Tag: tablet computer

Article

PS4 to get companion social app for tablets, PS Vita |Engadget

My Comments

Just today (21 February 2013), Sony was premiering the PlayStation 4 games console at their press event in New York City. They were promoting advanced “polygon-free” graphics which yielded realistic game views as well as support for “cloud-driven” console gaming.

This included various social-gaming options including the ability for an experienced astute player to help a novice player by effectively adding “dual controls” to the novice player’s controller. It is a feature that could have come in handy during a time when a friend of mine brought around the original PlayStation and rented a cricket game to play on the console. A person who lived with us had very keen interest in cricket and showed interest in this game but needed assistance with the video-game implementation of the sport.

But this console supports the new trend of the “second screen”. This option, which is implemented using apps on mobile-device platforms, is being explored by broadcasters and others with regular programmes but is being taken further by Sony for the PlayStation platform.

Most likely this concept would be positioned for social gaming, persistent scoreboards / inventory lists, alternate views such as overview maps, and similar activities to gain more out of the game. Of course, there will be the doubters that will say that the second screen is irrelevant especially for first-person shooters and similar games.

It will also be interesting to observe how much “in-sync” with the gameplay the second screen hosted on a separate device connected to the home network would be especially if extra action is to be viewed on this screen. Personally, I would make sure that you have the proper bandwidth available to your tablet when you want this function to work properly with the PS4.

A good idea would be to make sure that the Wi-Fi is strong to the games room and this could be achieved through the use of an access point with the wired network backbone. For that matter, most of the HomePlug AV wireless access points also have the Ethernet connections which can make this task easier with the PS4 connected to an Ethernet socket on the HomePlug access point while the HomePlug AV segment serves as the backbone.

Of course, this new console has a lot to be expected for its role in the lounge room, or the games room.

You may think that St Valentine’s Day is all about giving the one you love something special like roses, or inviting them out for lunch, afternoon tea or dinner because you know she lives in your town.  Of course, this isn’t the only day to show that affection.

But on the other hand, you may have used Skype to make a video call to them because they are away on business or holiday. It is worth reading this article about making sure that the Skype call goes to plan when they head on that trip. Here, I have highlighted becoming familiar with the Skype software, whether it is on the computer, mobile device or your smart TV or video peripheral. In some cases, you may have to do a “dry run” to make sure everything goes OK.

Similarly setting up a music playlist with a good variety of appropriate music on your computer or portable music player can work well for that dinner date at home or that movie date. As well, silencing that smartphone can work wonders but be sure you know how to bring the sound back on again so you don’t miss those calls.

If you have recipes in those books, scanning them to PDFs to upload to your tablet computer or laptop can allow you to have them in a more portable manner if you have to cook that dinner at another kitchen. As well, a bookstand can come in very handy if you use that tablet in the kitchen to refer to online or PDF recipes. On the other hand, that bread-bin can be shoehorned in to a temporary bookstand for that tablet.

Any of you who have watched MasterChef The Professionals lately may have seen some TV ads running for the HP Envy x2 detachable-keyboard hybrid notebook.

This unit is a basic Intel-driven Windows 8 notebook that converts to a tablet by you separating it from the keyboard. It is pitched as something you could use primarily as a tablet yet use the keyboard to do text entry.

Very shortly, I will be receiving one of these units for review as the first of the Windows 8 touch-enabled computing devices of this year and who knows what it will be like as a computer for its application.

Introduction

In Part 1, I had covered the home entertainment direction with such technologies as the 4K UHDTV screens, smart TV, and the presence of alternate gaming boxes. Then in Part 2, I had covered the rise of touchscreen computing, increased pixel density the 802.11ac Wi-Fi network segment amongst other things. Now I am about to cover the mobile-computing technology which is infact a strong part of the connected lifestyle.

Mobile technology

Smartphones

A major direction that is showing up for smartphones is the 5” large-screen devices that have been brought about by the Samsung Galaxy Note series of smartphones. These are described as “phablets” because they are a bridge device between the traditional 4” smartphone and the 7” coat-pocket tablet.

Sony are premiering the new Xperia premium Android phones which are the Xperia Z and Xperia ZL 5” standard with 1080p display. The Xperia ZL is a dual-SIM variant of the XPeria Z. As well, Huawei have increased their foothold in the US market by offering more of the reasonably-priced regular smartphones.

