Today is Day 2 of PDC09, and attendees were given a nice “treat.” During this morning’s keynote, Windows and Windows Live Division President Steven Sinofsky took the stage and announced that all attendees* of this year’s PDC will be given an Acer Aspire 1420P Convertible Tablet PC. This is being done to show our gratitude for the support we received by PDC attendees in the development process of Windows 7. This PC enables developers to leverage many of the unique Windows 7 capabilities including multitouch – which I will talk about further down in this post.

This laptop promotion is the result of a collaborative effort with Acer, whom we worked closely with to have these laptops ready for PDC. This PC is not yet available in the US (Acer has not yet announced pricing and availability for this PC) so that makes this “PDC Edition” of the laptop exclusive to PDC attendees.

 

The Aspire 1420P PDC Edition comes with the following specs:

• Windows 7 Ultimate x64
• Processor: Intel Celeron CPU SU2300 @ 1.2GHz
• Memory: 2GB (Supports up to 8GB)
• Display: 11.6” Widescreen |1366x768 Resolution
• Graphics: Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 4500MHD
• Network: 10/100/1000 Ethernet | Intel Wi-Fi Link 1000 802.11b/g/Draft-N
• Mobile Broadband: 3G
• Storage: 250GB

For a more complete and detailed list of specs, click here.

The Aspire 1420P comes with 3 USB ports, 1 HDMI port for connecting to HDTVs and monitors, a VGA port, Ethernet port, and a headphone and microphone jack. The laptop features a unique design with a metallic textured design just above the keyboard and a metal hinge for converting the laptop into Tablet mode. Its design is essentially a small laptop with Tablet PC features. It’s slim, light, and has a small footprint – making it easy to carry around. This laptop features a CTRL+ALT+DEL button and a Flip 3D button. Also, the Aspire 1420P uses the Windows 7 Sensor and Location Platform to adjust the screen depending on which way you hold the PC (in Tablet mode). For example: if you’re holding it a landscape position, the screen will display in landscape for you. Vice versa if you hold it in a portrait position.

   

We worked with Acer to image the laptops with some great software – including the beta release of Office 2010.

• Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010 Beta
• Microsoft Touch Pack for Windows 7
• Windows Live Essentials
• Windows Virtual PC with Windows XP Mode
• Microsoft Security Essentials
• Corel Paint it! touch

Because the Aspire 1420P supports Windows Touch, we’ve included the Microsoft Touch Pack for Windows 7 as well as Corel Paint it! touch.

Corel Paint it! touch allows you to use your fingers to draw and paint. You can also turn your photos into paintings too.

One application I’ve written about recently is Amazon’s Kindle for PC. Amazon has released Kindle for PC and it works great on this laptop. You can download the beta of Kindle for PC today here. You can use multitouch gestures to move from page to page on the Kindle book you are reading. You can also zoom in and out with ease. For more on the Kindle for PC app, check out my demo video here on this post. In Tablet mode, reading books with Kindle for PC is very nice.

The Aspire 1420P also sports Mobile Broadband. With Windows 7, using Mobile Broadband is easier than ever before. Windows 7 will automatically detect if a Mobile Broadband connection is available (after inserting your SIM card).

You can choose to connect to the Mobile Broadband connection where you will be required enter subscription details from your mobile carrier. No need to mess with 3^rd party Mobile Broadband connection utilities.

Not only can you use multitouch with the Aspire 1420P, you can also use it as a Tablet. The Aspire 1420P is perfect for writing down notes using Microsoft OneNote 2010 (my favorite Office app).

Overall, this PC will be great for all the developers attending PDC to experience many of Windows 7’s new features and to be able to develop with those features in mind.

* This promotion is for full-conference attendees who are onsite at PDC. It is not available to Microsoft attendees, members of the media, government employees, staff, speakers, crew, volunteers, day pass attendees, guests, or Workshop-only attendees.

