Posts Tagged ‘MultiTouch’

MS Touch Pack for Windows 7 Now Available

Thursday, April 22nd, 2010

For a while now we early adopters of multi-touch have been watching as newer Touch Screens were released with this thing call MS Touch Pack containing cool touch applications… And wondering how to get our excited little hands on it. Wonder no more. If you have Win 7 Multi Touch the Touch Pack is now available for download.

Latest Multi-Touch Screens for Windows 7

Tuesday, January 12th, 2010

Well it was only a mater of time. The next wave of Windows 7 compatible touch screens are here. Great to see the larger machines as well as standalone monitors getting multi-touch. Good for developers.

ACER Computers

http://us.acer.com/showrooms/touch/touchscreen.html

Acer Aspire 5738

Acer Aspire 5738

The Aspire 5738 with 15″ screen (1366 x 768), 500GB Drive and Win7 multi-touch.
The 5738DG models is 3D. Put on you polarized glasses and watch movies and games in 3D.

Aspire Z5610

Aspire Z5610

The Aspire Z5610 with All-in-one design, 320GB HD, 23″ HD multi-touch screen, built in speaker system.

Aspire 1820PT

Aspire 1820PT

The Aspire 1820PT. A convertible (Tablet PC), multi-touch, 11.6″ (1366 x 768 or 1024 x 600) display. Hard disks 160/250/320/500 GB.

Acer TouchScreen display - T230H

Acer TouchScreen display - T230H

Acer TouchScreen display T230H. 58cm (23”) Wide, 16:9 Full HD, Touch, 2ms, 80’000:1, DVI + HDMI, Speakers, MPRII, Black, Height Adjustment, EURO/UK cables, EMEA, adaptive contrast management.

Nice looking display. I’ve just ordered a T230 for myself.

SONY VIAO

Sony VAIO L

Sony VAIO L

Yes there is also a the Sony VAIO L all-in-one series as well.

DELL

Dell now have an all-in-one touch screen as well as a standalone touch screen.

DELL Studio One

DELL Studio One

DELL Studio One.

DellTM  SX2210T 21.5W

Dell SX2210T 21.5"W

Dell SX2210T 21.5″W Multi-Touch Monitor with Webcam

See older posts for other models

DELL Release 21″ MultiTouch Monitor

Friday, December 11th, 2009

Is this the first standalone Windows 7 compatible MultiTouch Monitor?
21.5″ Wide Screen, 1920×1080, built-in webcam and dual microphones.

Good to see. Put’s pressure on Samsung. :-)

Multi-Touch PCs for Windows 7

Thursday, June 11th, 2009

Windows 7 release is getting closer: Late July for the RTM (MSDN download; In-store Oct 22nd. If you’re in the market for a new PC you should be considering Windows 7 multi-touch. There are lots of touch screens out there but not all are Windows 7 compatible. Standalone LCD monitors are not available yet.

  • DELL Studio One 19 (All-In-One)
    Released April 2009.  19″ display. All-in-one form factor. Uses the NextWindow multi-touch hardware.
    Should run Win 7 multi-touck OK but haven’t actually heard of anyone doing this yet.

  • DELL Latitude XT / DELL Latitude XT2 (Tablet)
    DELL Latitude XT was release late 2007. It has a 12.1″ multi-touch screen. Very light tablet PC form factor. Powerful enough to run apps such as Outlook and MS Office. I own a DELL XT and the Win 7 touch and tablet features are a delight. The newer DELL Latitude XT2 (released Feb 2009) has better specs. With a slice battery attached these machines will give you 9+ hrs of battery life.  Both use N-Trig multi-touch hardware.

  • HP TouchSmart TX2 (Tablet)
    Released late 2008. A 12″ multi-touch screen. Similar experience to the DELL XT/XT2 but has a beautiful molded finish. My mate has this machine and it is a delight to use. Quite powerful for something  so small and light (< 2KG). And about half the price of the DELL XT/XT2. It uses the N-Trig multi-touch hardware.

  • HP TouchSmart IQ500/IQ800 series (All-In-One)
    The IQ500 (22″ display) and IQ800 (25.5″ display) series all support Win 7 multi-touch.
    See my other post. These use the NextWindow multi-touch hardware.

Last Words

To run Windows 7 RC on these machines you will need to download the latest Win 7 touch drivers from the touch screen manufacturers site.  

Note: Although TouchSmart All-In-One PCs have many model numbers (across countries and feature sets) they all in fact use these same drivers.

Warning: Please read the Readme file carefully. The N-Trig readme warns that the old driver must be uninstalled first. And that the PC cannot do dual boot (XP and Win7) since the old and new drivers  come with firmware updates. If you mix these drivers you can damage your notebook hardware.

