Touch screen technology

Hi there
Hopefully not

I HATE TOUCH SCREENS. Also with Swine Flu rearing its ugly head again public touch screens are one of the best (??) ways of transmitting the disease.
Keyboards / buttons of ATM's etc are regularly cleaned but cleaning the screens properly is a much more difficult task.

Cheers
jimbo

WYSIWYG, the touch screen capability is built into Windows 7. If you have a touchscreen monitor (also I believe USB tablets work as well), Windows will install it and adapt the operating system to suit. For example, the Show Desktop button will be twice as wide so that you can use you fingers, and dragging up on an icon on the taskbar will bring up a jumplist that has a bigger space between items (so that you don't accidentally hit another one. This has been temperamental in my experience, but may have been fixed in the RTM build.)
If you go to system properties (Start Menu > Right Click computer > Properties), under 'Pen and Touch' it will say whether a touch device is installed. To adjust the calibration, press start and type 'calibrate'. This will bring up a window with calibration options for your touchscreen. And if you have a multitouch screen, there are certain gestures available, such as pinching on pictures to zoom them in and out.
Hope that helps, a lot of the touch capabilities of Windows 7 are about making it easier to use, not about fanciness.

and jimbo45, what is easier to clean - a keyboard with hidden nooks and crannys where it is not possible to clean everything; or a touchscreen, where the surface is completely flat with no area for germs to hide. One or two swipes disinfects the whole screen.

My Toughbook is Touch and Pen. When I recieved it, it was installed with Vista Pro or Xp Pro, my choice of which to run. They both had Touch hardware of course loaded onto them, not from Windows but from Fujistu. It had all the calibration stuff, settings, etc to personalize it. In the control panel there was a section that stated "Additional Hardware" In there were the touch options and some other stuff.

When I loaded W7 it comes with Touch Calibration, Pen & Touch, Tablet PC Settings as standard. If your system does not have Touch it simply tells you your system is not compatible. There are some items that MS still has to get corrected that do not work yet. Either that or I hope Panasonic puts out some 7 drivers.

MS is also really pushing the envelope with the manufactures to develop Touch Technology for W7. From what I have read MS put alot of work into 7 with the Touch technology for future use. Touch technology is going to come on strong in my opinion. The possibilities are endless.

In regards to keeping it clean, it's actually easier to clean than my non Touch Toughbook since they have a better screen protector on it. I use a 100% dry soft towel and wipe, then buff lightly. No streaking, blurs at all.

Now what's really cool is our HP Touchsmart that we use for the family computer. You can hold your finger about an 1/8" from the screen and picks it up. Pretty wild.

When I was a kid, my parents would get after me for getting fingerprints all over the TV screen. Now that touch screen is here, I understand my parent's peeve.

Lordbob75 said:

antt, thanks for the info.
I could not find the Pen and Touch on my PC, but it may only be enabled with a touch screen installed.

Now, if only I had a multi-touch monitor.....

~Lordbob

oh yeah i forgot to add that the calibration utilities are only available if you have a touch enabled PC. Though if you went digging in the system folder, you could prob find the exe for it.

I liked my touchscreen, the only thing with it is that the screen was sooo bad to look at. It was resistive (not sure if capacitive does it) and the screen was so grainy it wasn't funny.
The HP touchsmart desktops use cameras or something for their screens I think, which is why they pick up your finger off of the screen.