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

"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."

"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."

"Regardless of what hardware you end up using, I would suggest going with at least Windows Vista or 7. I currently have an HP TouchSmart tablet convertible running Vista and I love it. I can use my fingers or the included pen. But what I really love about having Vista on my tablet is that that it already has a lot of great utilities and gesture recognition that makes using the convertible as a table a breeze. If you were to use XP instead of Vista or 7, you would need to use separate applications to get the same feature set.

Also, you might have some problems with Chrome and gestures. Although I tend to use Firefox more then Chrome regularly, I've been forced to use it more in my tablet because Chrome does not recognize the the scroll up/down gestures. Sure, it's not a big thing, but I do find that doing the gestures for scrolling to be far more natural then using the scroll bar in a touch interface."

Have you considered using a "regular" PC, with a separate touchscreen monitor? I've considered a project like this, and the best solution I've come up with is a wall-mounted (probably on an arm from Ergotron) touchscreen LCD, with a small form factor case hidden away in the back of a cabinet. I'd probably pair all of that with a slim wireless keyboard and mouse that can be stashed in a cabinet as well when not in use.

"There's the AI touch-book.

www.alwaysinnovating.com/touchbook/

This has a removable keyboard - and is magnetized so you can stick it to your fridge.

It is, however ARM based, so you'll have to chuck the notion of Windows (or Hackintosh) however it'd be perfectly suited - most of what you want to do should be possible with a thin, web-client."