ELECTRONIC DEVICE AND METHOD

• US 20160179215A1
• Filed: 09/04/2015
• Published: 06/23/2016
• Est. Priority Date: 12/17/2014
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Toshiba Client Solutions CO., Ltd. (Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Ltd.)
• Original Assignee: Kabushiki Kaisha Toshiba (Toshiba Corporation)
• Inventors: Midorikawa, Makoto, Tsuji, Kazuhiko
• Granted Patent: US 9,927,888 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 1/3215 Monitoring of peripheral devices
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 1/3218 of display devices
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 1/3231 Monitoring the presence, absence or movement of users
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 1/3259 Power saving in cursor control device, e.g. mouse, joystick, trackball
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 1/3265 Power saving in display device
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 1/3287 by switching off individual functional units in the computer system
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/03547 Touch pads, in which fingers can move on a surface
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/038 Control and interface arrangements therefor, e.g. drivers or device-embedded control circuitry
• CPC Class Codes: Y02D 10/00 Energy efficient computing, e.g. low power processors, power management or thermal management

Abstract

According to one embodiment, an electronic device provided with a touchpad includes a switching controller, a display processor, a notification processor and a notification controller. The notification controller is configured to control the notification processor to prevent a notification processing from being executed, even if an operation is performed on the touchpad, when the switching controller switches from a state of enabling an operation on the touchpad to a state of disabling an operation on the touchpad.

Claims

1. An electronic device provided with a touchpad comprising:

a switching controller configured to switch between a state of enabling a user'"'"'s operation on the touchpad and a state of disabling the user'"'"'s operation on the touchpad;

a display processor configured to execute display processing to display a mouse pointer on a screen;

a notification processor configured to execute notification processing when a user'"'"'s operation is performed on the touchpad, the notification processing comprising notifying the display processor of the operation performed on the touchpad so as to execute the display processing; and

a notification controller configured to control the notification processor to prevent the notification processing from being executed, even if an operation is performed on the touchpad, when the switching controller switches from the state of enabling an operation on the touchpad to the state of disabling an operation on the touchpad.

2. The electronic device of claim 1, wherein the notification controller is configured to monitor a state of the electronic device and to control the notification processor to resume the execution of the notification processing at a predetermined time.

3. The electronic device of claim 2, wherein the notification controller is configured to monitor a state of a backlight configured to light the screen of the electronic device, and to control the notification processor to resume the execution of the notification processing when the backlight is off.

4. The electronic device of claim 2, wherein the notification controller is configured to monitor a state of a backlight configured to light the screen of the electronic device, to monitor whether or not a key input operation is performed, and to control the notification processor to resume the execution of the notification processing if no key input operation is performed even though the backlight is on.

5. The electronic device of claim 4, wherein the notification controller is configured to continuously control the notification processer to prevent the notification processing from being executed when the backlight is on and the key input operation is performed.

6. The electronic device of claim 4, wherein the notification controller is configured to monitor whether or not the key input operation is performed based on whether a preset time is elapsed from a user'"'"'s preceding key input operation.

7. A method applied to an electronic device provided with a touchpad, the method comprising:

switching between a state of enabling a user'"'"'s operation on the touchpad and a state of disabling the user'"'"'s operation on the touchpad;

executing display processing to display a mouse pointer on a screen;

executing notification processing when an operation is performed by the user on the touchpad, the notification processing comprising notifying the electronic device of the operation performed on the touchpad so as to execute the display processing; and

controlling the electronic device to prevent the notification processing from being executed, even if an operation is performed on the touchpad, when the state of enabling an operation on the touchpad is switched to the state of disabling an operation on the touchpad.