There has been some more effort towards standardised wireless charging for the smartphone. This is although there are two groups promoting their standards – the Power Matters Alliance and the Wireless Power Consortium who maintain the Qi (chee) wireless-charging standard. Examples of this include Toyota implementing the Qi standard in their 2013 Avalon vehicles and Nokia integrating it in to their Lumia 920 smartphones.

On the accessories front, Invoxia had launched an iPhone dock which connected two desk phones to the iPhone. The original device used the iPhone as an outside line for the desk phones whereas the current version launched here also works as a VoIP terminal for the desk phones. It also works with a supplied iOS softphone app to have the iPhone as a softphone for the VoIP setup.

Tablets

Now there is an increasing number of the 7” coat-pocket tablets which were previously dismissed in the marketplace but made popular by the Google Nexus 7 and Amazon Kindle Fire. The Windows-RT-based devices were showing up more as a 10” tablet or a detachable-keyboard hybrid device.

Polaroid, trying to keep their brand alive in consumers’ minds after the demise of their legendary instant-picture cameras, have launched a few of the Android tablets. One is a 7” unit pitched for use by children. Here, this model uses 8Gb onboard storage and microSD expansion, 2-megapixel camera and works only with 802.11g/n Wi-Fi networks. It is built in a rugged form to withstand little ones’ handling but can work well for environments where a coat-pocket tablet device could cop a lot of hard wear-and-tear. The M10 is a 10” variant with a brushed-metal finish.

RCA fielded an 8” Android tablet that is made by Digital Stream and has integrated TV tuners. Here, it could pick up conventional ATSC digital TV and mobile ATSC (Dyle) broadcasts and works to the Android ICS. Personally, I would suspect that this device could be sold out to other markets, perhaps under other brands and equipped with local-spec tuners like DVB-T tuners.

Mobile technology

The ARM-based microprocessor has raised the ante for more powerful work by offering the same number of processor cores as the newer IA-32 or IA-64 processors used in regular computers. Yet this could allow for increased computing power with less power requirements thus making the embedded devices, smartphones and tablets that use RISC processing do more.

Here, NVIDIA launched the Tegra 4 which is a4-core ARM CPU that can yield faster response from tablets and smartphones. Samsung raised the bar with their Exynos 5 Octa which is an 8-core ARM CPU.

Samsung used this event to show a prototype 5.5” (1280×720) flexible screen and a 55” flexible screen as a proof-of-concept. As well, LG increased the pixel density by exhibiting a 5.5” 1080p smartphone screen.

The connected home

There has been very little happening concerning home automation and security through the past years of the Consumer Electronics Show but this year, the connected home has increased its foothold here.

This is demonstrated through the concept of mobile apps being used to control or monitor appliances, thermostats, security systems and the like.

Here, Motorola demonstrated a “Connected Home” router being a device that allows you to control a network-enabled central-heating thermostat using an app on an Android phone. What I liked of this was that the mobile device used to manage that thermostat wasn’t just the Apple iPhone and you were able to move away from that hard-to-program wall thermostat.

This has been brought about through the Nest thermostat opening up the market for user-friendly thermostats for heating / cooling systems. Here, this could lead to a commercial-style heating-control setup with a small wall-mounted box that works as a temperature sensor but may have a knob or two buttons for you to adjust the comfort level “on the fly”. Then you use your smartphone, tablet or computer that runs an easy-to-understand app to program comfort levels for particular times of particular days.

Alarm.com, a firm who provide monitoring for home automation and security sold through large retailers, has provided a “dashboard app” for their equipment that works on their platform. This app runs on the common mobile-phone platforms (iOS, Android, Blackberry and Windows Phone 8) so you can use your phone to check on the state of things with your Alarm.com setup.

Similarly, the Securifi Almond+ 802.11ac Wi-Fi router was exhibited at this year’s CES. This is a regular home network router but has integrated Zigbee / Z-Wave wireless home-automation-network support. Here, this device can be seen as a dashboard for the connected home and they are intending to fund this with a Kickstarter campaign.

As for appliances, Dacor integrated a 7” Android tablet into their high-end wall oven and this provides for guided cooking including recipe lookup. Of course, Samsung hasn’t let go of the Internet fridge dream and exhibited a four-door fridge with an integrated app-driven screen that can work alongside their Android phones and tablets. They also exhibited a top-loading washing machine that uses an LCD control panel and is able to be controlled with a smartphone.

