Touch point: An early look at the next Windows

Touchy subject
At the “D: All Things Digital” conference, Microsoft demonstrated aspects of multi-touch computing in Windows 7, including finger touch being used for drawing on the screen, manipulating photos and finding locations on a map.

“What’s going to get demo-ed, of course are the flashiest and coolest things” of a new operating system, said Helm. “But I think a lot of work is going on behind the scenes just to deal with boring, but really important things, like performance problems and making the security mechanisms – like user account control – work better.”

Multi-touch computing in Windows 7 is a feature that’s “unlikely to make the operating system lighter, and probably going to make it heavier,” said Gillen.

Currently, touchscreen computing is being used more commonly in smaller consumer devices, such as the iPhone and some other cell phones, GPS units and some digital photo frames.

And while touch computing may have its uses in mobile or specialized devices, there doesn’t seem to be any compelling uses for it in terms of routine computer programs such as word processing or spreadsheets.

It’s something that “may be more interesting for some of these mini-laptops” that have small screens and keyboards, said Helm, but “on a PC, it’s not obvious to me what the benefit is.”

No matter how it’s used, there’s a universal problem in going the touch route: oily fingerprints on displays, which are nearly impossible to avoid.

Pandigital recently released its PanTouch digital photo frames, but the frames have a touch sensor on the edge of the viewing area so that the screen itself is not touched.

“You’re just literally touching the edge, so that fingerprints don’t show up in the viewing area at all,” said Dean Finnegan, president of Pandigital.

Finnegan said he is a fan of touchscreens, but says fingerprints are hard to avoid on the screens themselves.

“It’s really the big problem with touch,” he said. “When you have a backlit LCD, and this very bright light shining from behind the LCD display, and when you touch the actual icon, or are in that viewing area, the fingerprint shows up. It’s very obvious, and no one’s been able to effectively solve that problem.”

'Save XP' effort
In the meantime, Microsoft has some other problems, including the ongoing effort to “Save Windows XP,” an online petition drive launched by InfoWorld, which covers the information technology industry.

Galen Gruman, the publication’s executive editor, says it has received more than 200,000 signatures in support of extending the retail availability of Windows XP.

Microsoft plans to stop selling XP to retailers and computer manufacturers June 30. The company will continue to provide mainstream tech support for XP users until April 2009, and will provide “extended” tech support for patches and security updates through April 2014.

XP also will be available for sale until Jan. 31, 2009, by “system builders,” small businesses that custom-build “white box,” or generic, PCs.

So far, Gruman said, Microsoft has declined to discuss the petition or meet with representatives from InfoWorld.

“We haven’t given up on getting such a meeting,” he said.

MORE FROM DIGITAL HOME

Digital Home Section Front

Kindle DX: A little ungainly Digital TV questions and answers Lines between netbooks, laptops keep blurring Dell launches 'Della,' a women's PC site IT survey: Not quite ready for Windows 7 AOL: You've got irrelevancy? Not your mother's Garmin or Nokia Can other 'app' stores work for mobile users? Non-removable batteries aren't a charge for all Kindle for iPhone not the only e-book reader Digital Home Section Front   Add Digital Home headlines to your news reader: