Users should expect multi-touch displays in notebooks well before the release of official operating system updates like Windows 7, Hewlett-Packard's consumer notebook general manager Kevin Frost says. The feature won't officially appear in Microsoft's software until 2010 but should be available "long before" then in shipping products, according to the executive. Technical marketing head Kevin Wentzel supports the notion and mentions that the advancement is more a question developing software than any limits in current hardware.

The mentions come a day after HP deepened its involvement in touchscreens with a 22-inch TouchSmart PC, which doesn't support multi-touch but has a much larger collection of touchscreen applications, most of which were designed by HP itself rather than a part of Windows. HP doesn't say when it plans to introduce multi-touch but includes it as part of the company's plans.

Apple is currently considered an early pioneer of multi-touch in notebooks but uses it only for the trackpad in some systems introduced early this year. Since then, ASUS' Eee PC 900 and Voodoo PC's Envy 133 have followed suit. Full multi-touch displays aren't expected in the near future but have been demonstrated in normal-sized systems, including the Dell Latitude XT used to demonstrate Windows 7 last month at the D: All Things Digital conference.