This is part of the “Internet of things” and this concept was underscored by a few manufacturers becoming charter members of the “Internet Of Things Consortium”. It is about an open-frame vendor-independent infrastructure for interlinking home automation / security, consumer entertainment, and computing devices using the common standards and common application-programming interfaces.

Automotive Technology

Of course the car is not forgotten about at the Consumer Electronics Show, and is considered as an extension of our connected lives.

A main automotive drawcard feature for this year are the self-driving cars; but the core feature for now are the app platforms for vehicle infotainment systems. Infact, Ford and GM are encouraging people to develop software for their infotainment setups. This is exploiting the fact that midrange and premium cars are increasingly being equipped with Internet connections and highly-sophisticated infotainment systems that have navigation, mobile phone integration and media playback.

Here, you might think of navigation, Internet radio / online content services and communications services. It may also include “one-touch” social destination sharing amongst other things.

For example, Google Maps to come in to Hyundai and Kia cars as part of their UVO connected infotainment platform. The first vehicle to have this is the Kia Sorrento (model-year 2014). Similarly Hyundai are implementing the MirrorLink smartphone-user-interface-replication technology in the infotainment setups.

As well. TuneIn Radio and Apple Siri integration are to be part of model-year 2013 Chevrolet Sonic & Spark cars. Ford has implement the Glympse social-destination-sharing software as part of their SYNC AppLink platform.

Similarly, Pioneer are extending the AppRadio functionality across most of their head-units so you can have certain iOS apps managed from the dashboard. They have also provided connectivity options for Apple’s iPhone 5 device with its Lightning connector and iOS 6 platform.

Last but not least

Pebble were showing a Kickstarter-funded concept of an E-paper smartwatch that interlinks with your smartphone. Here. I was wondering whether E-paper and E-ink could become the new LCD display for devices that can rely on an available-light display. It was also a way where these “smartwatches” were having us think back to the 80s where the more features and functions a digital watch had, the better it was and you could start showing off that watch to your friends.

Conclusion

This year has underscored a few key trends:

• the 4K UHDTV display and displays with increased pixel density being mainstream,
• the acceptance of touchscreen computing with regular computers courtesy of Windows 8,
• the arrival of very lightweight laptop computers,
• NFC becoming a common setup method for smartphones and consumer AV,
• the draft 802.11ac Gigabit Wi-Fi network segment being exhibited with relatively-mature equipment,
• the 5” smartphone and 7” tablet becoming mainstream mobile options

and has shown up what can be capable in our connected lives. Who knows what the next major trade shows will bring forth, whether as a way to “cement” these technologies or launch newer technologies. Similarly, it would be interesting whether these technologies would catch on firmly in to the marketplace.

Articles

How do you plan a working holiday?

My Comments

Toshiba Satellite L730 full-function ultraportable

A very difficult issue for most people who run small businesses is to be able to balance work and life. The article referred primarily to whenever you are on holiday but it can encompass business trips as well as other situations where you may not be able to have your hands “on deck” such as when you or a family member falls ill or there is a major event such as a birth or death in your family.

Here, you have to use the IT and communications technology available to you to satisfy this requirement.

Managing email, messaging and voicemail

This may involve the use of email, messaging and voicemail systems as a “store and forward” communications tools that help you separate the “wheat from the chaff”. This is compared to a common practice where people use text messaging, email or social-network messaging to seek instant replies and instant action.

Filtering messages

With email, you could “skim” the Inbox’s List view so you can look for messages from particular people, check on those messages and reply to them. Well-bread email interfaces also allow you to set up message filters or contact groups  so you can see only those messages that matter. You could also use contact groups on your mobile phone so you set distinct ring tones for those contacts you need to hear from.

The “sent from smartphone” tagline

The tagline used with most mobile-phone email clients which says “Sent from my smartphone”, “Sent from my iPhone” or something similar can have benefits and disadvantages. In some cases, removing it may convey a professional look of staying at your desk and slaving over your work but having it there may let one know that you are _away_ from your desk. This may say “Don’t expect me to reply instantly” or “Expect a short reply rather than the long one”.

You do not always have to be contacted

Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet – fit for business

The late 1980s has brought in to general business the culture of the 24-hour / day, 365-day / year working lifestyle. This has been facilitated with technologies like mobile phones, emails and text messaging. Here, you end up with people having the mobile phone always on hand or fielding work calls even when they are meant to be relaxing.

