The New Windows Boss Imagines A Horrible Future Where The 'Vast Majority' Of PCs Are Touch Screen - Polidicks

[Quote]New Windows boss Julie Larson-Green imagines a future which sounds absolutely terrible. She thinks that "the vast majority" of PCs are going to have touch screen interfaces. She said so during an interview with MIT's Technology Review: Windows 8 is clearly designed with touch in mind, and many new Windows 8 PCs have touch screens. Why is touch so important? It’s a very natural way to interact. If you get a laptop with a touch screen, your brain clicks in and you just start touching what makes it faster for you. You’ll use the mouse and keyboard, but even on the regular desktop you’ll find yourself reaching up doing the things that are faster than moving the mouse and moving the mouse around. It’s not like using the mouse, which is more like puppeteering than direct manipulation. In the future, are all PCs going to have touch screens? For cost considerations there might always be some computers without touch, but I believe that the vast majority will. We’re seeing that the computers with touch are the fastest-selling right now. I can’t imagine a computer without touch anymore. Once you’ve experienced it, it’s really hard to go back. Here's hoping Larson-Green is wrong. Tablets and smartphones obviously should have touchscreens. But desktop PCs and laptops? No. A keyboard and mouse work just fine. Consider the modern laptop's design. You can control the entire machine and all the apps on it while leaving your hands in a relatively small space, and moving nothing but your thumbs, fingers, and sometimes bending your wrists. The mouse is brilliant because the cursor doesn't move at a 1:1 ratio with your finger. It can move faster or slower. Meanwhile, desktop screens are getting huge. To interact with it via touch, you'd have to move your arm all over the place all day. One other reason this sounds horrible is that unlike a tablet or a smartphone screen, a desktop screen is in front of you at a 90 degree angle. Whereas touching a smartphone or tablet screen feels as natural as using a pad of paper or reading a magazine, touching a desktop screen feels unnatural – like jabbing. Please let Larson-Green be wrong.[/quote] Read more: [url]http://www.businessinsider.com/the-new-windows-boss-imagines-a-horrible-future-where-the-vast-majority-of-pcs-are-touch-screen-2012-12#ixzz2F2UhAGmS[/url]

Why not just have a tough screen [i]and[/i] a mouse and keyboard?

touch screen might be cool but that would have to be a purely, cheap, 3rd party alternative

Honestly, I have to agree with him. Its generally heading in that direction.

Touch screens are SO UNCOMFORTABLE for extended periods of time. Obviously not a tablet, but try and use a touch screen computer at a display for more than like five minutes. Fucking uncomfortable as shit.

[QUOTE=venn178;38827346]Touch screens are SO UNCOMFORTABLE for extended periods of time. Obviously not a tablet, but try and use a touch screen computer at a display for more than like five minutes. Fucking uncomfortable as shit.[/QUOTE] [img]http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Abr-ctFR6xo/T-srv2JGs5I/AAAAAAAABIg/fKEiXRIgA0Y/s1600/4586508629_b024f4dc78.jpg[/img] also, this, CLEANING THEM.

[QUOTE=Pierrewithahat;38827331]Why not just have a tough screen [i]and[/i] a mouse and keyboard?[/QUOTE] my school recently invested in touch screen monitors for half our computer rooms really the only benefit a touch screen has for a student is that its easier to lean over and close the work of people around you

I can probably see that as being true for consumers, though businesses and tech oriented people not so much. Considering how many people use computers for the sole purpose of reading things on the internet, Facebook, and checking email, you don't need to sit down at a desk for all that.

[QUOTE=Pierrewithahat;38827331]Why not just have a tough screen [i]and[/i] a mouse and keyboard?[/QUOTE] I can't see anything in the quote that this article's using that suggests that she wants 100% pure touch.

Well, a touchscreen is a really nice compliment to the keyboard and mouse, the same way the mouse was to the keyboard. Hybrids are they way to go in my opinion (and from what I've seen and heard, this is the way Microsoft wants to go as well) - I tried the XPS 12 yesterday and damn it's nice (and expensive).

I can happily use a touch screen if its a phone or tablet for a good while since your sitting, relaxing and just doing the basic stuff after a while however I get something in me that can't tolerate touch keyboards and I just need to use a KB+M that being said, touch screen monitors are cool but I would hate to just be pointing at a motionless one for a day

Microsoft Surface is genius though, messed with it myself and i like it a lot. Though only to a certain degree, when i start Word or a messenger i just type on the keyboard that comes with it.

The problem is that I have a 2 foot space between me and my laptop screen because i need the space for my textbooks and stuff. I dont want to constantly lean over everything just to click on something when i could have easily grabbed my mouse 4 inches away from me and make a gesture only in a 2 inch radius to accomplish the samething

Once you've experienced it you'll never go back? Speak for yourself. I have a laptop with a touch screen running Windows 8. I never use the touch screen. It's a terrible way to interact with a personal computer.

