Don’t Touch My Screen!

touch screen

“To touch or not to touch that is the question?”

I thought I would put an article together on the use of touchscreens. I recently tweeted about the use of touchscreen on laptops and desktops and how people are having to lean forward to use the touch screen and then back to type and then forward. Which might be great exercise but may also cause health problems.

The question is has Microsoft seen the mobile revolution and thought this is great for the office and laptop market and not thought this through? I must admit I sit at home in an evening and have my phone by my side and my tablet PC. I use the touch all the time and rarely change my position.

But when I work at my desk I use a standard desktop computer, keyboard and mouse and have done for years. Now, the for years argument, is not one I normally use because if that was the case we would never have changed anything and we would all still be using telegrams to send messages.

However, in this case I wonder if the future interaction is purely touch and voice activation and typing will be a thing of the past?

One article I read online from my friends at IT Portal said,

“In my research leading up to the Windows 8 announcement, I never heard people voice a desire for touch as a way to navigate among apps. They were quite comfortable using a mouse and track pad as they had been doing for years. Even now our research shows that many folks feel that lifting their hands off their keyboard or mouse to touch the screen is unnatural.”

Of course this doesn’t mean that we have to stay the same as we have always been, but some thought in how these things are forced upon us maybe necessary. Apple has not yet put touch screens on their MacBook’s or imac’s.

What are your thoughts on this?

There’s an App for that………

appsThe phrase that Apple have made famous by their Apple store advertising. We all expect an App for almost anything we want to do. We are getting so used to doing things on the hop now that everything is mobile. Smart phones for smarter working.

We thought we would look at the current race for having the most Apps available for users. The race is between the three main players, even though there are really, at this stage, only two, Apple and Android. Microsoft and Blackberry (RIM) are around but playing catch-up in this volatile market place.

Here are the latest stats at time of writing this article.

Apple store                                                        775,000+ apps available

Android Market Place                                        667,647+ apps available

Microsoft Store                                                  150,000+  apps available

The obvious question is, do we need all these apps and if so how did we ever perform without them. Now remember I am a self-confessed geek and use a good number of apps and technology that I never used in the past and find them to be some of the most useful kit I have and now rely on them, probably too much. That feeling of when your phone decides to not work, being the equivalent of your right arm being cut off. So I am not anti apps and new ways of doing things.

Apps tie you in

I have also found that apps tie people in, so there is another reason to be on the front foot when producing them. I told a friend of mine that they should try an Android based phone and see what they thought and they said that they couldn’t as they had spent so much money at the Apple store on Apps and other Apple related stuff that they would be losing out on a lot of money they had spent. So there is motive in the madness of App production.

Your Thoughts

What are your thoughts on the Apps race? Do you over rely on them or do you think there is an app that would be great and nobody has produced it yet. Or are you just an Angry Birds gamer and like all the gaming that can happen in the mobile arena.

Whatever your take, this is a race worth watching and we certainly will be keeping our eye on what is happening in this area. Follow our blog and we will keep you up to date on all things techie.

Ian Thomson

Founder/Trainer/Consultant

Windows 8 is on the shelves, will you change?

windows 8Microsoft have launched the latest incarnation of the Windows operating system and it’ s again a major revamp to tap into the mobile tablet market, where they have been lagging behind for some time.

Is it too little too late? Well that remains to be seen, they still have 2.5 billion desktop users worldwide and they have to be maintained and brought into the next operating system. This proved hard with Widows Vista where less that 30 % adopted the new operating system. Windows 7 redeemed them slightly and has now been adopted widely and clients and enterprise networks moving into Windows 7 with gusto now. Of course this was on the back of Microsoft dropping Windows XP, by far best incarnation so far and the one that just runs and runs.

So what of Windows 8?

Well it is a change again from what we are all used to and is designed primarily to attack the tablet market and mobile devices. The Start menu has changed and the desktop layout is completely changed.

In the main guts of it the system itself has changed, better power usage, more difficult to hack, faster to boot up as it leaves some of the operating system on a hard drive space in a memory slot so it can boot quicker, similar to the hibernation system we have had in Windows for some time and it works. There will be the inevitable learning curve and complaints about where everything now can be found. But that’s progression for you.

Adoption

As usual we predict that the larger organisations will stay with an older version of the operating system until Windows 8 has been proven and the first or even second service pack is launched.

This is always the case and nothing new for Microsoft. The biggest up take will be home users and the new computer purchases, which will drive the sales forward. Also the launch of Microsoft Surface, which is another name for the Windows 8 on a tablet. So the tablet market may take off big time. So look out for bargains of the older stock that retailers will get rid of.

Will you change?

Well it is this author’s opinion that it is a personal matter of the individual user as to when you change; just make sure that all your existing apps will work with Windows 8.

For companies it is always advisable to wait for the fixes to hit before adoption on a large scale.

Check out the buzz on the Internet now about Windows 8 and read as much as you can before you believe all the hype and take that plunge.

Good luck.

Ian Thomson

Founder/Senior Trainer/Consultant