When multitudes of Windows 8 users start playing with newly purchased hardware in the coming weeks and months, they'll encounter an indignity that once afflicted only smartphone and tablet users: dirty, smudgy, fingerprint-riddled touchscreens.
Ah, yes, the dreaded smudge. It's a problem we've all come to grudgingly accept on mobile device screens, but PC users generally aren't so accepting of people touchinglet alone leaving fingerprints ontheir desktop displays.
If Microsoft executive Keith Lorizio has his way, some
400 million Windows 8 devices will be active by July 1, 2013. Lorizio was surely including nontouch legacy machines when he made this optimstic declaration last week, and Microsoft has already backed away from Lorizio's comments. But the fact remains that desktop computing is about to get very, very dirty.
So just what is the tech industry doing to head off the collision between PC screens and fingers? Or will desktop users simply resign themselves to a life where dirty screens become the new normal?
