$200 Makes Your Laptop Touch-Enabled; Usine Music Demo

By Peter Kirn (createdigitalmusic.com)

No doubt about it: touch is coming to more screens near you. But there’s no need to disappoint your current beloved laptop. $200 kits can turn your laptop into a functioning touchscreen.

Now, as I’m working with JazzMutant’s Lemur this week, before you get excited, this is no Lemur - or even anything like your iPhone or iPod touch. Sensitivity and accuracy are workable, but not exceptional, the overlay is pretty simple (as you can see in the video) rather than integrated with the display, and this is single-touch only — not multi-touch. Lastly, on a conventional laptop that isn’t convertible, you may miss the ability to fully extend your laptop perpindicular to your body. (Having the screen be parallel can put your arms in a fatiguing position.)

But that said, there’s a lot of potential once you have the ability to reach over and make quick gestures on a laptop screen that control a set. You might make your own instruments and effects or controller dashboards in a tool like Processing or Reaktor. And at $200, this could be a brilliant way to retrofit a machine and breathe new life into it. There’s support for Mac, Windows, and Linux; you just plug in via USB.