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Some Windows 8 Laptops May Come With Built-In Kinect Sensors
An anonymous reader writes to point out reports that Asus is "working on a new laptop that will include Kinect gestures and will be compatible with Windows 8," and adds, "What does this mean for the consumer? Portable gestures in Windows 8!" Wired has an article based on the same report, which mentions also the prospect of devices incorporating alternative gesture-tracking software from SoftKinectic and others.
I hope they make it have fine enough resolution it will work for challenged people.
What really has me excited about Windows 8 is Kinect. I think we're going to see a big transformation in the landscape of user interface in the next several years pushing us towards device-less interfaces.
Granted, this stuff isn't a replacement, it's a supplement. So don't think I'm preaching the death of touch or mouse and keyboard. The more options of well developed and useful interfaces we have the better.
It's ok, someone will make a Metro app that unlocks the loader with a middle-finger gesture. (The devs just need a new name because "Angry Flipped Birds" won them a C&D...)
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
Kinect in the living room makes sense - voice/gesture commands in place of a remote control is surprisingly useful (when it works). On a laptop though -- what does the Kinect give that a touch screen can't do better? I mean outside of adult entertainment...
On the other hand, if it can support gestures with your eyes, then it might be useful. For example, gaze at a specific window/monitor and having it automatically come into focus could be quite a convenience ... but I don't think we'll see that for a while.
BSOD - you can simply bang your head on the table to restart your computer!
Don't worry - all your data will be safe in the cloud anyway!
"We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run over." - Aneurin Bevan
someone talking to themselves walking down the street would have been considered insane or on drugs
now, they just have a bluetooth headset on and are perfectly normal
today, someone sitting alone in the park making random jerky gestures would be someone on drugs, or insane
in 5 years, that's just someone using their kinect-enabled laptop
it's all part of technology's goal of virtualizing the experience of tourette syndrome and schizophrenia for us all
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Windows8... With a touch inspired graphical interface... And someone thinks the solution is to include a touch less hardware interface...
I'll skip all the jokes about keeping away from Wwindows... Or a hands-off approach to management, etc. (or not...)
I've been making gestures MS products for years. Call it feedback. Hell, I feel like making a gesture right now. The big change? Now we can be ignored 4 ways (keyboard, mouse, sound, gesture).
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
Some people were complaining about Siri, saying that for some reason they didn't want to be seen out in public, talking on... a phone.
Well I'd take that over being out in public with my mobile device looking like I was being attacked by an invisible cloud of bees.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Way to kill an excellent concept, MicroIdiots!
Voice control largely failed because nobody wanted to be caught dead talking to his computer and it just doesn't work at all in office environments.
Putting gesture control into notebooks must have been the winner of the "stupid idea of the year" contest, and for some reason it got mixed up with the actual product plan.
Seriously, on a train, in the airport lounge, on the airplane - that's when you really wish your notebook had gesture controls, right? And when you pitch your product to your business partners and give a crucial presentation, that's exactly the moment where you want to rely on more-or-less reliable gesture controls instead of a mouse or keyboard click or remote control.
Totally. The only place dumber than notebooks would've been the Zune.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
"OW!", that fucking hurt :S
It wont be the same and Windows 7 will be there. That was only true for the first 3 months of Vista where OEMS had a rude awakening.
I am struggling to get my parents to leave XP. There excuse is its a new computer they bought in Christmas 2007 ( a year after Vista). My father is not a computere genius but he reads the news and knows Vista was a POS and Dell advertised their XP 64 line of XPS for consumers and not just business users.
Most OEMs this time arround will learn the lesson and offer both or have drivers. The driver model is windows 7 64 bit for Windows 8 and many corporations are just trying to leave XP now and will still be this summer when Windows 8 hits the streets. Windows 7 will be the new XP of the 2010s. Like Vista Metro is not mature yet and has some many issues for desktop productivity.Windows 7 will install fine and OEMs this time around will anticipate a demand for Windows 7 after the Vista disaster.
Who knows MS may work ont he desktop and add the start button back, add overlapping Windows, add a task bar for multiple apps on big screens, and better mouse controls by this fall so who knows. I think GUI designers are so used to whiny users who bitch about change that they assume every complaint is just that rather than realize the lack of input oriented, multitasking friendly, UI, is a serious problem. Not a WA Wa where is my start button, etc.
http://saveie6.com/
I have not met a single person who likes Windows 8. Average Joes look at the screen funny and then ask why is this computer pretending to be a cell phone?
Metro on Windows Phone 7 rocks and has great reviews but I am not blowing dough to leave tweets on tweetorama as the vast majority of users use PCs for work now and let their phones and tablets waste such time.
I think it will bomb. Especially in the corporate environment. Many will be resentful and angry as after staying with IE 6/XP for 12 years the last thing they want is to use a 3 year old OS and standardize on IE 8 and get shit up the creek yet again (this time in only 7 years instead of 12). If they choose Windows 8 the users will FREAK OUT not being able to have 5 windows open at once, no task bar, no search function like their is in Windows 7, and people using tweeteroma instead of office working. The METRO versions of Office are just cheap notepad like functionality. Switch to desktop and you can't stay there. Since search is gone when you hit the Windows key you are back in the annoying Cell phone land UI. The gui is schzo and if Windows 9 gets rid of the desktop all hell will break loose and Macs might not look that bad in the corporate envrionment. /bitch ... just not with multitasking with big monitors. Metro 2.0 needs to address these shortcomings.
I worked freelancing and in a pc shop wipping Windows Vista and 7 with XP. Yes consumers are actually willing to pay money to go back to Xp as late as 2010. Seriously. Ms is right but wrong in so many ways. The gui is the future
http://saveie6.com/
When they started detecting distance.
Kinect and WebGL might make all those POV porn movies a lot more interesting. It could also give a new metric for Google over just how much fapping a web site generates.
Secure boot is only required for the ARM version of Windows 8. MS has explicitly said that you'll be able to install any OS you want on x86 based Windows 8 machines. Do some research before you make accusations and you won't make yourself look like a fool.
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/114173-windows-8-secure-boot-calm-down-microsoft-is-simply-copying-apple
Exactly -- it's not just a camera. Besides which, if "stereoscopic camera" gets a special name instead of just being called "camera", why doesn't this other camera?
The Kinect sensor works similarly to a stereoscopic camera, except:
1. It works in the IR spectrum instead of the visible.
2. Instead of making two recordings and correlating after the fact, one of them is actually fixed and projected (and this is the part that isn't a camera).
For that reason I would expect the approach to fundamentally be more accurate than stereoscopic cameras, not less, under most circumstances, and particularly in low-light conditions. I tried to find comparisons online but mostly got qualitative university student reports on how the Kinect works without quantitative data before I got bored. Best one I found is:
http://www.cs.illinois.edu/class/fa11/cs498dh/lectures/Lecture%2025%20-%20How%20the%20Kinect%20Works%20-%20CP%20Fall%202011.pdf
A little over halfway down it compares pros and cons with natural light stereoscopic cameras.