Windows 8

[Alex]

While I'm hardly a Windows hater (I was, for the most part, perfectly fine with Vista), Windows 7 has been extremely good for me. Good features, super stable.

As far as touchscreens go, when in a static situation I don't really have much interest. We have some here (to better emulate development for iPad/iPod) and nobody uses them outside of that niche, even though they could.

Dragging stuff around a 21" monitor is more annoying than you'd think and when you're doing pixel perfect stuff the precision is just awful. Admittedly that doesn't apply to most people it hasn't made me want one of my own.

As far as ergonomics go, I'll be stuck because no matter how good touchscreen gets, I am not going to type in a 250 page functional spec on either a virtual keyboard or a vertical screen. So the environment will still need to be keyboard-centric in its design.

But for a mobile device, cool.

[Ghoulish Delight]

Originally Posted by Alex

As far as ergonomics go, I'll be stuck because no matter how good touchscreen gets, I am not going to type in a 250 page functional spec on either a virtual keyboard or a vertical screen. So the environment will still need to be keyboard-centric in its design.

Yeah, this is the reason I find it highly unlikely touchscreens will ever be the dominant form factor. But they will become more and more present in applications where typing and precision screen object manipulation aren't required. Especially things are moving in a direction where the touch screen devices and the standard keyboard input devices are compatible. Then touch screen and standard systems can be mixed in an environment without having to fight through issues of file formats etc.