See Me, Feel Me, Touch Me, Touch Me …

By STEPHEN WILLIAMS
Of the five senses, touch may be the least hip. Except in computing.


So stock up on those spray bottles of iClean, meant to “safely remove fingerprints and smudges without drips, streaks or stains.” You’ll be touching that PC screen plenty when Microsoft’s Windows 7 comes to pass.

Hard on the heels of Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch and its multitouch trackpads, Windows Touch will be a “first class way to interact with your PC alongside mouse and keyboard,” said the company.

While there are some touch-screen PCs at retail, from Hewlett-Packard and Dell, the sophisticated functions to be appended to the new OS will purportedly spawn a wealth of devices and applications to take advantage of new ways to tap, click, scroll and zoom.

Windows Touch will be an evolutionary tool; it’s a bit ironic though, that Apple, which will probably incorporate touch functionality in its next OS, Snow Leopard, has set the stage for Microsoft in this category.

In an extensive entry on the MSDN blog, the engineers wrote that they focused “on common activities and refined them thoughtfully with touch in mind. You will have the freedom of direct interaction, like being able to reach out and slowly scroll a web page then flick quickly to move through it.” With touch-optimized applications, “you will be able to immerse yourself as you explore you photos, browse the globe, or go after bad guys in your favorite games.”

Microsoft has begun a Windows Touch Logo program to alert consumers if the machine is touch-optimized. Becoming “Touch”-certified is a multistep process, and Microsoft says it will test each machine in house.

Windows 7 is expected out early next year. A beta version has already been issued, and a “release candidate” for users to audition is to be available at the end of May.