Lastly, there's a capacitive sensor underneath the keyboard, allowing the laptop's touchpad to be disabled automatically while you're typing. (Naturally, this works best if the trackpad is also made by Synaptics.) The company is also developing a feature in which the space bar could be a touch sensor in and of itself, with support for functions like autocomplete.

ENGADGET: Synaptics enters the keyboard market, announces the ThinTouch keyboard aimed at Ultrabooks

It features a 2.8-inch capacitive touchscreen display, the widest QWERTY keyboard available on a BlackBerry smartphone and a trackpad for easy navigation.

ENGADGET: Sprint's BlackBerry Bold 9930 and Torch 9850 land on August 21st for $250 and $150

On the iMac's first boot it was able to pick up the mouse and keyboard without a problem, even letting us use the capacitive scrolling to work through the setup wizard.

ENGADGET: New iMac and Magic Mouse unboxing and quick hands-on

Users can quickly type using the on-screen keyboard and navigate through the slate's features with the highly responsive capacitive multi-touch screen, or write naturally on the screen using an electromagnetic pen, making it easy to take meeting notes, create documents and reports in Microsoft Office 2010, or browse online.

ENGADGET: Samsung's Series 7 Slate PC hands-on Hands-on

In an effort to square those two different use cases, Intel designed North Cape so that when it's undocked from the keyboard, the screen shrinks to a more hand-friendly 11.6-inch capacitive display that will ignore your grip along the sides of the screen.

ENGADGET: Intel's Haswell-powered 'North Cape' reappears, promises 10 hours of battery life in tablet-mode (hands-on)