N-Trig release new Windows 7 Touch drivers

Monday, May 11th, 2009

N-Trig (who make the touch hardware for DELL Latitude XT/XT2, HP TouchSmart TX2 computer screens) have finally released a new Windows 7  multi-touch driver/firmware update.

Unlike the last drop this is full featured, supporting Windows 64bit/32bit, and both Pen & Multi-Touch.

Combined with the many small improvements to Windows 7 RC, it is exceptionally fast and accurate to use. After installing, my DELL XT machine would not boot until I pressed F12 and told it where my hard drive was. Weird. After awhile this settled down and I no longer see the problem.

Warning: This is a Windows 7 only driver/firmware update. Do not install on Vista or XP system. Do not dual boot into Vista or XP. Do not try and install an older update over this (you must uninstall first) otherwise you can damage your PC hardware. Please read the release notes before installing.

The old N-Trig system (MTG) handled all gestures, and so could provide Multi-Touch support for Vista and XP.  The new MTM driver integrates natively with Windows 7 Multi-Touch system.  As a result we’re seeing huge improvements in responsiveness and speed.

Impressions:

  • A note to everyone on the Touch Team.. Congrats and Well Done! Beyond my expectations!
  • In Paint .. allows up to 4 fingers at a time (was more under MTG but much slower).  It’s perfect. Previously (last beta) there was a lag as you added more fingers.
  • Windows Photo Viewer… seem more responsive.
    - Small initial delay when you start to pan, pinch  or zoom, then it’s very responsive.
    - I’d like to see Two Finger tap to reset zoom.
  • I can now Touch the outer pixel edge of the desktop. So I can now grab windows that are maximized or close to the edge of the desktop. A bit of clever fudging going on.
    - Thanks for listening MS! Perfect.
  • Two finger Tap in IE 8 – Will Expand/Contract  (or restore to 100% zoom). –  Love it!
  • Finger + Tap other Finger = Context menu..  Nice!
  • Multi-Touch on Soft Keyboard has key repeat – Yeah! Almost feels like a real keyboard.
  • Latest FireFox 3 has Pinch zoom (no pan) & has basic gestures supported. Cool.
  • The new Pen Ink is wonderful. It’s really begining to feel like I’m writing with real ink!

Any one else seeing cool new stuff that catches your eye?

WiiMote for Windows 7 Touch?

Wednesday, January 7th, 2009

If you watched the Johnny Lee Wii Remote hack videos (below) you can easily imagine using a Wii Remote to turn any screen into a touch screen for Windows 7.   The question really is now, who will be first to write a Windows 7 driver for the wiimote :-)

All the demos below are available from www.johnnylee.net web site. Johnny Lee you are a star!

Low-Cost Multi-touch Whiteboard using the Wiimote

Head Tracking for Desktop VR Displays using the WiiRemote

Tracking fingers with the Wii Remote

Windows 7 & Touch Screens

Monday, January 5th, 2009

Some more digging into Windows 7 and touch screens.

DEL Latitude XT Convertable

DEL Latitude XT Convertable


HP TouchSmart IQ500/IQ800 series All-In-One

HP TouchSmart IQ500/IQ800 series All-In-One

Which companies make multi-touch screens?

Microsoft say they are working closely with several OEMs including: Elo, N-Trig, NewWindow, Qanta and Wacom.

However there are 2 OEMs that standout, N-Trig and NextWindow.

If you watched any of the PDC 2008 sessions you would have seen Window 7 multi-touch being demoed on a Del Latitude XT notebook (uses N-Trig technology) and a HP TouchSmart All-In-One PC (uses NextWindow technology) . At this early stage that’s all there is available for developers. HP TouchSmart tx2 notebook also uses N-Trig (guess HP are hedging their bets), but there are no Windows 7 drivers available for it yet.

N-Trig are based in Israel with offices in the Taiwan and Austin Texas, USA.
NextWindow is based in Auckland, New Zealand with offices in USA (Pleasanton, California  and Chicago).

(more…)

Windows 7 MultiTouch

Friday, December 5th, 2008

Single touch screen solutions have been around for quite a while. MS Win 7 uses a special MultiTouch screen which recognizes multiple touches at once. Apparently Microsoft develops using the N-Trig’s DuoSense API suite.

There are already several W7 compatible screens out there now. You’ll need to download a W7 compatible beta driver from the screen manufacturer’s website.

As you can imagine most Screen manufactures are promising W7 compatible MultiTouch screens next year.

Cool links and videos

Incredible things in the pipe – Paper Windows & OUI (Organic User Interface)