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Intel laptops recognise gesture, voice

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CIOL Bureau
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LAS VEGAS, USA: At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas today, chip maker Intel refreshed the familiar notebook computer with ideas borrowed from more glamorous competitors.

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Touch, voice control, and even gesture control–the latter popularized by Microsoft's Kinect gaming controller–will be coming to lightweight laptops dubbed "ultrabooks," said Mooly Eden, Intel's vice president for sales and marketing, at Intel's press conference this morning.

Intel dominates the market for desktop, laptop, and server processors, but has been a spectator to the rapid growth of smart phones and tablets. Worse for the Santa Clara, California, chip maker, high-powered smart-phone and tablet processors based on designs from U.K.-based ARM are beginning to show potential in Intel's traditional realm.

Smart phones, tablets, and Apple's super-lightweight MacBook Air have made conventional laptops look rather staid in recent years, threatening a major source of revenue for Intel.

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Eden's presentation made it clear that Intel has spent considerable effort in its labs developing new technologies to refresh the notebook. Touch, voice recognition, and novel hybrid tablet-laptop designs have all been developed and will be licensed to partners such as Asus, Acer, and HP, which make ultrabooks.

Eden also showed a brief demonstration of an ultrabook able to recognize hand and arm gestures made in front of its screen, using software developed by Intel.

A simple game involved using a slingshot, operated by extending an arm into the space in front of the ultrabook, making a grasping motion in thin air, then pulling back and releasing to fire the catapult. "We believe that we'll see gestures even with our ultrabook," said Eden.  

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Eden also showed ultrabooks with designs halfway between laptop and tablet. The screen of one design, which he described as a "slider," could be moved over the keyboard to become a tablet. A prototype called a Nikiski has a large, transparent touch pad that stretches the full width of the device. When a Nikiski laptop is closed, some of its screen is visible through that touchpad, providing easy access to notifications like calendar events or e-mails. When open, the panel can detect when a person places his hands down to type on the keyboard.

The Nikiski prototype was shown running the forthcoming Windows 8 operating system. It includes a special interface, known as Metro, which presents notifications and access to programs using a grid of tiles intended to be swiped and tapped. It was originally designed for touch devices. "We'll be able to get an even better experience with the tile experience," said Eden.

Eden said that the voice feature could be used to compose social-media messages and updates, and to ask a closed laptop in a person's bag for information with questions such as "when is my next meeting?"

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(source: www.technologyreview.com)







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