Convey the “contact me only if urgent” requirement

When you are on holiday, you may have to communicate a “contact me only if urgent” requirement to whom you deal with at work, which is an issue that may be difficult for anyone with a managerial or executive role. This may be through the use of “out-of-office” auto-reply emails or voicemails.

Being ready to delegate

You may also have to be ready to delegate your role on a temporary basis. Doctors have made an art of achieving this by having the clinics or hospitals they work with engage a “locum” doctor when they aren’t able to work at the clinic or hospital.

It may also involve underscoring the role of, empowering and preparing the “duty” or “acting” managers in the business’s decision flow. These situations may include regularly briefing the staff who will assume these roles when you are not there to preparing information documents like manuals or “crib sheets” for the staff.

Establishing the “portable office”

Acer Aspire S3 Ultrabook – suits air travel very well

A lightweight portable computer device like a tablet, netbook or ultraportable could be used as a tool to “keep tabs on everything” with work. Here, you could use it to check or reply to email or keep an eye on key figures provided by your business’s management-information system.

These devices can work alongside remote-access technologies like remote-desktop tools (LogMeIn, GoToMyPC, etc), cloud-storage services (Dropbox, etc) or cloud-assisted local NAS storage (WD MyBook Live) to provide remote access to your work data. Some of the consumer-focused cloud-storage services are starting to offer a small-business variant of these services which will provide a secure operating environment that suits most business needs.

Here, you can then use this connectivity in response to an event at the office. Similarly, if the management-information system allows for email, SMS or app-driven notifications in response to key events, you can then use this feature to avoid the need to look at the “dashboard” of the management-information system regularly.

Conclusion

Once you know what technological resources you have at your business and have these resources set up properly, you can then use them to reclaim a healthy work-life balance.

Article

Xbox Surface gaming tablet reportedly in the works | Microsoft – CNET News

My Comments

What I see of Microsoft’s XBox Surface tablet is Microsoft entering a very competitive portable gaming marketplace with a coat-pocket-sized tablet tuned for games.

The portable-games market is competing in different ways with 3”-5” options in the form of the PlayStation Vita and Nintendo 3DS gaming handhelds as well as the iOS and Android app stores becoming full of games that can be downloaded to an iPhone or Android phone. Even Microsoft is competing against this device through the availability of games in its Windows Phone app store that are ready to download to one’s Windows Phone. There are even some handheld devices like the Apple iPod Touch and a few Android-driven MP3 players that can work well as handheld games consoles. But they don’t have wireless broadband or mobile-phone capabilities in them.

But the 7” coat-pocket-size tablet is showing up to be a capable portable gaming form factor. This was initially “owned” by the Android operating system with devices like the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7, the Toshiba AT150 and the Google Nexus 7 having access to the gaming catalogue in the Google Play app store. Some of these devices are driven by the NVIDIA Tegra chipsets which are rated as having very good game prowess. As well, Sony had built a subset of the PlayStation gaming franchise for the Android platform by having certain high-performance Android smartphones, mostly their Xperia phones, “certified” for the name and establishing an app store for that franchise. Lately, Apple brought the iOS mobile platform in to the foray with the arrival of the iPad Mini, thus introducing another mobile platform in to this form factor.

No doubt, Microsoft doesn’t want to miss out on the party where you can quickly bring out of that coat pocket a small tablet computer and begin to play one of many games ranging from Angry Birds through the “games of a misspent youth” (pool, pinball or arcade games) to an intense action-adventure title. This could yield in a highly-competitive gaming environment for this form factor.

As far as the multi-player multi-machine gaming could go for this platform, it will primarily be an “online-driven” environment with little effort on local or venue-driven gaming.

Introduction

I am writing this piece about the newer crop of Windows-8 computers that will be equipped for touchscreen computing. This will explain the different types that will be available and how to get on board this platform.

Types

Portable

Tablet

This class of Windows 8 portable is a simple touch-sensitive tablet that can come with a keyboard and mouse. If you don’t have the keyboard with the computer and you want to do some text entry, these computers will use a touchscreen virtual keyboard for this purpose. Because Windows 8 uses the Bluetooth and USB class drivers for input devices, you can use third-party keyboards and mice that connect via these interface methods. This can come in handy with using the Bluetooth keyboard attachments that are available for iPads and Android tablets.

An extension of this class is Sony’s VAIO Tap 20 which is a 20” tablet that isn’t considered all that portable. Here, this one works with supplied keyboard and mouse accessories but can work as a tablet. It also has a kickstand so it can work like the typical all-in-one computer.

