Windows 7 multi-touch video demo

Doesn't seem very practical as a desktop monitor. Maybe if I was walking down the corridors of the Enterprise and needed to find the bathroom... but that's about it.

I was really excited about this tech when they were introducing the lounge/bar tables... what happened to them?

Huh what? Sorry I was sleeping. Nothing new or interesting I want here. Honestly the onscreen finger movement to right click just as you would with a mouse, how innovative is that? Wow more globe spinning, look how productive I am playing with maps! OMG more flipping thru photos, that's so new, fresh, innovative and productive! If you have seen one touch demo you have seen them all. Screens with fingerprints, getting your hands in the way of the display, massive input lag, what a great technology! Let's do this correctly with a large touchpad that slides out from under the keyboard and has variable pressure sensitivity. I can't wait for some 4 year old kid to punch the monitor and get injured.

glare much?

I wouldn't want to do this on a plastic LCD screen. It would need glass.

Maybe an iMac would work.

It looks more and more like a mac book windows does...

wouldn't it be easier to use a mouse. is minimal movement compared to this multi touch nonsense on a desktop.i would imagine the poor guy doing the demo must have a stiff hand at the end of the day!

I can see uses for this. But the monitor would have to be low, and at an angle. Use it as a graphics tablet like an Cintiq when using Photoshop or Painter. Even for film editing I could find a use. Moving through frames would be nice this way.

Not as useful for Excel or word processing.

So it's just like an iPod. very innovative Microsoft.

Microsoft has stopped learning from its mistakes. Tablet PCs failed because the Tablet PC interface was being used on a mouse and keyboard OS. This "touch" interface will fail because it's being used on a mouse and keyboard OS.

How many times will these idiots have to piss away millions just to find out consumers can see through cheap gimmicks within 5 second of using a device?

The most positive thing about having a quickly animated globe was that the demo showed that you select a small part of a large database of information very quickly. I'm not sure what the value of rotating that view was.

Corel added some large icons and a single twist feature in a photo album. The software didn't seem to respond to any kind of gestures - the touch was simulating a mouse only. The page turn looked unnatural and inhuman. The photo twist could have been achieved using a mouse in conjunction with a modifier key.

There were no cues to show what features responded to multi-touch, and the content didn't seem very directly manipulatable.

It would have been much more interesting if the demo had shown that you can use both hands to grab lots of pictures at a time and drag them to your album. Why drag one by one if you have a multi-touch screen. It is likely that Corel doesn't have the engineering skills or resources to make this happen yet.

The most telling aspect was that the Microsoft person sounded like he was walking on a tightrope - staying very close to the demo line and worried that at any moment he would fall off. To switch metaphors, it sounded as if he was worried that a kid would pipe up that the Emperor has no clothes.

I think Microsoft would rather some other software company shows them the way, so they can implement a version that is good enough for the majority. The history of computing so far shows that it is better to wait for others to innovate for the 20% thought leaders, so you can implement for the other 80%.

Maybe this is a better video about Microsoft's position on multitouch - http://mschannel9.vo.msecnd.net/o9/mix/09/wmv-hq/c15f.wmv - it is Microsoft Surface's manager on Natural User Interfaces - talking at MIX09.

I think it is too soon for apps to incorporate multitouch into everyday applications - we haven't worked how to make this useful.

Touchscreen function in desktop computers is highly questionable. Sure is neat to manipulate objects with fingers, but the screen has to be on a nearly horizontal position so it can be used as a drawing board. Otherwise is just to use buttons on the interface and that's it.
It has nothing to do with Cyntiq, as the precision is bad as every capacitive touchscreen is. Plus, it don't have the pressure levels, and angle detection. It's rudimentary to say the least.
Now is time to open a LCD cleaning fluid factory. As the screen will grow unreadable every hour or so.

No Google technology was demonstrated. Things shown included: Right menus from finger gestures, Microsoft Surface Globe featuring Microsft Virtual Earth 3D, and Corel Digital Studio all running on a HP TouchSmart PC (not a laptop or tablet)

is to combine this with a pseudo hand shadow. Basically, your hand or hands would be projected as shadows on the screen. In this way, you wouldn't smudge the screen(you would never actually touch it), your hand wouldn't block part of the screen, and, in my opinion, movement would be more natural since actual distance(right-angle to the screen) wouldn't matter quite as much. You could have the screen physically in front of you, but your hands would actually be sitting on the tabletop in front of you. It would be similar to the way a mouse works, forward and backward would be up and down with right and left movement staying the same.

Whats the deal with that guy?
Was he fingering the camera man the entire time or what?
Who uses their middle finger to push buttons?

Vista currently does right click rather easily in 2 different ways, either every time it detects a "click" press on the screen it brings up a little mouse, or you can just set it so that if you click-press and hold for a second it brings up the right click menu.

Give me my stylus any day though.

I have a tx2-1015 that supports multi touch, but I ain't installing 7 on it till the first service pack :)

nothing new as far as i can see here...The corel software is just another imitation from iphoto on ilife in mac.Boring... this is why windows still far behind because they never invented new things, they just copy and copy from mac.Vista shows the failure and they still havent realized it yet.damn it.. For years we've being a loyal customer to Microsoft and still we get nothing new from them... Shame upon u Microsoft

Inq needs to get the affiliations right. Microsoft Surface Globe is NOT from Google! Or did the Goog buy out the Vole?

Ditto most of the above, it is a stupid gimmick.

Glossy screen ? Then I'm not buying it, and nor will anyone else who's ever had to use one.

And i thought that as the time goes, everything gets smaller and here we go, iphone/ipod oversized with microsoft badge on it :) what a crap

There are things that touch screen makes sense: iPhone/smartphones and POS terminals are just a couple. I could even see this useful in a netbook. However, using your desktop or laptop with a touch screen is pretty pointless.

On top of this, as you can see, the touch software algorithms aren't good. Using an iPhone, everything works smoothly. This demonstration is anything but. It's like the touch screen on my crappy LG Voyager, which never reacts like you would expect it to.

MS needs to go back to the drawing board... Do they think these things through, or do they just stab at the wind?

It takes longer to perform the hand motions than simply using your mouse...

Yeah i know shadow graphical manipulation would be the best way to move subjects around and touching buttons but then how do you make a shadow make pressure but their is technology where you dont have to touch the screen to apply virtual pressure.