Most of what we encounter at CES is shiny, new tech. So it was a nice change a pace to learn a bit more about the evolution of the HP TouchSmart experience at CntrStg yesterday… with a hand crafted prototype. One of the original conceptions of TouchSmart was a touchscreen coffee table, dubbed Misto. And the biggest barrier to bringing this to market wasn’t necessarily the tech, it was the shipping weight and logistics. After playing with Misto a bit (brief video below), I’ve been percolating how I might craft my own Surface-alike living room computer without breaking the bank. Not sure if Instructables or Make Magazine has hit this, but I think it’d be possible to pull off on a budget… as long as you didn’t want to place a drink on the “screen”. Hm. Regarding the actual deployed TouchSmart solutions, let’s just say I miss Audrey – she was ahead of her time.
haha, I still have an audrey in a box somewhere in my office basement
Someday I’ll actually read up on how to hack the unit for some other uses…
I am looking forward to the touchscreen enhancements in Windows 7 as well as other platforms. I think this will have some traction beyond the somewhat boring tablet PC market… (we have an X60 tablet and have barely used the touchscreen part, but I will be installing Windows 7 beta to see if that makes it any more useful)