But if you are going to buy a new PC with Windows 7 pre-loaded, why don’t you try an AIO? An All-in-One (AIO) PC basically consists of three components – the monitor which has an integrated CPU, the keyboard and the mouse. AIOs have started gaining popularity due to two main major factors – they look sexy and they save space. It is also worth noting that the concept of an AIO was first given by Apple with their iMac. So here we present you some of the best AIOs available in the market currently:-

5. Sony Vaio VGCJS410F/S

This AIO from Sony has Intel’s Pentium E5400 clocked at 2.7 GHz along with 4GB of DDR2 RAM giving it enough juice to carry out your tasks efficiently, although the processor will surely hamper it. 320 GB of disk space is given for storing all your files while for graphics there is Intel’s X4500 HD graphics. The monitor is 20.1 inch and has a screen resolution of 1680*1050. The camera with face tracking technology is also included. This system, meanwhile runs the 64 bit edition of Windows 7 Home Premium. No Bluetooth, and touch screen support are a disappointment but the low price is well, okay.

Price: $849.99

Purchase it!

4. Sony Vaio VGCJS450F/S

Forgive me for my fascination with Sony’s AIOs, but their products are just so beautiful. Anyways this one is similar to product number 5 on this list with the only exception being  the addition of 500 GB of disk space – 180 GB more than the previous model, Bluetooth 2.1. and Blu-Ray support. Well, these additions are really worthwhile and so, this product finds a place on this list.

Price: $999.99

Purchase it!

3. Dell Studio One 19

The Dell Studio One 19 looks like an over sized tablet when you first look at it, but on the second look, it doesn’t fail to impress. Available in four colors: White, Charcoal, Navy Blue and Tuscan Red, the top end model features a 18.5 inch touch screen, with a screen resolution of 1366*768 and a 16:9 aspect ratio, which is more than enough for your 720p HD movies, all of which can be dumped on this model’s spacious 640 GB hard drive along with all your documents and games. To play all those games and movies, you can safely rely on its Intel Core 2 Quad Q8200 processor clocked at 2.33 GHz and 4 GB of DDR2 RAM while the integrated Nvidia Geforce 9400 graphics are good enough for moderate gameplay. The integrated webcam and the multi-touch capabilities of this device make it one of the best AIOs available. This top end model also includes within its price, Dell’s 2 year Basic Service Plan and Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit.

Price: $1199

Purchase it!

2. Sony Vaio VPCL111FX/B

This VPCL111FX/B has a Intel Pentium E5400 processor clocked at 2.7 Ghz and has been coupled with 4 GB of DDR2 RAM, to give you the best performance. For storage, there is 320 GB while for graphics there is Nvidia Geforce G210M having 512 MB of dedicated VRAM. The monitor is 24 inch and has a 1920*1080 resolution which allows you to watch full HD movies. Bluetooth 2.1, Wi-Fi support, Blu-Ray is all there but only the processor is a disappointment in this wonderful machine otherwise running Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit.

Price: $1299.99

Purchase it!

1. Sony Vaio VPCL116FX/B

This Vaio, also described as a HDTV, is although available only in Black color, features Intel’s Core 2 Quad Q8400S processor clocked at 2.66 GHz along with 6 GB of DDR2 RAM which will be more than enough for all your memory intensive tasks. The hard drive is 500 GB is although less, considering it may store a lot of 1080p movies. It has been correctly described as a HDTV as it integrates a Blu-Ray player, TV Tuner card and a remote. A wall mount option is also given. The monitor featuring a 24 inch touchscreen has a 1920*1080 resolution, which means that you can watch all your 1080p movies on it. For gaming, it has the Nvidia Geforce GT 240M, which has 1 GB VRAM dedicated totally to it. Apart from all this, it features an integrated camera with a 640*480 inch resolution, Bluetooth 2.1 and Wi-Fi.

Price: $1799.99

Purchase it!

Let us explore how this touch experience works…

Basic Touch Gestures

Gestures are one or two finger touch inputs that translate into predefined action (gesture) that the user performs. Once this is detected, Windows 7 will then send a gesture message to your application which contains the information needed for decoding and make it work.

Single Tap –Single Click

Double Tap – Double Click

Tap and Hold – Left Click

Single Finger Rotate – Touch the corner of an object and drag it in a clockwise or counter clockwise motion to rotate the object.

Swipe Left – Page Forward

Swipe Right – Page Back

Swipe Up – Scroll Down

Swipe Down – Scroll Up

Two Finger Pinch Inwards – Zoom In

Two Finger Pinch Outwards – Zoom Out

Double Tap – Reset Zoom

Double Press and Drag – Pan

Two Finger Spin – Rotate

Single Tap and Hold Followed by a Second Finger Tap – Right Click

On-Screen Keyboard

• Using the keyboard will light up the keys and a clicking sound will indicated a pressed key.
• The keyboard can be resized to fit your fingers.
• Keystrokes can be saved using the intelligent text prediction engine which stores words you frequently type and will display this list once you start typing.

