Okay, so I'm new to this stuff but if I could write Taiwanese we'd all have this. A thin self adhesive strip that you stick to the edge of your computer screen facing across the screen to the far side with infra-red light beams and receivers all the way along. At the start of the strip there's a tiny wire that leads off to a USB plug that carries the signals. When you've stuck the strip all the way round to the start point again, you simply cut off the excess with a pair of scissors (you may need to make a small cut in the strip at the corners of the screen to get a nice clean right angle - but that's okay because the tiny micro wires that carry all the signals are embedded in the leading edge). Slip on the termination cap on the end and that's all the hard work.
After the "new hardware found" wizard has finally finished with it's balloon tips and you've installed the accompanying software, automatic callibration takes place as the IR omitters and receivers find their "dancing" partners on the opposite edge of the screen. You can now happily throw away your mouse and if you want to select something on the screen you just touch it. Double-clicking is a simple double-tap! You can even click and drag (just as long as your not eating nachos at the same time). If you have big fingers like me, you set your appearance settings to have larger icons and larger buttons. Now I can select an item just by touching it on the screen, copy it by touching the copy icon, minimize the window by touching that little line in the right hand corner (it's not a mac so I only need to touch it once) and paste it into my other application behind by touching the paste icon. Hang on, did I just use two hands? Surely I must have, it was so darn quick. No, I don't think I did that time. And I didn't have to shift that mouse cursor that's always getting in the way - because there isn't one! If you have kids, the space where your mouse used to be can now be kept clear for a jumbo sized box of screen wipes. And every one sold comes with a free set of rubber thimbles to protect your screen against your teenage daughter 3-inch nails and a pack of rub-on/peel-off plastic films to safeguard against your lovely little 4-year-old neices' crayola art set.
Touch screens will no longer be reserved for ATM's and high-end expensive computers, but will be available for everyone on every computer! (Minimum specification Windows XP or higher, loads of RAM, stacks of disk space)-- megauk, Nov 06 2003 Tablet overview http://www.transmet...w.cfm?articleID=499 [Eugene, Oct 17 2004] Touchscreen retrofit kits #1 http://www.tmc.co.n...creen/cap_retro.htm [phoenix, Oct 17 2004] Touchscreen retrofit kits #2 http://www.trolltou...s/addonscreens.html [phoenix, Oct 17 2004] Touchscreen retrofit kits #3 http://www.kioskmedia.com/product/ [phoenix, Oct 17 2004] baked by the Microsoft Tablet. -link
I wouldn't want to have my arm up in the air all the time, personally--and it would take a lot of the fun out of PC gaming.-- Eugene, Nov 06 2003 Why limit it to the screen surface? There's an arcade game that has a "frame" in front that you stand within, and it senses your motion to control the point of view of the game. Make a PC version of that and you'd be able to wave your hands, gesture and such and have the PC react. Wouldn't everyone love to give their PC the finger?-- krelnik, Nov 07 2003 I remember reading about somebody working on a monitor base that could detect where a screen was touched by measuring various force vectors relative to one another and translating that to a position on the screen. Interestingly, if that worked, the monitor surround could probably be included in the "touchable" area.-- half, Nov 07 2003 IR omitters?
Once I read an article on street lamps with the phrase "light-omitting diodes". I imagined a beam of darkness spreading out from the device.-- omegatron, Nov 20 2004 random, halfbakery