Detachable-keyboard hybrid

These portable computers use a supplied detachable keyboard module that clips to the screen. They take this example from the Android-powered ASUS Transformer Prime and operate in two different forms.

The inexpensive varieties have the keyboard and, in some cases, a trackpad just as a controller device powered by the tablet. But most of the desirable variants would have extra functionality in the detachable keyboard such as an extra battery, USB ports, etc. Here, the computer can benefit from a large range of extra abilities when the user wants to enjoy these benefits.

Convertible

Here, the screen swivels or folds over to become a tablet or the computer can open and close like a regular laptop. An example of this type that I reviewed was the Fujitsu Lifebook TH550M that I previously reviewed and you might be able to claw for cheap on the secondhand market. This is one of the classes of computer that can benefit those of us who want to use the computer for a lot of text entry like working on documents or Excel spreadsheets. Similarly, they can he angled in a manner that benefits viewing or showing content like pictures, PowerPoint presentations, video or Web pages.

The simpler variants fold over so that the keyboard is exposed whereas other types have the screen swivel vertically on a pedestal or horizontally through a frame. These ones may have an increased risk of damage if you try to rotate the screen further in a similar way to what can happen with most digital cameras that have the fold-out screens.

Slider convertible

These computers such as the Sony VAIO Duo 11 appear like a tablet in normal use. But the keyboard on them slides out from underneath the screen and the screen can be tilted up using an integrated kickstand.

Most of them may, at the most, use an integrated thumbstick as the secondary pointing device. Here, you may find that the Bluetooth wireless mouse may be more important for these computers if you want that gradual pointing or scrolling ability that these devices have.

Touch-enabled laptop

The mainstream portable option may simply be a regular clamshell laptop computer that is equipped with a touchscreen. The manufacturers would find this easier to offer as an incremental option for their designs thus offering it across the board.

Most manufacturers are offering as a cheaper alternative a laptop that doesn’t have a touchscreen. Instead these machines use a highly-optimised trackpad that is flush with the palmrest, perhaps with a ridge surround the trackpad. This provides proper support for multi-finger touch operation thus providing some support for Windows 8’s touch gestures. This may be a confusing experience for you if you are working your laptop at one area while you view the screen at another area.

For customers, this could be a cost-effective entry point to the touch-enabled Windows 8 experience for a portable or transportable application.

Desktop

Touch-enabled all-in-one

Most all-in-one Windows desktop computers, like the Sony VAIO J Series that I previously reviewed, will have a touchscreen but Windows 8 and its Metro user interface would make the touchscreen come in to its own on these computers. A few of these computers are gaining respect as far as performance is concerned, thus allowing them to be used for intense gaming, video editing or other intense work.

Regular desktop with touchscreen monitor

Most of us who have regular desktop computers and want to upgrade to Windows 8 could upgrade the monitor to a touch-enabled screen. Similarly a newer regular desktop, whether tower-style or low-profile, could be specified with a touchscreen monitor.

The touch-enabled monitors nay require a USB connection to the host computer as well as the DVI or HDMI video connection.

At the moment, it may be hard to look for a reasonably-priced touchscreen monitor, especially with the preferred DVI, HDMI or DisplayPort sockets. This is because quite a lot of computer retailers, especially the “big-box” retailers, don’t sell them at all or sell them at an exorbitant price. The best result may be to do some online shopping or visit independent computer specialists for these monitors.

Confusing issues

Already own a tablet

If you already own an iPad or Android tablet, you may think that purchasing a touch-enabled Windows computer isn’t necessary. This is even though you may use the iPad or Android tablet with an accessory keyboard to create content.

In some ways, the touch-enabled Windows 8 computer may be a way of extending the touch-driven computing experience you started to enjoy with your mobile-platform-based tablet. Here, you could think of working with a touch-enabled large-screen laptop as a main or sole computer with the tablet serving as a casual-use unit. Similarly equipping the desktop computer for touch computing, whether through purchasing an touch-capable all-in-one or adding a touch-enabled monitor to the existing desktop may achieve this goal.

Similarly, you may own a Windows 7 computer that has an integrated touchscreen or is hooked up to a touchscreen monitor. Here, if the computer is equipped to modern specifications such as a recent-standard processor and at least 2Gb of RAM, preferable at least 4Gb, it may be a good break to update this unit to Windows 8.