Today, Popular Science released their annual Best Of What’s New for 2009 which recognized this year’s top 100 innovations. Windows Touch in Windows 7 has won Popular Science’s Best of What’s New Award this year in the computing category. Very cool!

Speaking of Windows Touch – USA Today’s Ed Baig takes a closer look at Windows Touch in Windows 7 and multitouch on PCs in general. He suggests Windows 7 could spur multitouch adoption in PCs. I’ve been playing with the HP TouchSmart tx2 and have a couple of multitouch monitors on the way for my office here in Redmond. If you haven’t had a chance to experience Windows Touch on Windows 7, head to your favorite retailer and give it a spin.

Windows 7 will change the ways you interact with your PC. How you ask? Windows Touch.

Touch refers to the way Windows lets you interact directly with a computer using a finger. Compared to using a mouse, keyboard, or pen, touch can be much more engaging, natural, and convenient.

The Windows Touch technology in Windows 7 is an evolution of the technology that is rooted in Windows Vista. In Windows Vista, single-touch input improved the interaction when using the pen stylus and the mouse of earlier Tablet PC platforms. With Windows 7, users can directly manipulate their computer environment through multitouch for the first time. Users can use a variety of gestures directly on their computer screen to move data, including:

• Touch, or mouse-such as behavior: tap, double-tap, right-click, drag, and select.
• Touch gestures- such as Flicks (navigational and editing).
• Multitouch gestures-- such as zooming in, zooming out, panning, and rotating.

A Windows 7 PC powered by NVIDIA GPUs will deliver faster, more engaging Windows Touch experiences. NVIDIA GPUs are well known for accelerating 3D interfaces. The Windows 7 Aero desktop, now designed using the DirectX 10 API and designed for Windows Touch, is no exception. From the new taskbar previews to Aero Peek, Flip, Snap, and Shake, NVIDIA GPU provides a snappy 3D experience. Windows 7 also uses the GPU to reduce memory consumption by half by eliminating the need to keep a second copy of each window in system memory. This frees up system memory for other applications and keeps your PC responsive.

Multi-touch capability was designed into the core of Windows 7 and is a perfect fit for the new highly visual GPU-accelerated applications like Cooliris and Super Loiloscope. Cooliris lets you browse the web in 3D and now with the addition of Windows Touch, the experience becomes even more immersive. With Super Loiloscope you can have fun creating videos and applying effects with the touch of your finger.

Touch input does not replace the keyboard and mouse, it enhances them. Touch is a natural and intuitive way to interact with you PC when you are doing common computing tasks such as:

• Web browsing
• Interacting with photos
• Playing games
• Organizing music and video (creating playlists, sorting media, and organizing content)
• Reading and sorting e-mail
• Using documents
• Managing a Windows workspace

As you can see, your Windows 7 Touch experience will be faster, smoother, and more immersive with an NVIDIA GPU in your PC.

I had the pleasure of attending our HP press tour to launch many of our new products this month, and let me tell you - across all of our product lines, we’re offering better performing and more visually pleasing desktops than ever before and they’re all Windows 7 ready. You’ll find that we offer a variety of quality desktop PC’s for consumers, small businesses, Enterprise and Public Sector customers – from the stylish HP TouchSmart 600 for the home to our powerful HP Compaq 6000 Pro series for business.

Check out some of the highlights that we shared on the press tour: 

Touch really does make the computing experience come alive. We’ve been innovating in Touch since 1983 when we launched the first touch PC, the HP 150. Fast forward to 2009 and HP is still investing in both hardware and software to help people reduce the complexity in computing. We’ve worked with Microsoft to share HP’s learnings and award-winning touch technology and best practices for integration into Windows 7. The deep collaboration between the companies offers customers the most advanced computing experience they have grown to expect from HP. 

