Potential touch screen without soldering to the mobo?

Hi everyone, I tried to make the title sound as much of a question as not to get people's hopes up.

Anyways I was thinking of buying the touchscreen panel from DealExtreme. The cable has a USB "plug" that you can plug into your USB port, and I was thinking of cutting down the size of the usb plug and soldering the 4 cables onto the 4 metal connectors found on the plug, so as to have the TS working off a usb port, which I can remove at any time if necessary.

Also the DealExtreme photo of the usb cable has a large, white cylindrical "brick" attached to the cord:



Is this some sort of power converter? Do I need to have this attached to the cord in order for the cable to work off a usb port or can I cut it off?

Thanks.

 

This cylindrical brick is a filter. It reduces any interferences in USB link... TS controler can operate w/o this unit but it is always recommended...

 

There is a post here regarding about cracked screens (damage during shipping) dealextreme is providing.

 

Just more info on the "brick"
It's called a ferrite bead, and as melhiore pointed out, it's for reducing high-frequency EM interference. Simplest example of the problem they address would be cell phones and cheap speaker wires. Cell phone frequencies (and other high power radio devices) can introduce clicking into poorly shielded cable. Minor irritation in an audio signal, but now think of that phenomena applied to a high speed data transfer - essentially you get file corruption hell.

 

If you're gonna spend the time and effort to install the touch screen overlay on the computer, might as well just solder it directly to the mobo. With that USB header on the bottom of the mobo, it's just really easy to do it.