Requirements for a (multi)touch wall-mounted kitchen pc [closed]

Solution 1:

I'd recommend single touch if you're not going to be using some sort of pen to interact with the display.
I'd go with Windows 7. It's coming out soon (already out if you have TechNet or MSDN), and it has greatly enhanced support for single and multitouch over say XP. You can try it now with the RC, it's very stable and i'm running it right now!
It sounds like most of your needs can be served by Google Docs (for note taking), GMail (for mail), Google Calendar (for calendar), Pandora or Last.fm (for internet radio), and Windows Live Photo Gallery. Plus, with most of these they're web based so you can split them off into separate "applications" with Prism (a firefox addon) or use chrome's built in functionality for this. This would allow you to access them from your laptops as well.
The one big thing i can see a kitchen PC used for is recipe look-up and storage with a recipe management system like this or this. That way you have an on hand reference for thousands and thousands of recipes whenever (considering) making something.
No! a wall-mounted touch PC is quite useful.

Solution 2:

I was totally going to setup something like this, then I bought a netbook (the Dell Mini 9 to be precise) and put Ubuntu on it. Then I realised that I didn't really want a dedicated kitchen walltop because it was stuck in the kitchen all the time. With the netbook I can take it with me in to the next room when I'm done in the kitchen and I'm not stuck eating my dinner standing up in the kitchen because I wanted to finish the podcast I was listening to.

This doesn't really answer your question but it's solving the same problem from a different angle so I thought I'd share. Also, I guess if there are multiple people using it, then its portability becomes its weakness: you might go to use it and not be able to find it.

Practical uses I've found for a computer in the kitchen are:

listening to streaming music. eg last.fm, pandora.com
listening to podcasts
looking up recipes
and of course, email and IM et cetera

Solution 3:

Have you considered approaching this from a slightly different angle and getting an iPod Touch?

You'd be saving a ton of time, money, and effort, and would be getting a superbly designed and flexible device with an operating system and applications that are actually designed for touch input.

With apps available for note-taking (Evernote, Things), calendar management (built-in), mail (built-in, Gmail), photo management (various Flickr apps), internet radio (Pandora, Shoutcast), you'd have plenty of software available and good options for syncing in a multi-PC (or iPod Touch!) environment.

Some other possibilities that we use our iPod Touch for: - use Apple's Remote app to control an iTunes library on the local network (in our case an HTPC) - use something like Touchpad Elite to remote control a PC on the network (we use this as our HTPC remote -- you could also control an Apple TV) - stream media from a media library on the network using something like the Orb app - and more apps every day!

Granted, you'd be losing some screen real-estate (you could use the video output to address this, though), and there aren't any webcam solutions yet, but those might be small prices to pay for the ease and flexibility of the iPod Touch.

Solution 4:

If i were looking for a touch screen pc for my kitchen i think a will take informations about MSI it seems they have some PC for this usage.

Especially the Wind Top AE2010.

But the ASUS and HP are good choice too. It's a good idea the kitchen computer.. In my dreams the kitchen computer also command all the lights of the house (switch off when you go for ex.), is connected to a media server to look all your DVD's and Divx, also listen for your music.. but it's something else...

Multi touch is a really confortable option, i think it's now necessary.
I'm totally for linux Ubuntu but i think it's only a personal choice.. in other side 7 seems to be better than vista..
I'm for cloud computing and online storage like dropbox..
Lol don't give up ! a white board is not so interactive.. :-)

Solution 5:

I agree with humble-coffee, the best bet would be use a netbook or similarly sized laptop.

However, if you would be happy with a stationary machine, it may actually end up cheaper to buy a standard display, and purchase a touch overlay for it. You could reduce costs significantly, because you'd have just a regular PC with a screen and a camera, and I'm willing to bet you could also go with the multi touch.

You could also get away with a reasonably small form factor PC hiding behind the display - since most of the uses you mentioned don't require too much in the way of grunty hardware. Most modern computers would be able to handle all that easily, especially on XP or a light-weight linux distro.

Let us know which way you end up going!

Some companies that produce touch overlays - although this is a bit more expensive than I remember, and more aimed at OEM applications :p

http://www.nextwindow.com/ http://www.elotouch.com/