We all know that customers want a great experience, interaction and the total “it was made just for me” feeling when they buy a product. Just recently, I was in a la00rge scale, popular hotel lobby. In a period of about 30 minutes, my husband and several other people walked up to this PC and touched it to start interacting…..not seeing the disclaimer at the bottom of the screen.

That’s right, it said: “THIS IS NOT A TOUCH SCREEN”. To that end, HP is striving to create personal, engaging experiences through applications that you absolutely can touch. The finger is the natural pointing device.  One of my favorite applications that we showcased on the press tour is the HP TouchSmart RecipeBox. In talking with customers, we found that many people have put their PCs in the kitchen.  The TouchSmart RecipeBox lets aspiring chefs discover, explore and learn recipes by voice or touch commands.  It also lets you collect, format and store all your favorites together in a “digital” cookbook that is all yours. 

Not only has HP created specific applications that meet your needs, but you can also see it in the HP TouchSmart software. Partners recognize the PC is a critical piece to the entertainment, communication and multi-media equation and have developed applications with us that work in the touch environment. There are built-in, interactive tiles with key applications from third parties from the likes of Hulu, Twitter, and Netflix.The Hulu TouchSmart tile provides quick access to Hulu’s vast library of hit TV shows, movies and video clips with the touch of a finger. Users can browse, search and watch their favorite comedies, dramas, sci-fi and web-original shows from nearly 200 leading content companies. In addition, users with Hulu.com accounts also can access their queue, subscriptions and viewing history.

Touch is not limited to consumers; there are a number of businesses who are investigating or using HP TouchSmarts already to deliver a better experience to their customers.  At Compass Bank in Houston, the bank is able to extend more services by providing “virtual loan officers” by using TouchSmarts with Webcams at their banks but saving costs by locating the loan officers centrally; they provide a unique, personalized experience to each customer and get the forms submitted and approved in less time. Priscilla of Boston is helping their customers find the perfect wedding dress using HP TouchSmarts (if you’ve ever been married, you know how the dress choice is a very “personal” decision).  Lastly, Sheraton Hotels are using TouchSmart PCs to provide a customized experience for their patrons with immersive touch technology that brings interaction, connectivity and play to the Link@Sheraton – the heart of the Sheraton brand’s new lobby experience. We’ve even launched a new product line of Digital Displays including the 42” HPLD4200tm Interactive Digital Sign which brings touch to more people in more places (hospitality, education, and point-of-sale). 

Besides Touch, HP has expanded on the Compaq Portfolio and brand for the home and business PC user. The Compaq portfolio delivers great design, strong performance and reliability that customers need for ‘just right computing’ at ‘just the right price.’ The Compaq Presario 4010f desktop PC delivers all the productivity of a traditional PC in a sleek, streamlined desktop design. Then there’s the Compaq 500B Series desktop PC which are designed for the budget-conscious small businesses that need PCs that are easy to set up, use and expand. The Compaq 500B and 505B desktop PCs, available with Intel or AMD processors respectively, offer businesses efficient and reliable performance with Windows 7, and configurable hard drives and memory.

Lastly, I wanted to mention this idea of “year of the refresh.” Customers have told us that they have held onto their desktop PCs for 4-5 years. We know the recessions around the world have squeezed budgets. We have heard you ask questions about the environmental impact of the products you buy and how you can manage your costs when it comes to power usage. We know people have been anticipating Windows 7. At HP, we used your feedback and planned for this; we designed a portfolio of products to hit the right price and performance equation for you.  As of today, all of our PC’s are Windows 7 ready. When you’re using your new HP desktop PC at home or work, our testing shows you’ll get up to three times better overall performance because of our HP hardware combined with Windows 7 (when compared to a similar PC from a few years ago.) Boot time is 45 percent faster, suspend time is 50 percent faster and resume time is 90 percent faster. All of these things will help you save time, be more efficient and have a better PC experience. (The testing was conducted by HP Desktop R&D)

These are just a few of the HP Desktop products that launched in the last month. Be sure to check out all of our cool business products here for business products and here for our home and home office products and upgrade to the PC you deserve.

