This May Sound Weird And Creepy, But…

Do you enjoy touching your computers? That may sound weird and creepy, but I’m not talking about touching your computers in general. Instead, I’m referring to the way in which you interact with them. For many of us, the keyboard and mouse are still our primary methods of interacting with computers, and they work just fine. If you’re a little adventurous, you may have either looked into or tried some of the alternative and futuristic interfaces that promise to become a bigger part of our lives in the near future. Whether that will actually happen or not remains to be seen, but it’s definitely interesting stuff.

For example, Microsoft recently unveiled one of its latest products called Surface, and although it may just look like a coffee table at first, there’s obviously a lot more going on under the, well, surface. With Surface, you won’t be bothered with any cables, keyboards, or pointing devices because the only things that you need to interact with the screen are your fingers.

Do you want to view the photos from your digital camera? Simple, just place your camera on top of the table and your pictures will pour out onto the screen for you to interact with in a variety of ways. You can even transfer the photos to your cell phone by placing it on the surface and dragging them over to the phone. Once again, this is all taking place with the help of your fingers. To get a better idea of how this works and what the possibilities are, you really should visit the Microsoft Surface Web site and view the videos. The product may be expensive and primarily intended for commercial use at this time, but that doesn’t cheapen the fact that it’s amazing.

In other news, I’ve been using a Tablet PC running Windows Vista for the past few days, and although I was fairly skeptical about using a tablet for more than a couple of minutes, I have to say that I’m becoming a fan of the interface. For me, it’s certainly not practical at all times, but its fun and helpful periodically. I especially like the potential that this type of thing has for presentations, demos, and so on. I know that the Tablet PC is nothing new, but it just goes to show that we’re now touching our computers more than we were a few years ago.

Going back to the Microsoft Surface, which operating system do you think is behind this incredible device? Sure enough, a modified version of Vista is at its core, so anyone that still doubts Vista’s capabilities should really reconsider their viewpoint. The OS may not be perfect, but it’s certainly powerful in a number of ways, and Surface is proof of that point.

This announcement from Microsoft has shown that it’s interested in touchscreen technology in a big way. In terms of what Apple has shown us in this area, the only thing that we can really point to at this time is the iPhone because it still hasn’t released an official Mac Tablet (although Axiotron has developed a modified MacBook touchscreen computer called the ModBook). Microsoft has already shown off the touch technology incorporated into Vista, but now it’s time for Apple to really gain some presence in this area. I know I’m not the only person that’s interested in a Mac Tablet.

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[tags]interface, surface, keyboard, mouse, touchscreen[/tags]