Many new PCs were shown off at last week’s Computex trade show in Taiwan, and while designs and approaches sometimes varied wildly, touch support was a common theme. Windows 8’s final release is still a few months off, but it’s already casting a long shadow over PC hardware makers hoping that the new OS will drive sales of their products. The Metro interface is a big (and sometimes awkward) overhaul for PCs, and hardware makers are responding with correspondingly large changes to their hardware.

Ultrabooks, convertibles, and other laptops

The first generation of Ultrabooks consisted of a more-or-less homogenous batch of thin-and-light 11” and 13” laptops that earned plenty of (often unfavorable) comparisons to Apple’s successful MacBook Air. Less than a year later, most hardware makers are having their second or third crack at an Ultrabook design, and while the wide variety of approaches has quickly sapped the Ultrabook moniker of nearly all meaning, it has produced a more noteworthy crop of PCs.

Some manufacturers are beginning to put dedicated graphics chips in their Ultrabooks to boost their graphics power and gain gaming as a marketing bullet point. Some, like Toshiba, are using oddball screen sizes to turn heads. Most, however, are integrating touch support in one way or another.

Some of these are simply regular Ultrabooks that use touchscreens. You can see that in laptops like Acer’s Aspire S7 and Asus’s Zenbook Prime, both of which share many qualities with their first-generation predecessors (we reviewed both Acer’s and Asus's first efforts). Adding touchscreens seems like a logical way to distinguish one’s Ultrabook from the rest of the crowd, but I do have practical concerns: having a touchscreen laptop or monitor isn’t going to make reaching out from your desk and touching it less awkward, and the greasy smudges you leave all over your screen aren’t going to be particularly attractive either.

Tablets that use keyboard docks should prove to be more usable than traditional laptops with touch support tacked on, and quite a few of them made appearances. Most were from either Acer or Asus: the former showed off both its 10.1” Atom-powered Iconia W510 and the more powerful 11.6” Ivy Bridge-based Iconia W700 (examined here by Engadget), and the later showed off Atom, ARM, and IvyBridge-based approaches in its 11.6” Tablet 810, 10.1” Tablet 600, and its Transformer Book (which comes in 11.6”, 13”, and 14” flavors). I expect this approach will be more popular with consumers looking for a laptop-tablet hybrid—these laptops come the closest to fulfilling Windows 8’s “one device for everything” approach. They also address one of the iPad’s deficiencies for heavy writers who need a physical keyboard (or a keyboard integrated into a case) for use with their iPads.

Meanwhile, Samsung’s Series 5 Ultra Convertible laptop (examined here by Laptop Magazine) takes a slightly different approach—at first glance it’s a standard Ultrabook, but the screen’s hinge can be folded all the way back to make a tablet of sorts. Unlike many current convertible laptops, which have a swiveling screen that folds down over the keyboard (HP’s EliteBook tablets come to mind), Samsung’s way of doing things leaves the keyboard exposed. One assumes that having the Ultra Convertible folded over into tablet mode would disable the built-in keyboard and touchpad to prevent unwanted input, but it still seems less elegant than some other solutions.

And, of course, there are some laptops that don’t quite fit into any established product category. Take Asus’s new 11.6” and 13.3” TAICHI Ultrabooks, which feature two screens—one normal screen where you’d expect, and a touch-enabled screen (with a webcam) on the lid that turns the laptop into a tablet when it is closed. The two screens can also be used simultaneously, enabling people sitting on either side of the laptop to see what’s on the screen. The end result will ultimately be a bit bulkier than a standard tablet, but with fewer moving (and breakable) parts than the convertible or dockable models.

Monitors and all-in-ones

Mobile form factors can (and have to) be a bit more flexible than equipment that sits on a desk all day, but some touch-enabled monitors and all-in-one computers are also showing up to the Windows 8 party. We’ve seen touch-enabled all-in-ones before (most notably HP’s TouchSmart lineup), but more manufacturers are beginning to get on board now that they can expect robust touch support to be baked into the operating system.

Asus's new Transformer AIO computer takes the core concept of its Transformer portables and applies it to the all-in-one desktop. This oddball 18.4” all-in-one is actually a huge touch-enabled display sitting in a dock, which, when undocked, becomes an immense Android tablet running Ice Cream Sandwich. Access to the Windows operating system, which is still running on the hardware in the dock part of the machine, is provided via a remote desktop app. Having a tablet the size of a small TV in your lap doesn’t sound particularly practical, but you can’t say it’s not a creative implementation.

Acer’s Aspire 7600U and 5600U, examined by CNET here, are a bit more conventional—they’re 27” and 23” all-in-ones (starting at $1,599 and $999, respectively) that will swivel 90 degrees into portrait mode if desired by the user. Support for monitor swiveling tends to be restricted to business-class monitors for the time being, so it’s nice to see this capability in something a bit more consumer-focused, and the unit's pricing is fairly competitive (though reports on the 5600U prototype’s build quality have been mixed).

Asus also showed off a multitouch-enabled monitor, as seen over at AnandTech—we don’t know much about it, other than the fact that it’s a 23” 1080p display that supports ten simultaneous touch points at once. Touchscreen monitors should be an easy way to add touch capabilities to an existing desktop or laptop, though I still have my doubts about the arm fatigue and smudges that would be caused by constantly touching a monitor on my desk.

Conclusions

This year’s Computex showed us a batch of computers that are betting big on Windows 8. To succeed, they’ve got to convince the PC buying public that a new computer is going to offer a better Windows 8 experience than any of the years-old computers that (1) they already own and (2) will run Windows 8 just fine. Some of the more interesting laptops here look like they might meet that requirement—the Asus TAICHI and all of the dockable laptop-tablet hybrids both look like good alternatives to taking both a tablet and a laptop with you on trips. Others, particularly the more traditional form factors with touch support tacked on as an afterthought, do not.

It should also be said that no matter what their design, whether any of these new computers can gain a foothold in the market will depend largely on the success of Windows 8. If the operating system is well-received, it should definitely drive sales of touch-enabled PCs and accessories, since Metro with touch is often more usable than Metro without. If Windows 8 is a flop, consumers are more likely to stick with machines they already have, and hardware makers are going to be tempted to revert to cheaper, non-touch displays and more conventional designs.

Listing image by Asus