Anneliese Olson
Director of Desktops for HP

Windows Touch holds the promise of fundamentally changing the way users interact with their devices. One of the ways this will happen is by opening up the power of multi-touch to new audiences, which I believe will transform how design and engineering professionals currently interface with the tools of their trade.

The powerful functionality afforded by Windows 7 will also open up new possibilities for other professionals, allowing them to meet their simpler design needs without the steep learning curve of industrial-strength design software like AutoCAD, which has been an industry standard for over 27 years.

In this respect, Windows 7 is helping Autodesk to further democratize design.

Today in New York at the Windows 7 launch event, Autodesk will be showcasing a new technology product that we’ve developed for design enthusiasts to do simple and elegant drawing and drafting. Project Cooper will allow users to easily and quickly create professional-looking drawings and sketches, or precise drawings with real-world dimensions, and share this information with others who may be working in AutoCAD or with other professional applications.

Project Cooper has been engineered to take full advantage of Windows 7 support for multi-touch, including panning, zooming, rotation and flick functionality – which makes this application easier and more approachable for both mobile users and anyone using a touch-enabled machine.

Windows 7 support for multi-touch will be especially important in situations when using a keyboard and a mouse is frankly impractical. During our research we met folks like interior designers, home remodelers, event planners, and contractors who wanted an easy way to be productive when away from the office, such as visiting a project site. That’s why I believe that Windows 7 has the potential to significantly change the life of mobile professionals—by allowing them to perform complex tasks on the go using simple, intuitive gestures.

Overall my experience working on Windows 7 to develop Project Cooper has been that almost everything is faster and simpler, and we know this will be a welcome development for our customers. This is the same philosophy that guided the creation of Project Cooper – the ability to start sketching right away—without any training, with an intuitive user interface and straightforward interaction – just like Windows 7.

For the new Windows 7 users, not just those with multi-touch machines, we encourage you to put your new OS to the test and download the Project Cooper – it is being released as a technology preview so you can try it out ahead of the final version – and be sure to tell us what you think!

Amjad Hanif
Senior Director, Product Management
Emerging Products

Today’s launch is something Corel’s software teams have been looking forward to for many months. Windows 7 and Windows Touch are the most exciting things we’ve seen in computing for a long time.

To coincide with the launch of Windows 7, Corel has released two all-new products that re-invent the typical menu-driven user experience, offering consumers more expressive and interactive creative environments. Engaging and dramatically different UI designs let users get the most out of Windows 7 by providing a more natural way of interacting with your PC. It’s all about removing barriers to creativity. Nothing gets between you and your inspiration.

Windows Touch has given our software teams the opportunity to push the limits of user experience. Sometimes computing can feel a bit detached – you sit at your computer, input info with your keyboard and mouse, and see the results displayed on screen. But with our new interface designs and Windows Touch, the computing experience gets an entirely new personal dimension, solidifying the PC’s place as the creative hub of the home.

Watch the video called “A new kind of software” at www.corel.com/windows7 to see Corel’s user experience designer, Jennifer Fraser, explain how Windows 7 and Windows Touch impacted our software design. Jennifer discusses how this amazing new OS offered Corel’s development team the opportunity to offer new experiences that foster creativity and build stronger connections between users and their content, whether it’s a painting, family snapshot or home movie. Jennifer explains our overall approach to designing consumer creative products and gives a quick glimpse at two of our new Windows Touch-enabled products, Corel Digital Studio 2010 and Corel Paint it! Touch, which was announced today.

With our long history of working closely with Microsoft, particularly around the introductions of new operating systems, we speak from experience when we say that they’ve really got it right with Windows 7. This new platform offers unprecedented power and stability, enabling Corel to deliver products that help customers create, connect and interact with their home PC in ways never before possible.

Joe Roberts
Executive Vice President – Products