Product Name: OpticalBar USB
Provided By: www.Simply-Touch.com
Retail Price: $30.00 - $60.00
Review Date: 10/26/04
Written By: Rusty Newton

This is a recent product of SimplyTouch. It is a
interaction device meant to enable you to use part of
a monitor screen as a touch screen. Its quite ingenious
and works well. Take a look!

In The Box:

The OpticalBar USB comes in a nice orange cardboard box. Very well packaged.

As you follow this review, notice the simplicity of this device. Quality gadgets usually end up simple yet performing well.

Included in the box contents are the following:

1 x OpticalBar USB unit with attached 7-8 ft USB cable.

1 x Installation CD for Software and Drivers

1 x Instruction Manual in Three Languages

1 x Set of Sticky Adhesive Pads

Design & Features:

Now the OpticalBar USB is not the coolest looking gadget on the block.
We tend sometimes to judge gadgets too much on their looks. Especially lately with all the glowing, flashing fancy things. The design of this item is exactly what I would like to see more of in gadgets, simple design, the style goes with anything, versatile, configurable, performs exactly as it is supposed to and the best part AFFORDABLE.

Looks like one of those handheld scanners.

For mounting the device the manufacturer includes those little adhesive sticky dots. Personally I hate the adhesive dots, once you put them on something you can never ever eeveerr get them off, but I found a solution to that.

I found that a better way is to use "Handi-Tak", the yellow sticky reusable adhesive stuff. You can use it to stick the OpticalBar on your monitor and pop it right off, no residue will be left and you wont have to scrape anything. Just try to get the OpticalBar as level as you can with your screen for the optical sensors to work properly.

Heres how it looks on your monitor.

Its like a small blue version of HAL. Except for the talking
part and killing the crew of a space ship.

Im glad its a blue LED and not a red or green one.
Blue is nice and neutral.

For what this thing does the configuration options are excellent. They went above and beyond what most companies would have done.
Even the blue LED is configurable, you can set it to stay on all the time and blink off when there is activity, or vice versa. You can set it off, on etc.

On the next page we will look at the software, what it does, how well it works and the cool features.