TouchSmarter: Touch Screen Gadgets

Hewlett-Packard wants to put you in touch with its latest computers. Quite literally.

The company’s handsome new line of all-in-one TouchSmart PCs makes liberal use of a mouse-keyboard alternative you always have with you: your fingers. You can launch applications, play music, crop photos and handle other tasks, just by pressing against the screen.

The machines went on sale in retail stores last week. HP says early sales are trending above forecasts. The $1,499 TouchSmart IQ506 that I’ve been testing - the more expensive of two new models - may already be difficult to come by, says Vickram Bedi, HP’s product management director for worldwide consumer PCs.

As an all-in-one computer, the entire guts of the machine are stuffed underneath the display. TouchSmart belongs in the company of the Dell XPS One, Gateway One and Apple iMac. But none of the others boasts a touch experience.

Touch computing is not a new concept. It just has never really gone mainstream. HP is one of many manufacturers, for example, making tablet PCs that use a pen in lieu of a mouse or keyboard. They aren’t exactly best sellers. Apple is helping boost the visibility of touch through the iPhone.

Indystar E Technology Gear - Personal Tech News, Video Game Reviews, Gadget Reviews and more from Gannett News Service.

We knew Dell was planning on updating its first-ever tablet—the Dell XT—with multi-touch capabilities from N-Trig, and now the wait is over. Though many were under the impression that we would have to wait until Windows 7 for multi-touch on a laptop, N-Trig and Dell today released the multi-touch firmware update for the Vista running XT. Over the last few weeks, I have been trying out the new multi-touch capabilities and can confidently say that it sure beats the multi-touch trackpads of the Eee PCs and the MacBook Air.

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How to do you perceive your home in 2013? Do you want all the devices in your home to run with your voice common and simply want to navigate through using your hands? Then you can surely dream about it because human touch and natural user interface is something that companies are seeing their future in. Some laptops and handheld devices already use biometric finger scans to access stored data and can easily recognize the human touch as input device. Well, these things might come into other device within your home too making your life much easier than ever before.

Microsoft Surface Blog & Discussion Forum (Unofficial). Interacting with MultiTouch Input Devices and More..

Interactive Multimedia Technology: iPhone: Multitouch control of a laptop screen!

The Media Computing Group at RWTH-AACHEN University has developed an application to allow users to control a laptop via a multi-touch iPhone. Although the demo shows how to rotate and resize images, the “multiple views” section is interesting. Like an Etch-a-Sketch, you shake the iPhone to reset the images.

I’ve been toying with ideas about ways to create user-friendly interactions between screens of all sizes. This approach intrigues me.

It’s definitely not a mobile pc, but it is a touch PC, so I hope this forum is okay for this.

I work at an Office Depot and we just put our TouchSmart IQ504 on display (the 2nd generation of the TouchSmart) and I though I’d post up my first impressions.

We currently have it set up next to the first generation of TouchSmart and the size difference is amazing. The entire unit is about the same thickness as just the first generation’s screen. It stands on two small feet, but feels very stable. The setup of it is a snap, literally one plug and then a connect button on the mouse or keyboard to get it set up.

In terms of bloatware, I took a quick look at the taskbar. It was definitely not the most compact. I’m sure a couple of them were for the screen and mouse/keyboard, but it could definitely do with some cleaning up.

As for the new touch experience. The computer initially booted into the normal Vista desktop, and I did see the TIP - something I haven’t noticed on the old Touchsmart. The new TouchSmart interface is a huge improvement over the old Touch home. The sliding interface is pretty smooth as long as you don’t do fast movements with your hand. It will pick up quick movements but is a little delayed on the sliding. It seemed almost as though the graphics card wasn’t quite powerful enough to keep up, just a little delay all around on the interface.

IMO if you’re looking for an all-in-one PC as opposed to a tower + monitor combo, then this is a great model. That being said, if you can get by with the standard combo, you’re going to get more performance for the money. The new TouchSmart would definitely make a nice bedroom or hub computer. The large screen combined with thin wireless keyboard would make it excellent in the bedroom as a TV.

HP Touchsmart 2 - Tablet PC and Mobile PC Forums.

We have been developing a new software for tracking and object handling in vvvv. We started from scratch due to performance issues and now the system is reactive and fast - just the way we always wanted it to be. David Dessens did a great job there! Still, there are a couple of issues to be solved. We’ve tested and prototyped some applications, like a memory, a media browser, a synthesizer, and of course abstract touch-sensitive visuals are always great fun to play with.

This video shows the current Work-In-Progress (next time in HDV again, this is plain DV quality):

Multi-Touch Interface Research » An update of our Work-In-Progress.

Multi-Touch - Work in Progress from Andreas Koller (Strukt) on Vimeo.

A nice overview of the multi touch support on the Dell XT tablet…

Since the unwitting leak that lead to massive speculation regarding the Multitouch Sphere that Microsoft had been working on, the device has actually been demoed. There are many different videos circulating the internet at the moment that discuss the different parts of the demo, but suffice it to say that Microsoft has drummed up more interest in Multitouch and their own company than they have seen in years.

The Sphere did a number of different things, but it is perhaps the omni-directional nature of the sphere that has so many people interested in it. Microsoft employees were able to broadcast omni-directional video onto the sphere, allowing you to take a look at 360 degrees of camera action on the surface of the sphere. In addition to that, you could take a look at a map of the world in globe format, manipulating the map and zooming into and out of specific features with the use of your hands.

There was even a demo of a picture sorting software package that Microsoft has come up with. Using this package, you can have a pile of pictures placed at the top of the sphere and a number of people sorting through those pictures while standing around a sphere. With all of the wow factor that the sphere’s demo brought, there are still some questions as to the practicality of the sphere. After all, why stand around a sphere and sort pictures when you can sit at a table and do the exact same thing?

Microsoft Unveils Multitouch Sphere | SurfaceRama.com.

Dubai: Major mobile phone vendors are set to cash in on the growing demand for multi-touch handset technology in the Middle East and are expected to boost their product line-up catalysed by Apple’s highly successful iPhone.

Research firm iSuppli forecasts global market for touch-screen panels to grow to 341 million units and earn $3.4 billion in value this year.

“In a market dominated by so-called resistive touch technology, Apple’s iPhone uses a different technology called projected capacitance that enabled the multi-touch functionality that had been lacking in resistive-based touch panels,” Jennifer Colegrove, senior analyst for emerging displays at iSuppli, said.

Gulfnews: Mideast to witness big demand for touch-screen mobile phones.