3.5 (~350 px).

This roughly the size of Maemo Org's quick reply box, arrowed down once.

I don't want that as my pointer, no matter what optimizations OS or apps have.

Already Maemo has widgets smaller than their close button. Already I close instead of drag.

And then there's the little issue of the finger never having a constant pressure point. It's easy to stay withing a 5 pixel long-press. With a finger, you drag. So you have a 30 pixel drag limit so now you can't drag a little.

I had a touch screen on my PC. Threw it away, now it's gathering dust in a corner. All of a sudden, my PC felt like it was 320x240 again.

I think there are a few jumbled up 'sides' in this debate... mostly because of the current technology limitation and current product associations in the market, for better or worse.

IMHO, the main opposing camps are:

Finger friendly vs Stylus-centric

- Capacitive screens can only cater to finger-friendly UI implementations.
- (Recent?) Resistive screens can cater to both, as can be seen on the N900.
- Finger UI usually accompanied with multi-touch gestures, which resistive screens can't provide.

From all those variables above, the main players have made their own (still evolving) implementations.

But the n900 touchscreen is not as responsive. Doing any serious typing with the VKB is a waste

@nosa101: yes, i forgot to write that down... this whole subject is a jumble of juxtaposed elements which isn't that fun to separate -.-

resistive screens aren't as sensitive as capacitive ones and they don't support multi-touch, both of which are necessary for a good on-screen touchtyping operation...

I use stylus for dragging mostly.
I haven't found touch screen (resistive nor capacitive) slippery enough not to rip skin of my index finger while dragging items...

You're just spreading a (common) myth...

http://www.engadget.com/2009/11/27/s...ere-awed-agai/

By the way (hope is good subject to ask about this, I don't want to create separate for this question) regarding to this debate finger/stylus , resistive/capacitive how useful for you guys is screen protector in each case?

For me completely destroyed enjoyment of interaction with device.
(I'm using invisibleShield) I bet will remove it soon. Fingers/stylus is to much sticky. Original N900 surface is just ideal for this type of screen IMHO.

Don't you think this kind of protection should be factory standard?

@smoku: yea, i've heard of stantum for a few months already. Unfortunately I haven't heard of any real products with stantum screens. So I've no idea what their real performance is like. For the time being, I haven't found any resistive screens that provide good performance for onscreen-keyboard touch typing..

@devu: i hate invisible shield type protector too... though they're tough like ******. they're especially nasty if you use them with a sharp-ish stylus. they stick and fold around the tip of the stylus...
I use matte-protectors on my devices (iphone, ipad... i don't use the n900 much, so it's nude).

You just answered your own question. If the protector would make the screen better, it would be added by manufacturer.

I've never used one.