I've got some money to spend and was looking at some HP touchscreen monitors and was wondering if anyone here had any experience with them? I love them, I love the whole concept. It's like a big iPhone, and while I know thats a stretch it may soon evolve in to one. I was planning on using a physical keyboard with one with a desktop down below and was just curious as to whether or not anyone had any tips for my shopping?

We have them at work and they're great, due to the in-car application. We have heavy-duty Motorola screens, though, so that probably won't help you much.

Has anyone here ever tried the Windows Media Center interface on a touch screen? I'm curious if it responds as well as it does with a remote or mouse.

Touchscreens work okay, but they're simply not ready for primetime on the desktop. Windows, even with the changes in 7, is simply not finger friendly.

Yeah, I definitely believe they're a gimmick on the desktop. Certainly the best application in the home would be with a frontend suitable for the primary location the monitor is located in.

I understand touchscreen's place in public places and such.

But I don't understand what a touchscreen on a personal home computer offers better than a mouse + keyboard normally does. Pecking away at a screen doesn't sound so efficient to me, especially with the mouse right next to me.

Agreed, way too lazy to constantly move my arm to touch a screen. I'd rather rest it on a desk and move a mouse around. On that note, extended use of a touchscreen monitor would probably kill your arm. Try holding your arm straight out for 10+ minutes.

I saw one at Fry's, played with it for about 2 minutes. Total gimmick unless the computer is dedicated to one sole purpose, doesn't need a keyboard or mouse, and is running simple software designed to be used with a touch screen.

Even using a mouse is too much of a pain sometimes. That's why I love launchy, and whoever it was that posted it here for me to find

I think (finger) touchscreens are useful on tablets. There are a lot of times when I'm using my tablet (in slate mode) that I'd much rather use my finger than the pen (or use both at the same time).

The school uses smartboards, but I guess that's a little out of your league.

Well, that makes sense since those things are portable. Yes, the touchscreen on the iPhone is nice and all, but what's the appeal of that when its on a much bigger plane that remains completely stationary? Besides presentations of course.

I guess you can think you are in Minority Report.

interactive porn games

I just got launchy but it wont open individual files, only folders and applications. How can I change it to search my music folder and open an individual song in it's default program? (itunes)

You would have to make a shortcut of every song you wanted to open individually (which I'd assume you'd want for all of them) and paste it in Program Files>Launchy>Utilities>Special Folders.

Same goes for any other folders or .exes you want Launchy to open that it does not by default.

What are you talking about just edit the catalog to include certain extensions in certain directories

People still use launchy with the advent of Vista/7?

absolutely! windows 7 in no way diminishes the usefulness of launchy, up until I discovered it (today! thank you maevie) I was still using the address bar I added to the taskbar.
It was pretty good (the taskbar) since I have a bajillion things on my desktop (hidden), much better than anything windows 7 has tried for me, but launchy is even better!

I don't see how launchy does anything that the start menu doesn't, with the same number of keys. In fact, the Start Menu actually integrates more with windows and applications.

I can't configure my start menu to include my 1 terabyte external hard drive with games, movies, and music.

Add that hard-drive to your indexed locations...?

I've got several here at work on our machines. They allow for faster repetitive actions on menus (that are designed for such use) but in a true windows desktop situation, it would be frustrating to make all of the tiny mouse sized buttons big enough for finger punches.

I use both Launchy and Start Search for some reason. It's just a habit to hit Alt+space to search (like for Spotlight) sometimes. And Launchy is still faster than Start Search for opening specific folders since usually the default (first) result in Start Search will not be a folder OR the default highlighted option is "See more results" and you have to click or navigate to the desired folder (whereas in Launchy it's just hit Enter)

E.g. i have a folder named "Pommy's Stuff" -- in Launchy I type "Pomm" and hit enter whereas in the Start Search I have to type Pommy's S and then either click on the folder or press up a bunch of times

it does it faster and cleanlier, haven't had any integration issues.

I'm also loving how easy it is to use google, wiki, imdb and etc.

I would never use it for google/wiki/etc because I can do that already in the browser anyway, and it'll return results I've searched for before as well.

And I don't see it doing anything faster than the start menu, it's already instant

You skipped the fact that you don't need a browser open to do use launchy, that's the point of launchy, it launches things =p

My browser is open 24/7. If I had to wait for launchy to open it I'd never do it.