Has anyone tried these new touchscreen computers?

[truthwolf1]

My dad is 70 and mom is a little younger. They both left the workforce early 2000's when email and web-surfing was standard. That is pretty much all they do now. Write emails, surf, bank and look for airline tickets. I do not really see any adavantage to what they currently are accustomed to and a touch interactive experience. Mom, however would benefit with a larger screen/font laptop because she does have bad eyes.

Now kids are a whole different story. This is a great way to get them into computers with the whole touch interactive experience. The whole morphing humans with technology is going to be quite common in their lifetime. Something I was told years ago from a instructor (1997) who was working for a military industrial industry is that they were already starting to work on projects of loading information into your brain. So, if you needed to speak Japanese it would be a just a download away. It sounds pretty far out there but he was also part of the team that created eye and voice control to computers for the handicapped which seemed pretty wow in that time also.

[Crow]

[sgreger1]

Yah I just saw that video too Seatteleite and I couldn't agree more, latency on touch screens right now sucks. Try painting on an ipad or something in one of the drawing programs, it's just not ready for prime time yet.

[Crow]

Yah I just saw that video too Seatteleite and I couldn't agree more, latency on touch screens right now sucks. Try painting on an ipad or something in one of the drawing programs, it's just not ready for prime time yet.

Soon though, soon.

That's the beauty of technology... Always progressing.

[lxskllr]

Regardless of how good the physical touchscreen is, you still have a craptastic interface for doing real work. It's a n00b display with n00b apps, and improving the speed will just make it a faster n00bpad.

[Premium Parrots]

I never liked them. just a lil too salty for me.

[sgreger1]

Regardless of how good the physical touchscreen is, you still have a craptastic interface for doing real work. It's a n00b display with n00b apps, and improving the speed will just make it a faster n00bpad.

In it's current incarnation yes, but touchscreens I think will be much more valuable as a technology in the future. We need to get holograms that are able to project on things combined with touch technology, we need to do away with screens altogether.

[Ainkor]

Not sure if anyone mentioned it, but the biggest problem currently for touch screen desktop computers is an ergonomic one:

According to OSHA (yeah yeah, a government agency :P) the ideal distance for a computer screen is 20-40 inches. The average man has a 32/33 arm length and women are less. In business or work use, it will lead to bending forward and holding your arm out. That is also known as the "gorilla arm" problem. Its tiring and not very nice to do over many hours.

Now, I will say this though. On my laptop, which has a touch screen and runs windows 8, sitting at a table working on something using a finger along with a mouse is about perfect. Some things are for mice, some are for fingers.

[lxskllr]

In it's current incarnation yes, but touchscreens I think will be much more valuable as a technology in the future. We need to get holograms that are able to project on things combined with touch technology, we need to do away with screens altogether.

Then you're reaching up. I wouldn't want to spend my day doing that. Keyboard/mouse is an abstraction, but a very useful, easy to work with abstraction. Sometimes a hands on approach isn't the best one. Touchscreens have their uses, but not everywhere. Interfaces are dumbed down to leave room for meaty fingers, and less is displayed at one time. That's fine for a consumption device. You just hit play once, and watch some idiot on YouTube, but to do real work, you need a real interface, and it needs to be comfortable to use for long periods of time as Ainkor pointed out.

[shikitohno]

What lx said, exactly. Touchscreens are well suited for some tasks. They're best suited mostly for consumption, like playing movies or games or reading an ebook on your iPad. In those instances, it can be cool and more useful to have them. My issue is the way companies seem to be forcing their "In the future, everything will be touchscreens!" vision down my throat, increasingly in areas where touchscreens are inappropriate. The have their uses for sure, but the keyboard and mouse will be around for a long time to come. Companies could do well to remember that these two means of input can actually coexist, either on different devices or the same device. Instead of trying to implement a one-size fits all design, they should be applying each input method as appropriate for individual cases.

Edit: For some reason I had a flash back to 11th grade English right now, where we learned consumption used to mean tuberculosis. I kind of smile when I think of an iPad as being primarily a consumption oriented device with that memory fresh in my mind.