Optimize Windows 7 for use with Touchscreen enabled devices

Contributor Icon Contributed by Jimmy Selix  
Tag Icon Tagged: Microsoft Windows 7  

Lately, there has been a sudden resurgence back into touchscreen technology and adding of touchscreens to laptops and other devices.  Windows 7 is setup to handle touchscreen input pretty good out of the box, however trying to use the scrollbars and start menu can prove to be a challenge on netbooks with a touchscreen or smaller devices.  This recipe will show you how to use an existing Vista utility, Microsoft Origami Experience 2.0 (free) to optimize the GUI to allow easier navigation using touchscreen inputs.  This barely known but very useful add-on also will give us the Origami add-on and also picture password as an added bonus.  :) 

This will of course also work on Vista computers too since the add-on was originally release for Vista and UMPC machines.

  • - Reboot
  • - Go to your Start Menu > All Programs > Origami Experience 2.0 > Touch Settings.
  • - These are the settings I use for my touchscreen on my MSI Wind U100 (solderless kit).  Since i do not use a pen for writing, i leave the Tablet PC Input Panel as No Change.
  • - Log off and back on for changes to take affect.
  • – Also, the origami now and central apps are really nice media players/information boards that are optimized for touchscreen devices (ie UMPC, netbooks w/touchscreens) and runs decently on an Atom N270 cpu w/2GB DDR2.
  • – Picture Password lets you setup a password that uses a picture and your password would be you touching a certain pattern.

Before:

After:

 

9 Comments -


  1. jimmyselix said on September 21, 2009

    NOTE:

    if you have issues w/the Origami Central or Now application or don’t want it to run. Just go to your Start Menu > All Programs > Startup and remove the Origami items.

    This can help login time for those pc’s without as much ummph (ie netbooks) and those that get errors after installing the pack.
    -thanks to James K at http://jkontherun.com/ for the heads up

  2. sam6 said on September 23, 2009

    I don’t think Windows 7 is setup to handle touchscreen out of the box, you will need to buy a seperate Multi touch pack for it.

  3. sam6 said on September 23, 2009

    I don’t think Windows 7 is setup to handle touchscreen out of the box, you will need to buy a seperate Multi touch pack for it.

  4. jimmyselix said on September 23, 2009

    it is setup to handle touch; just not multitouch. you would need to get the proper drivers given your tablet/pc can handle it/support it.

    my touchscreen kit i have on my msi wind is an aftermarket, resistive touchscreen (multitouch are capacitive) and worked right out of the box. the touchpack is actually made for multitouch capable devices and would be pointless to install on a single touch input (plus, only OEMs have access to the touchpack).

  5. Jill said on April 8, 2010

    This only works in Windows Vista. It does NOT work in Windows 7, as the article claims. I gave it a try anyway, and, to be sure, it did not work AT ALL in Win7.

  6. Jill said on April 8, 2010

    Correction.. I gave it another try. Uninstalled it and reinstalled it with custom install and only installed Touch options. Error messages stopped and touch options seem to work now.

    Also, My Windows 7 Professional had multi-touch capabilities right out of the box.

  7. free registry repair said on September 10, 2010

    Unfortunately for most Intel users, when it came down to obtaining drivers for Windows 7, some users were left in the dirt with no support and no mention of support from Intel

  8. Benjamin Healey said on January 12, 2011

    I cannot get OE 2.0 to even run install in win7 home premium. i get a message that it’s for umpc’s running vista only, then install exits suddenly, saying no changes were made to the system. how are you guys getting it to work, but im not? perhaps microsoft updated the installer to stick it to us for making use of their software? who has an old copy of the installer?

  9. jimmyselix said on January 13, 2011

    problem is that you need to hack the OE 2.0 msi installer to be able to run on non UMPC machines. guide over here at my blog:
    http://blogs.tech-recipes.com/seamonkey420/2007/03/16/my-hp-tc1100-vista-and-origami-experience-pack/

 

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URL

Leave a comment -