Multi-Touch support in Windows 7

What Microsoft has officially shown of Windows 7 is not much and their extremely tight-lipped approach has led to some confusion and false rumors in the past. The D6 Conference took place yesterday and Microsoft, for the first time, demonstrated one of the features of Windows 7 that is most likely part of the retail version.

The demonstration was about the multi-touch support of Windows 7. The system used to demonstrate the feature was a Dell Latitude XL notebook running Windows 7. The multi-touch technology was borrowed from Microsoft Surface. The interface looks responsive and Microsoft’s Julie Larson-Green is demonstrating various applications for the touch interface including photo manipulation, a mapping application and arts like drawing and playing music.

It does look fluid and nice but the real question is if this is a mass market feature. I would say it is not, at least not for many years to come. I can see that multi-touch makes a lot of sense for various groups but not for the masses. The real problem is probably that touch screens are not mainstream yet either, at least not when looking at desktop computers and notebooks.

It’s slowly making a way into the mobile market though and it could very well be that the technology will eventually take over the notebook market as well, but probably not in the next two years.