why does it hurt?!

dos this mean all new monitors will need to have touch, ouch...

will touch interfere with the screen image, the battery life of my windows 7 notebook, ect...

I tried using touch screen with an HP screen and I just couldn't get used to it. just use a mouse.

Yes touch will increase power needed. Any electrical device added like a touch recognition board requires power. Its touch support so a touchscreen isn't necessary. There will probably be an increase in touch screen support, but I doubt it would widely be used because of cost.

The logo should be a fingerprint as it's what you'll end up with all over the screen.

Gates has long believed that 'touch' is the future.

I have to agree with him on this one.

they imitate the Same thing Linux Do
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQk [...] annel_page

I go ape-shit on anybody that touches one of my displays.

Kitchen PC + LCD Screen + touch = bad idea

lol bill gates just enjoys being touched *wink wink*

does that mean my normal lcd monitor becomes a touchscreen monitor? i dont get this at all. Do u require an touchscreen monitor, or just a normal one would do.

I've no interest in touch screen technology for pc's.

touchscreen is wack...all you get are fingerprints on the screen

tablet with a stylus seems to be more useful since you can 'write' with it easily

I do! I've got a lot of interest in it in fact. I've got one pc at home for playing games, which is never going to benefit from touch. But I can't imagine any feature missing from my media center that'd I'd rather want than touch.

TouchScreen would have some application, but really it has some serious issues:

# Limits the size of your display, the screen can't be too large if you need to sit an arm's length away.

# Fingers offer pretty poor precision.

The future is not friendly for folks with clammy hands... like me. It's not like I don't like touch screens, I just can't use them! They're unreadable and slimy in like 10 minutes!

I doubt that touchscreens will become primary way of interaction fr a long long time.. But I do see imporance of having support.

Also, touch screen is great when more than one person works on a same screen at the same time. Imagine scenarios that I encounter all the time in my company:
a) computer guy is working on some presentation/website and CEO is standing behind his backs and telling him "move this here, this should be a bit here" and so on; main problem is if you have doezens of elements is - WHICH piece do you want to move? He can point to you, but your perspective (sitting, closer to screen) and CEOs (standing, farther out) is different, and you have to keep guessing. Now, with Touch, just let him select the object, and operator can do everything else he desires

b) user is doing something and calling for help, guy that comes to help sees what the user is doing and is telling him to click THAT icon. Which? THAT! OK, let me show you .. Takes a mouse from users hand, and clicks for him. Wouldn't it be easier that he just approaches the screen and "clicks" it by finger?

There are many more scenarios in other areas, as public computers and so on.

One thing I agree is - "kitchen PC" + touch screen = messy no-no

Anyway... I'm all for this. If you want it you have an option. If you don't just keep using your ordinary display and mouse/kbd. Nothing wrong with HAVING OPTIONS

Good points, LuxZg. I don't plan to use touch technology anytime soon, but as long as they don't remove support for mice and keyboards, why should anyone be upset about it?

I think if they are really serious about touch, they need to work on developing some type of stylus that can be attached to your finger and still feel natural when you use it. This would give the user much more precision and eliminate the fingerprint issue.

I have no problems with touch exclusively on small devices like cell phones (although I wish there was an emergency keypad underneath the back cover for such devices in case the screen goes bad) - but I prefer to have the keyboard/mouse option available on larger devices. (Especially since my main computer at home is hooked up to my LCD TV and well outside of arms reach.)

However, LuxZg's first example got me to thinking of one drawback that needs to be overcome before touch really becomes useful: single user input.

Currently most OSes account for only one mouse/touch/stylus and one keyboard for input. However, what if you have a 50" high resolution display where two or three people are working on something, wouldn't it be useful if they could be doing work at the same time within the same program? How about on the same file?

For that matter, skip touch and allow additional USB mice and keyboards to create a new set of cursors and a new input focus. Now the techie comes in, plugs his wireless mouse transmitter in, and can use his cursor to click the icon instead of waiting for the user to let him at the mouse.

lol i have to stop kids from touching the lcd's at school, stupid reading program they use tells them to follow the words with their fingers, ofcourse the program was written when everyone had a crt. Wouldn't be such a big deal but kids have horrible motor skills and pushing hard is the same and folowwing it from a distance.

Yeah I hate it when idiots touch my LCD screens - pisses me off to no end. Also if you want to munch and crunch on the PC your icky fingers will get cheeto sauce all over the screen - I mean what about those of us that eat at the computer and use it too? Touchscreens aren't good for that. I want to gain weight AND computer...With a touchscreen that isn't possible. Also just the thought of poking a screen just seems wrong.

You can mark my words - Touch will be a part of mainstream computing before 2015.

And for those of you who are worried, mouse and keyboard support won't be going anywhere for a while. Think about it - do you really think the computing industry is going to drop something that's been such an integral part of computers since the beginning?

No touch for me thank you. I'm sure it will have its uses, but for any kind of real computing work touch will be slow. Imagine throwing your arm around for a few hours (tiring to no end)...not going to happen until they invent super arms we can attach to our bodies, like Short Circuit.

touching for fps games won't work

^^

well, for FPS games, you'll probably have an advanced version of Neural Impulse Actuator (NIA) in a few years..

Like I've said, kbd and mouse won't be going anywhere, this is just another CHOICE you get.

@MDillenbeck - multitouch? As much as I know Win7 should support it, it will just require appropriate hardware as well.
But I agree, there should be support for multiple cursors, for example two people writing at the same time, on the same computer. OK, if those aren't same files you probably can do that already through virtualization, but that's not SAME file and SAME OS.. It would probably complicate lives of Microsoft developers more than they can allow it at this moment

touch is always slower. Mouse movement amplifies your smaller wrist movements. can't see why I need touch at home.

Exactly how I feel. Dragging your finger across a screen requires more effort and takes longer than moving your mouse a fraction of an inch. The only applications that I know of which would benefit would be those that need to allow the computer illiterate to operate software.

Haha.. I can see it now. Someone comes over your shoulder and rubs their greasy fingers all over your screen, "what? your screen doesn't have touch?".

my friends actually broke my LCD screen from touching it. I had to get it replaced for $140 CAD and I'd tell you, it ain't cheap. It's an aspire one btw.