Need a question answered

[Desdemona]

Hey all
So am almost on the verge of pre ordering a Surface RT. I was going through all the feature list and was wondering about pen input. Now I know the RT doesn't have an active digitizer, but it seems like it would support capacitive pens?
Can someone care to explain what that means? Are these pens effective enough? I would like to use it for one note and stuff, and so I am sort of intrigued by the idea.
Cheers!

 

[ljkelley]

The way a capacitive touch screen like the one on the Surface works is by detecting electric properties of your fingers. That's why you can use any object that has an electric charge including for example hot dogs. It is also why capacitive touch screens don't work when you are wearing gloves or anything that will block the electric properties of your fingers.

An active digitizer is more accurate, but a capacitive pen is gonna be more accurate than your fingers do to its finer point.

 

[jdevenberg]

Active digitizes allow for greater accuracy as well as, and this is the killer feature, palm rejection. What this does is enable the tablet to turn off its capacitive touch sensor when a pen is near the screen so that you can rest your palm on the tablet's screen without it recognizing it as a touch, so that you can write in a more natural, paper like position. With a capacitive stylus, the screen will still recognize touches from your palm/arm/finger, so if you accidently touch the screen, it can negatively impact your writing.