Let’s say you finally got your hands on a multitouch laptop, whether a PDC laptop, HP TX2, or something else. With the smaller screens, you might say to yourself “Hey, it’s almost as if this scrollbar was made more for a mouse cursor than my fat greasy finger.” You’re kind of right, but fortunately some fine minds at Microsoft had already thought about that. Recall the Origami Experience 2.0 pack from Microsoft. This incredibly helpful bit of bytes will allow you to optimize the chrome on your apps for fat fingers, with taller title bars, bigger Min|Max|Close buttons, and wider scrollbars. There’s an option to put the touch keyboard by the systray and enable a touch pointer.
Two other components of Origami Experience include Origami Now and Origami Central. Origami Now is kind of a gadget carousel that will let you create and rotate through tiles of things like weather, clocks, calendars, email, lists, pictures, notes or (pre-defined & out-of-date) RSS feeds. Origami Central includes a fat finger friendly media player, web browser, and customizable program launcher.
Keep in mind this is UMPC/Vista code. Mileage may vary, caveat emptor, etc. etc. But I’ve used it on the PDC laptop without a hitch.
Closing our CES 2010 coverage, this is a look at some of the hardware that Lenovo currently has or will be offering this year. It includes everything from the typical business machines to contemporary all-in-one machines, even a laptop that lets you game in 3D (they tell me all DirectX games are 3D compatible.)
Microsoft’s Gary Schare demos some of the new hardware for Windows 7 at CES including network media devices and touch-enabled monitors that will allow you to multitouchify your current laptop or desktop.
I stopped by HP’s Smart Home to see the refreshed TouchSmart TX2 Tablet/Laptop. The HP TouchSmart TX2 laptop has been my main (work) PC now for several months and it’s easily the most versatile laptop I’ve ever had. It’s a laptop, it’s a Tablet PC, it’s got multitouch, Dual Core, removable Lightscribe DVD burner, removable remote control, thumbprint reader, even dual headphone jacks. Best of all, the starting price of $700 (the previous TX2 has been on sale for less) it’s more what you would expect to pay for a tricked-out netbook. But with Dual Core and 8GB of DDR3 RAM possible, it will run circles around a netbook. For those who think they won’t use multitouch, this is a great way to dip your toes in the water, but be prepared to intuitively smudge the screen of every other laptop you use thereafter. You can also see my video on the