Microsoft had ushered in a new breed of UI with the following major elements: multi touch, physics and gestures. By integrating the multi touch support into its operating system, Microsoft had elevated itself several notches higher by allowing developers to open a new avenue in software development that will use multi touch on their applications. Likewise, the hardware aspect is advancing up ahead even though applications are still relatively limited. After several decades of working on user interface functionality, Microsoft had finally hit home on what could be one of the best user interfaces after all.

Technorati Tags: multi-touch windows 7, top windows 7 features

1. Surface DJ from Vectorform – What really stood out about this app was that the UI is super easy to use (even for a surface app which is saying something) and it allows multiple collaborators. It’s like DJ Karaoke -   
2. Table Toss by RazorFish – A very good example of how you can use real world objects with Surface (provided they won’t damage the surface). It actually looks like a ton of fun –
   .  
3. DaVinci by RazorFish – A very cool drawing app. RazorFish seem to be doing a good job of coming up with new and different apps. This actually would be a huge hit with kids –
   . That little bit with the seeaw at the end is unreal.  
4. Surface in Education – A really good example of using Surface in education is what Churchend Primary School in UK are doing – Great to hear the kids loving it. And I’d never realized just how impressive the community aspect of Surface is.

The education application is called Finguistics. Although its worth nothing that Surface in general was a big hit.

Its interesting how Surface is still flying totally under the radar. Hopefully, some of the multi-touch magic of Surface can show up in Windows 7 and reach a much wider audience.

Technorati Tags: microsoft surface

Surface Team will be tasked with developing a set of common gestures for multi-touch that will be used across Surface, Windows 7, and Windows Mobile.

Hopefully this means some of Surface’s cool applications make their way to Windows 7.

Here’s a video of the Surface SP1 –

The video does a good (not great) job of focusing on the Surface and not on the interviewer. Something I’m beginning to notice more and more is gadget videos where you see the gadget only 50% of the time.

I absolutely love the little circle type menu used to find related photos etc.

They’re also made drag and drop APIs (if i heard the video discussion right) easier. Which is great as it’ll lead to more and cooler applications.

Why do I care about Surface?

1. Its really, really cool.  
2. All the improvements and applications will sooner or later (hopefully sooner) show up in Windows 7.
3. It advances human computer interaction in a very meaningful way – not the least of which is applications that become multi-user, and not in the ‘connect two computers together’ way.

Everyone who’s excited about communicating with other devices and other people should be excited about being able to interact with other users on the same screen.

Technorati Tags: microsoft surface

This is a customizable tool that lets kids with motor control problems due to traumatic brain injuries practice and rehab their motor skills. It also keeps records of progress and lets doctors create their own tests.

It took 6 weeks to build the app which is impressive. Team of 8 developers and designers working all out. The company that developed the app is VectorForm and they have a lot of experience developing Surface Apps so they’re a good company to keep in mind if you’re looking for Surface expertise.

Technorati Tags: microsoft surface

Living with the Windows 7 Beta, you always feel the lack of truly exciting multi-touch apps. When videos like this pop up, its a reminder of how much potential multi-touch, and by extension Windows 7, holds.

Here are a few multi-touch apps I’d like to see for Windows 7 -

1. The really cool photo gallery app in all the early Windows 7 multi-touch demos. 
2. Apps like Health Vault.  
3. Apps that let people do things together.

It’d also be good to have a Windows App Store.

In terms of Health, the opportunity is immense, and there are two advances I’ve been watching with interest -

1. Companies building gadgets specifically for the Health industry and/or taking existing technology and leveraging it for healthcare. The video above is a good example. 
2. Google consolidating health records from various pharmacies and trying to create a global repository of patient records.

Technorati Tags: health vault, microsoft surface

You have to see the video –

I think it looks really cool and useful and goes really well with Windows 7’s multi-touch. You can download BumpTop at their website.

My favorite features of BumpTop are -

1. Getting a whole new dimension to work with.
2. Selecting multiple items and organizing them into piles.
3. The icons on the side which represent actions so you can just throw files at them. 
4. Its a feature that makes sense for a Windows 7 multi-touch environment.  

Ironic that the best touch related feature that’s available is not from Microsoft. And the BumpTop.com guy ought to run through a few runs of a demo before releasing it to the world.

Will play around with it and let you know more.

Two more write-ups -

1. Engadget’s thoughts on BumpTop. 
2. Katherine at All Things D reviews BumpTop.  

Technorati Tags: bumptop, windows 7, windows 7 ui

I just bought a HP TouchSmart IQ506 – it’s a refurbished model and after taxes it’s for $1,150 Canadian dollars. I really love it, and am eagerly looking forward to it. It should get here sometime next week – hopefully before New Year’s Day.

