Touch Screen Monitor on Win Desktop

Jon Light (deceased) · Post by **Jon Light (deceased)** » 20 Sep 2014 5:43 am

I just saw This Monoprice unit and I wondered if anyone has experience using this sort of thing in their rig. I've got a Win7 mainly and also an XP. I didn't know this was possible. I'm wondering if it would be a glitchy retro-fit or a perfectly reasonable interface.

Richard Sinkler · Post by **Richard Sinkler** » 20 Sep 2014 12:05 pm

It looks like it is just a unit like an iPad or other tablet, but hooked to your computer. Touch screen have been around for a long time. I used to work for a company that sold machine tools (milling machines, lathes, machining centers, etc) and one manufacturer we represented used touch screens on there product. This was between the years of 1993 to 2001. They worked well.

I would like to have one, but in a 22" model.

Stephen Cowell · Post by **Stephen Cowell** » 21 Sep 2014 7:07 am

$150 is actually pretty high for a 1024x768 display with resistive touch... everyone is going toward capacitive touch, and as Richard noted, nobody wants to use a 15" low-res screen. If you have a point-of-sale application for this then it's a good deal.

One thing to think about is whether you would actually like using touch. Even with Win8, designed for touch, it's not that great for a desktop machine... it's called the 'lead arm effect' and after a while you just give up on touching and go back to the mouse. Think about how small the targets you're trying to touch are (the little red 'X' up in the right corner, for instance)... you soon realize just how fat your fingers are.

Resistive touch is done by actually closing a membrane switch... that means you have to actually press to get a click. The more surface area there is, the harder you have to press... a finger nail often works best. This monitor is not multi-touch... resistive touch cannot be made to have multiple fingers recognized. New OS's like Win8 have special functions for multi-touch (think zooming or rotating) that this monitor won't supply.

I was in the touch screen industry for 12 years, I have all varieties of touch controllers available, up to 22" multi-touch capacitive... and I prefer to use a mouse.

Jon Light (deceased) · Post by **Jon Light (deceased)** » 21 Sep 2014 7:24 am

Stephen Cowell wrote: I was in the touch screen industry for 12 years, I have all varieties of touch controllers available, up to 22" multi-touch capacitive... and I prefer to use a mouse.

That is an attention grabber. Means I'm gonna lean in & squint when I read what you've got to say.

Think about how small the targets you're trying to touch are (the little red 'X' up in the right corner, for instance)... you soon realize just how fat your fingers are.

... that means you have to actually press to get a click. The more surface area there is, the harder you have to press... a finger nail often works best.

I was thinking of using this with my DAW, with fingerpicks on. With the DAW, native fx and EZ Drummer, yep, tiny buttons. But fingerpicks may/may not be an antidote to fat fingers and may/may not be analogous to fingernails. But needing actual applied pressure rather than simple light tapping....that won't do it.

Bottom line---you have pretty thoroughly talked me out of something that I definitely did not need but wondered if maybe I wanted. Now I don't.

Thanks for sharing your experience in the field! Saved me $$$ and aggravation.