News - Dell shows off its Smart Desk concept

[HEXUS]

It shares more than a passing similarity to HP's Sprout PC.

Read more.

[LeetyMcLeet]

This reminds me of something MS did in the mid 00's, that massive touch table which they sorta scrapped and replaced with pixel sense or something? All we need now is some kind of hologram between the desk part and the display

[freedomzero]

It better has some tea and coffee resistance

[crossy]

This reminds me of something MS did in the mid 00's, that massive touch table which they sorta scrapped and replaced with pixel sense or something? All we need now is some kind of hologram between the desk part and the display

The Microsoft table display is alive and kicking - check out Hawaii Five-O on Sky on Sunday nights.

It better has some tea and coffee resistance

From what I've read the Dell design is an active surface (display elements in the horizontal bit) so that'd be more vulnerable than the Sprout (which projects it's horizontal display from overhead).

Nice to see something new coming out from the major vendors - although the Sprout has more "cool" factor in my books.

Disclaimer: I work for HP, but not the division doing the products mentioned

[Corky34]

Would love to see something like this with haptic feedback, if we are to use these screens for manipulating things, using a virtual keyboard and the like, it would work much better if it gave tactile feedback to the user.

[scaryjim]

... the Sprout ... projects it's horizontal display from overhead ...

a few years back there was a mock-up no-screen tablet that used a kinect-like sensor (perhaps a LeapMotion?) and a mini projector to turn any surface into a tablet PC. I can see a desktop peripheral like that being a nice addition to any PC, but then nothing seemed to happen with it (and that differs from Sprout, which uses a touch mat rather than finger tracking). The option to turn part of my ordinary desk into an interactive touch peripheral for my PC? Yeah, I'd go for that

[Spud1]

Interesting - certainly looks a lot prettier than the Sprout too! They seem to be different products though with the Sprout more focussed on 3D drawing/design and Dell's being much more general purpose.

It will take many more iterations before it catches on I think, but I love the concept. As people get more and more used to typing on a touch screen it will get easier and easier to make this sort of product appeal, and something like haptic feedback could make a big difference. Curious to see how it turns out!

[steve threlfall]

This reminds me of something MS did in the mid 00's, that massive touch table which they sorta scrapped and replaced with pixel sense or something? All we need now is some kind of hologram between the desk part and the display

The Surface. Well, as it was back then anyway

http://money.cnn.com/2012/06/19/technology/microsoft-surface-table-pixelsense/

[Imran520]

Are you agree with it?

[noight]

i definitely wouldn't mind checking this out. neither would an artist friend of mine.

[devBunny]

"While these HP and Dell smart desk concepts do look enticing perhaps some systems designers could go down a cheaper route - to use the tablet computers most people already own as the horizontal desktop part of the twin-screened systems."

Yep, I'd much prefer to use my tablet as a two-octave piano keyboard than have to run my fingers up and down that big desktop screen.

Putting it another way, sure, if an application doesn't gain a unique benefit from the hardware provided then it could be implemented on something else instead.

[crossy]

Yep, I'd much prefer to use my tablet as a two-octave piano keyboard than have to run my fingers up and down that big desktop screen.

Putting it another way, sure, if an application doesn't gain a unique benefit from the hardware provided then it could be implemented on something else instead.

I know what you're getting at, but I think you've kind of missed the point with SD/Sprout. As has been said above there's whole classes of users for whom this way of working would make a lot more sense. If I was in the graphics or publishing business then I think I'd be taking a long hard look at these two systems - in the interesting of improving workflow.

And at the risk of sounding like an advert for HP, if you coupled up Sprout with the 3D printer HP announced at the same time then you'd perhaps have a pretty streamlined setup for doing product development. What I'm thinking is that you could clay model cases etc, then scan into the PC for modifications then 3D print the tweaked model. Or scan in the US office then send that file to a 3D printer in China for 1st run prototyping.

As I've said before - I applaud HP and Dell for thinking differently. And my kids think that these have a "wow" factor.