First, here’s a picture and the model details (HP TouchSmart IQ506 22 inch screen multi-touch PC) so you can read reviews, and get more of an idea -

HP TouchSmart PC IQ506 at Amazon - Perfect for Windows 7

Here are my top reasons to buy an HP TouchSmart PC -

1. Multi-Touch – It makes me feel like a kid again to be so excited about a feature.  
2. A large 22 inch screen, and all the components are built into the Screen Unit itself.  
3. The wireless mouse and keyboard are a good touch.  
4. I was going to buy a touchsmart laptop – however the refurbished IQ506 at such a low price point really made the decision veer towards the IQ506.  
5. Having a Multi-Touch screen enabled HP TouchSmart with the Windows 7 Beta (which hopefully comes out first week January) would just make me much better at writing good Windows 7 articles for this blog.  
6. I’m a very visual and touch based person – so being able to touch and feel/interact with the screen will really improve my experience with computers.
7. It’ll look beautiful in my home.

There are basically 4 HP TouchSmart computers (not counting laptops) -

1. HP touchsmart IQ506 - 22 inch screen, tv tuner, priced at $1,399 dollars approximately. 
2. IQ504 - Same as the above model with no tv tuner.
3. IQ804 - 25.5 inch screen, no Blu-Ray drive, wall mountable, tv tuner. For $1,739 approx.
4. HP TouchSmart IQ816- Comes with a Blu-Ray Drive, has a 25.5 inch screen, is wall mountable, and in general is the top of the line model. Priced at $1,972 approximately.  

I think they are a good option, and one of only a couple of viable options to try Windows 7 multi-touch. There are confirmed reports on the internet of people getting Windows 7 pre-release builds working on HP TouchSmarts. As soon as the Beta for Windows 7 is released I’m going to test it out myself and let you know.

Technorati Tags: hp multi touch, touchsmart

1. We as humans are inclined towards particular senses – some people love ’seeing’, some people love to ‘feel’ and ‘touch’, others love music and sounds. So far, on computers, we have been restricted to sight and, to a limited extent, sound. I’d say computers do a good job on the visual aspect, and a so-so job on the auditory aspect.
2. Touch introduces a whole new dimension. In terms of Human-Computer Interaction it’s literally going from two dimensions to three. It’s the difference between being able to see and talk to someone Versus actually being able to reach out and touch them.
3. Edit: I just realized that a whole different dimension that MT* opens up is multiple people interfacing with a PC at the same time.

The signs are that Multi-Touch in Windows is going to have a lot for people who like to touch and feel things. I’ve gathered together all the information that’s available and some of the best videos.

Looking Back to understand Windows 7 MultiTouch.

Its useful to look at the Microsoft Surface Table product, to get an idea of the origins of multitouch in 7 (straight from wikipedia) -

In 2001 Steve Bathiche and Andy Wilson of Microsoft began work on an idea for an interactive table that mixes both physical and virtual worlds … In 2007 Microsoft introduced Microsoft Surface … a computer embedded in a table with a large, flat, touch-responsive display on the top. The table uses small cameras (as opposed to finger pressure or heat) that enable it to react to the touch of any object. The preliminary launch was on April 17, 2008, when Surface became available for customer use in AT&T stores. The price ranges between $5,000 and $10,000.

An easy way to understand where Windows 7’s multi-touch originated from is to take a look at this Microsoft Surface video –

Multi-Touch in Windows 7

Microsoft has ‘borrowed’ multitouch from Surface and made it one of the star features of Windows 7. Here’s an overall overview of multitouch in W7 (it’s from the PDC 2008 demo) –

Here are some examples of what you can do with specific features and multitouch in Windows 7 -

1. Photos App with MultiTouch – This video just blows my mind – it’s visually and functionally so much better than what I’m used to (i just spent an hour going through my old photos). Windows 7 is going to make a lot of people very happy.
2. Maps with Multi Touch in Win 7 – If you’ve used Google Earth or Live Earth, or even normal yahoo maps, you know how much of a pain using the mouse to change the view, resize etc. can be. With multi-touch all of this control is literally at your fingertips.
3. Paint – You can use multiple fingers to paint – all ten fingers at the same time if you want. This functionality is called ‘Touchable’. And it also means that multiple people can collaborate on paintings.
4. I’m going to add more comprehensive overviews for other features – At the moment you can use touch to scroll through documents, there’s a piano that you can play with your fingers, and there’s an on-screen keyboard you can bring up and use.

I’ve just downloaded a build of Windows 7 and this Friday I’m going to try to install it and will then update you on other cool Windows 7 stuff I find.

Technorati Tags: multi-touch windows 7, windows 7

1. First, a windows 7 video – Windows7 Multi Touch Screen.
   
   Windows 7 (seven) multi touch
   by Giyoomu-sama
2. Next, a Microsoft Surface Video –
   
   Introducing Microsoft Surface
   by genterist

I’ll add more cool videos as I find them.

Technorati Tags: windows 7 multi touch, windows 7 screen