Considering a touch-enabled computer less productive

Some of you may find that the touch-enabled computer less productive. This can be so if you expect to enter a lot of text such as working on spreadsheets or preparing copy. It may not be a worry if you just compose short emails or work the Social Web.

These kind of users should place value on a keyboard as being part of the computer and use the touchscreen primarily for navigation and coarse selection purposes. The main screen in Windows 8 does work properly with the touchscreen as do applications that are written ground-up for Windows 8.

The touch-enabled virtual keyboard can come in to its own in a few situations such as entering foreign-language characters, especially those languages with non-Roman alphabets. This can be enabled if you can implement different keyboard layouts for the virtual keyboard and the hardware keyboard. As well, the virtual keyboard can be useful for entering confidential data if you use a desktop computer that you suspect has been equipped with a keystroke-capture hardware “bug”.

Windows RT computers

There are some tablets and detachable-keyboard hybrid computers out there that use ARM processors and run the Windows RT variant of this operating system. One example of this is the Microsoft Surface detachable-keyboard hybrid. These won’t be able to run the software that is currently available for the Windows platform because this software is written to work on the Intel microarchitecture.

Rather, you have to download extra software from the Windows Store which is the integrated app store for the Windows 8 / Windows RT platform. There will be some software like a home-student variant of Office on these computers so you can “get going” with this platform.

Software in the Windows 8 touchscreen world

The iOS and Android mobile operating environments have exposed the world of touchscreen computing to the consumer. This will lead to various expectations for how the user interface will be designed for various classes of program.

A good place to start for finding this software is the Windows Store which is the platform’s app store. As with all app stores, you may find yourself in a situation where you have to sift through the poor-quality “shareware-grade” software to find the good-quality gems. For example, I would start with the official clients for the online services you use or Windows-8 ports of known software titles from known authors.

Web-browsing

This will become a “chrome-free” application with you having to “drag” to the window edge to call up browser functions or the address bar. In Windows 8, there will be some reliance on the Charms Bar which is selected from the right of the screen for some functions like searching.

Office applications

This class of application would benefit from touch, more as a way to locate the cursor to a point in the text or a particular cell or object in the document. You would still use the cursor keys or the mouse for fine-tuning the location of the object.

These applications would have you touch items on the ribbon bars to instigate processes or select options. In some ways, you could see “full-screen” dashboards being used to select options such as creating new documents or applying themes.

Of course, the keyboard and mouse still remain as the tools to remain productive in these applications. Here this would encompass creating the content as well as manipulation parts of the content so you can be sure it looks right.

Gaming

Most game types can benefit from the touch-screen user interface for handling game objects, coarse menu selection or coarse navigation. Some games may exploit the multi-touch option for swivelling or panning the point-of-view or providing “true-to-form” manipulation of objects by allowing the player to turn or grip the object.

Of course there may be issues with slow touchscreens which may impact gameplay with games that require real-time interaction like action, sport or “real-time strategy” games. This would evolve over time as manufacturers create highly-responsive touchscreens that are suited to real-time interaction.

What could happen for most games is to require support for multiple user interfaces such as keyboard, mouse and touch with the ability for the player to determine which interface suits their current gameplay needs.

It is also worth knowing that some existing games may be touch-enabled “out of the box” or through the latest downloadable software patch. For example, Civilization V has been “touch-enabled” through the latest downloaded patch for those of you who have Windows 8.

How to go about buying in to the Windows 8 touchscreen world

I would suggest that you buy in to the Windows 8 touchscreen world as you purchase newer computer hardware. This is more so as more manufacturers introduce this hardware to the market in increasing numbers and at increasingly-different price points.

Convertibles, to some extent sliders, are a good portable solution when you like entering a lot of text as well as wanting to take advantage of the touchscreen as a tablet. The detachable-keyboard hybrid would suit those of us who want the lightweight tablet but like to be ready to do text entry.

If you have the traditional desktop computer as your main computer, whether as the classic “tower” look or a low-profile chassis, I would suggest that you factor the cost of a touch-enabled monitor in to the total upgrade cost for Windows 8. This could be something to evolve to at a later stage as you consider upgrading the monitor. On the other hand, an “all-in-one” desktop can satisfy your needs if you want something more elegant and less cumbersome.

Conclusion

Once Windows 8 gets a stronger foothold, whether through people purchasing new computer equipment or upgrading existing Windows systems to this operating system, touchscreen computing will start to acquire a newer momentum.