Chris Flores, the Director of the Windows Client Communications Team has posted up some information the new Multi-Touch feature in Windows 7 that was demonstrated at the Wall Street Journal’s D: All Things Digital conference. I love touch screen’s and this is a great development and is the next step in the evolution of touch devices working off the code used in Microsoft’s Surface. I am hoping existing touch based devices will work with Multi-Touch or if new hardware is needed. I would love to use this on the Fujitsu P1610,HP HTX1000/TX2000, EloTouch Screen that we have.
Video: Multi-Touch in Windows 7
For years Microsoft has been investing in many forms of natural input in order to simplify the way people interact with their PC’s and devices. The advent of the original Windows graphical user interface forever changed the way people used their PC’s. Today, advances in pen and handwriting technology in Windows Vista offers students a natural and intuitive way to capture searchable notes and diagrams in the classroom. Others are using this technology to quietly capture pen based notes during meetings. Speech recognition, something which was once considered science fiction, is enabling many Windows Vista users to see, hear, and use their computers for the very first time.
Last year, at the Wall Street Journal’s D: All Things Digital conference, Bill Gates introduced a groundbreaking new computing experience called Surface. Surface harnesses touch and multi-touch capabilities to provide users with a natural way to interact directly with computing devices. Expect to see the table-like Surface devices in hotels, retail establishments, restaurants and public entertainment venues…
Tonight, at this year’s D:All Things Digital conference, Julie Larson-Green showed Walt Mossberg how a few of the multi-touch innovations first previewed in Surface will ultimately enhance the next version of Windows. A transcript of the demo can be found here: http://d6.allthingsd.com/20080527/gates_ballmer/.
It looks pretty cool and would make doing somethings a bit easier (I know a few graphic artists, UX engineers, and Digital animation people are dying for this type of interface) and we would be one step closer to the computer in Minority Report like the one demonstrated by Jeff Han at TED a few years ago. 
