Microsoft News Tracker

Last night was the kickoff of the D6 conference and Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer were the opening act. Aside from a little light comedy and some reminiscences, the big news was a teaser for Windows 7 which will have multi-touch support for PCs with the requisite touch screen hardware.

The applications shown seem to be PC versions (e.g. no bar coded foreign objects) of those demonstrated with Microsoft’s Surface table kiosk system (aka "Big ass table") which was demoed last year at D5. Touch screens have been around for Windows seemingly forever via third parties and while it may be useful for kiosk builders to have the support baked into Windows 7, it is hardly the kind of thing that will draw the crowds. Still, it makes a nice demo and that’s the point after all.