Touchscreen PCs Prompt Interface Innovations
From: Wired.Com
Touchscreen displays are going to get a big boost from Windows 7’s built-in support for multitouch tech — but there’s a hitch: Flicking, scrolling and opening programs can be cumbersome when stubby fingers meet Windows’ tiny icons and menu items.
“PCs with touchscreens look cool, but what do you with them?” says Jennifer Colegrove, a director at Display Search. “When it comes to the iPhone there are 50,000 applications that use touch — but what do you do an PC with touch?”
To help answer that question, some companies are building touchscreen-centric “skins” for Windows aimed at making tactile navigation more pleasant. Two big PC companies, HP and Lenovo, as well as a startup called BumpTop, have built touch-oriented user interfaces that will run on top of Windows.
“The question is, can we re-think the touch interface as a first class citizen and provide a fresh approach to the desktop?” says Anand Agarawala, founder and CEO of Bumptop. “Not only is touch a more natural way to interact with your desktop but it also adds to your productivity.”
Touchscreens are not as popular on PCs as they are on smartphones. Only about 3 percent of the desktop and notebook PCs available today have a touchscreen, says research firm Display Search. But it is a growing market. Driven by their experiences with touchscreen based smartphones such as the iPhone and Palm Pre, consumers are craving to reach out and touch their PCs — or so PC makers think.
On Thursday, Sony announced a new touch-enabled, multimedia PC called the VAIO L Touch HD PC. The device has a 24-inch touchscreen display. Last month, Lenovo introduced the a tablet PC and a ThinkPad laptop with a touchscreen display. HP is expected to offer updated versions of its TouchSmart computers in time for the holiday season. Even Dell now offers a touchscreen option for its all-in-one desktop or nettop.
