One of the highlights of this week’s Windows 8 Consumer Preview event was when Microsoft Windows lead Steve Sinofsky turned a giant HD display into the world’s largest touchscreen, Windows 8 “computer.”
OK, he didn’t actually transform anything when he unveiled Windows 8 Consumer Preview during Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Sinofsky, who is Microsoft’s president of Windows and Windows Live Division, simply revealed the true nature of the 82-inch display. It hung almost unnoticed at the back of the stage for much of the presentation, until he and Michael Anguilo, Corporate VP of Windows Planning and Ecosystem, walked over and started touching the Windows 8 Metro interface on the giant display. The screen is not a computer by itself. It still has to connect to a computer, in this case running Windows 8.
Built by Perceptive Pixel, the 82-inch panel of optically bonded Gorilla Glass beat the previous optically bonded Gorilla Glass leader, Microsoft’s own 40-inch Surface 2, which it built with Samsung. Sinofsky and Anguilo explained that the screen can accept up to 10 people touching it at once, though Perceptive Perceptive Pixel’s own site puts the number of touch points at “unlimited.” That bonding, by the way, essentially removes the parallax, putting your fingers as close as possible to the pixels. As a result, the screen makes it look like you’re actually touching and moving on-screen objects. It also works with a stylus, where the “sub-millimeter touch precision” can come in particularly handy.
During the demonstration, the Windows 8 metro interface operated smoothly and the Microsoft exec explained that it doesn’t take a big, powerful PC to drive the big screen. They showed off a hand-sized AMD, Dual-core block of a system that could run the Perceptive Pixel screen. They never said, though, that such a box was running the demonstration we saw that day.
Check out the short video and then drop into the comments to help us envision what you’d do with a giant, 82-inch touch screen in your home or office.
Inside the Windows 8 Consumer Preview Event
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