The hell do people have against buttons these days? With a touchscreen you HAVE to look at what you're doing, because there's no tactile way that you can tell what you're pressing. With a keyboard I can just keep looking at the screen and I don't have to watch what my fingers are doing, because I can [I]feel[/I] where they are (and it's obviously visually confirmed by the screen).

Why not just have both touchscreen with keyboard/mouse, it sure is a good additional gimmick for computers

[QUOTE=Pierrewithahat;38827331]Why not just have a tough screen [i]and[/i] a mouse and keyboard?[/QUOTE] That's actually kinda the idea. Even noticed that theverge reviewers were surprised that it was actually a very solid combination.

[QUOTE=J!NX;38827348][img]http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Abr-ctFR6xo/T-srv2JGs5I/AAAAAAAABIg/fKEiXRIgA0Y/s1600/4586508629_b024f4dc78.jpg[/img] also, this, CLEANING THEM.[/QUOTE] I spent 5 minutes wiping off the front of my tablet last night. 5 minutes! I soaked the screen in the stuff you use to clean eyeglasses, dried it off with a nice paper towel, and then arduously went over it with a microfiber cloth. It was nowhere near perfect and infinitely harder to clean than a standard non-touchscreen. On my desktop, I could spray down and have clean both my monitors in half the time it took to clean my tablet. Both monitors are also bigger than 10.1 inches. It's silly.

Bullshit I can click a link faster with my mouse than with touch, especially because it seems to be difficult to hit the link with my fat finger and it'll result in me clicking the wrong link and having to go back and try again

Try tapping everything you click on your monitor for a full work day. I bet your arms will fucking hurt. Then try typing out an essay on an iPad, which has no depression reaction when you type like on a keyboard. If you don't immediately start to feel pain, your joints and finger bones will get all screwed up the longer you type on a touchscreen for. This idea is just so filled with awful.

[QUOTE=Protocol7;38827891]I spent 5 minutes wiping off the front of my tablet last night. 5 minutes! I soaked the screen in the stuff you use to clean eyeglasses, dried it off with a nice paper towel, and then arduously went over it with a microfiber cloth. It was nowhere near perfect and infinitely harder to clean than a standard non-touchscreen. On my desktop, I could spray down and have clean both my monitors in half the time it took to clean my tablet. Both monitors are also bigger than 10.1 inches. It's silly.[/QUOTE] on my g510 I could work as I turn on an air compressor in my room to blow it down at that point time to clean is irrelevent, because it takes hardly any work. To blow out dust within a computer is about 5 minutes for a good, solid consistent clean, for that, that's good time. [QUOTE=Jon27;38827962]Try tapping everything you click on your monitor for a full work day. I bet your arms will fucking hurt. Then try typing out an essay on an iPad, which has no depression reaction when you type like on a keyboard. If you don't immediately start to feel pain, your joints and finger bones will get all screwed up the longer you type on a touchscreen for. This idea is just so filled with awful.[/QUOTE] now do that with a monitor that's not flat on the table but perfectly sideways arms, they'll fall the fuck off I've not had any carpal tunnel issues or any problems with wrist/finger pain. I'm a heavy typist.

the speaker did say that mouse and keyboard won't go away, don't know why the article is freaking out

[QUOTE=J!NX;38827965]on my g510 I could work as I turn on an air compressor in my room to blow it down at that point time to clean is irrelevent, because it takes hardly any work. To blow out dust within a computer is about 5 minutes for a good, solid consistent clean, for that, that's good time.[/QUOTE] I'm just talking cleaning screens, I said nothing about dusting :v:

[QUOTE=Protocol7;38828024]I'm just talking cleaning screens, I said nothing about dusting :v:[/QUOTE] I was adding that you could do that + dust I guess :v: I mean fuck if it takes the amount of time to clean that screen when you could clean an entire desktop, something is wrong.

Touchscreen + mouse and keyboard is awesome, i use it at work and it's great, makes windows 8 a lot faster to use, of course, touchscreen-only pc's are bollocks, can't happen. at least not in my lifetime i hope

[QUOTE=J!NX;38828291]I was adding that you could do that + dust I guess :v:[/QUOTE] Oh yeah definitely. I know where all the dust collects in my case so a few blasts from compressed air cans is like a minute worth of time (and 5 minutes of coughing!)

[QUOTE=Protocol7;38828305]Oh yeah definitely. I know where all the dust collects in my case so a few blasts from compressed air cans is like a minute worth of time (and 5 minutes of coughing!)[/QUOTE] the coughing is the best part! what doesn't kill you immediately kills you later

[QUOTE=J!NX;38828325]the coughing is the best part! what doesn't kill you immediately kills you later[/QUOTE] no that's why I have an inhaler it's for "asthma" but I've never actually had asthma that wasn't caused by some sort of dust or dirt kicked up

Multitouch trackpads are fine aren't they?

Hahaha,No. You expect power users to use Photoshop,3ds Max, Maya, After Effects, or any art program without keyboard shortcuts? Yeah No.