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Microsoft works on notebooks with multi-touch June 21, 2007 [mobile PCs (Tablet PC, mini-PC, ...)] | By Edward J. R. During press conference of Microsoft when UMPC was unveiled to the public for the first time in history we (we were there on location!!!) asked a question "what about support for multi-touch in UMPC?". At that time we didn't get any specific answer. But buy now Microsoft has unveiled commercially (!) the Microsoft Surface technology (a table with multi-touch display) and now it has been revealed, that Microsoft is working also on notebooks that would support genuine multi-touch: 
As you can see above the multi-touch notebook displays - as designed by Microsoft - make it possible to detect not one, not two, but many points of touch. Interestingly in the demonstration a regular Dell notebook was used: 
... that however was extended with special electronics behind the display: 
... that makes it possible to detect multi-touch events with use of infrared light reflection. The Dell notebook used in presentation was runninig Windows Vista with additional software controlling the multi-touch functionalities: multi-touch gestures like zooming and rotating. To learn more then click here and watch the video (multi-touch topic starts at around 75% of the video length). Please note: Lenovo uses term "multi-touch" wrongly to denote Tablet PC computers equipped with both passive digitizer (i.e. regular touch screen usable even with fingers) and active digitizer (i.e. special display requiring special pen to use). Some Lenovo Tablet PC notebooks, that have multi-touch work in this way that without digitizer pen they are just regular touch screens but when digitizer pen is used then very high pointing precision and 512 pressure levels are available for users. Conclusion: while Apple is first to the market with multi-touch consumer device, Microsoft is approaching multi-touch from other direction and is going from non-consumer products like Microsoft Surface multi-touch table (cost: approximately 10,000 US dollars), through above mentioned multi-touch notebooks (not ready for commercial launch yet but we can expect this technology both in notebooks and UMPCs) to (possibly) multi-touch Windows Mobile devices!  Post your comment (free registration is required to post, but if you register you can edit your posts later)
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