Many times when I go to Boston I try to pay a visit to a little shrine of technology called the Sony store in the Prudential Center. They always have some cool gadgetry on display. I was not disappointed a few weeks ago either. This time it was an all-in-one desktop computer that caught my eye, the Sony Vaio L Series. The best part: it is multitouch enabled running Windows 7.
Here at the lab we are very interested in multitouch technology as reported before. Our research is made even more relevant with the commercialization of affordable touch computers. Other companies have also come up with multitouch desktop systems for personal use: HP, Dell, etc. But Sony always puts a bit of extra effort in making their products even more stylish. And with the advent of Windows 7, an inherently multitouch operating system, touch computers start to make perfect sense. The Vaio L also dubs as an HDTV and a Blue-ray disk player/recorder.
I quickly double tapped the virtual globe application on the desktop. The Virtual Earth / Bing Maps style environment popped up quickly. I was multitouch navigating to my home town in no time. The feel of touching the computer screen was a little bit strange, because until now we all tried to keep fingers off from our beloved monitors. The feel of it was sleek, like our TouchKit table and unlike the Microsoft Surface, which is textured. All in all it was a very pleasant experience using this computer. It is going to be interesting to see how this new concept of human computer interaction will change the perception and use of desktop computers in the coming years.
Oszkar