Alps Electric's Capacitive Input Devices Suit Today's Digital Sets

摘要

Since the introduction of Win-dows3.1 for personal computers in 1992, the graphical user interface (GUI) became an indispensable function along with the widespread use of the external mouse as a pointing device. Meanwhile, a built-in pointing device adopted in notebook computers eliminates the need for an external mouse, thus achieving high portability. Initially, notebook computers were equipped with a trackball, which carries an inverted structure as that of a mouse. Because of the principle involved, a trackball requires a ball-shaped component and it tends to have a thicker structure. Therefore, a low profile and user-friendly pointing device has been highly called for. To meet this demand, the capacitive touchpad was introduced. Along this line, Alps Electric Co., Ltd. has released its GlidePoint capacitive touchpad.