A Touchscreen Monitor for Your PC

Have you ever thought about getting a touchscreen monitor for your PC? In the past, it wasn’t necessary, but with the new Windows 10.1, having a touchscreen can be quite handy.  If you have a touchscreen laptop or used an All in One (AiO) PC before, you familiar with how convenient it can be.

Now you can just buy a touchscreen monitor and have the benefit of a touchscreen monitor with your full-powered PC.  When I priced touchscreen monitors a little over a year ago, they were over $600.  But they are becoming more affordable.  In fact, I was able to purchase a Dell 23″ touchscreen monitor at Walmart for under $300.

What Can You Do with a Touchscreen Monitor?

I love my Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro laptop.  I take it anytime I travel or go to a conference. And with Windows 10, I use the touchscreen often as I type and search for info.  

I have often found myself touching my screen on my home Windows 10 PC to help with navigation, but to no avail, it’s not a touchscreen.  This is what prompted me to buy a touchscreen for my PC to see if it would be handier than my non-touch monitor.

Here’s how I’m using my new Dell 23″ Touchscreen LED Monitor (P2314T) at home.

Navigation

Swipe Right

If you’ve used any Microsoft Windows 10 product, you know that you can swipe your finger from the right edge of the screen over and the Action Center pulls up.  The Action Center displays any notifications, updates, and warnings, has a quick launch to settings, lets you check whether Bluetooth is on, helps you connect to devices, put your PC into Tablet mode, even make a quick note in Outlook.

Swipe Left

Swiping your finger from the left of your screen to the middle opens up all the Tasks you have open.  I generally have a number of tasks or app/applications open like Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome, One Note, Snipping Tool, Excel, Powerpoint, and more open at one time.  Opening up the Task menu is a great way to see visibly all that you have open.  Just swipe left again to close the task menu.

Zoom In, Zoom Out

I love this one.  If I’m reading or working on a page – whether on the Internet, in Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Skype, really anything, I can easily and quickly Zoom in or Zoom Out simply by pinching two fingers on the page or moving my two fingers apart.  It’s incredibly simple.

I especially love the touchscreen when zooming in on items I’m interested in buying – I can zoom all the way to full screen and more!

On Screen Calculator

Have you ever tried to use an on screen calculator…forget it.  If you have a simple calculation, it’s fine, but when I was using it with my mouse to help solve a problem for my daughter’s homework, it was a pain.  I love being able to touch the calculator on my screen as if it were a physical calculator.  I’m much faster this way.

View Pictures & Video

A touchscreen is a fast way to scroll through your vacation pictures, especially with Windows 10 Photo app.  The pictures are so vibrant and I love zooming in to show the detail on a picture.  Finally, I have a great way to show pictures that’s larger than my phone or tablet.

Watching videos is also nice.  The 23″ screen is big and I can easily enlarge or shrink the video screen as I like.  Pausing a movie is easy by just touching the screen.  Fast forwarding or rewarding is easy as well.

PowerPoint & Word

Moving pictures and images around and on different pages/slides is a breeze with your fingers.  However, first, right click on each picture, choose Wrap Text, then select “Through.”  This allows you to easily move pictures around.  This is a great tip, I always adjust my pictures to the “Through” setting in anything I do, it gives you a lot more flexibility.

You can highlight text with your finger to type over or move.   You are also able to rotate pictures, using the green circle that appears above your picture, once you tap on it, but it is not always easy to do.

I was really disappointed that I could not shrink and enlarge pictures with my fingers.  I tried multiple times but couldn’t get the pictures to change in size…only the screen.

Signatures

As a blogger and consultant, I sign a lot of contracts.  I loathe printing out a contract, signing it, scanning it in, and sending it back to the sender.  I have scanned just my signature before and pasted it into documents, but this doesn’t always look good.

With a touch screen, I can use a pen that has a stylus rubber top, to sign my name.  And because this Dell touchscreen monitor can rotate down to 180 degrees, I can accurately and comfortably sign my name.  

You can actually sign your documents in Word and in some PDF readers, save them, and send them on their way.  I downloaded the free Windows 10 centric app called Xodo – so now I can easily sign my documents and contracts.  Love it!

Microsoft Edge

The new Microsoft Edge browser has a built-in annotator, that lets you mark notes on a webpage and save it to One Note or share it with others.  This is really handy for articles you’ve read or creating shopping files for things you’d like or your kids would like.

I wrote this with my rubber top stylus.  I can only imagine if I had this tool when I was planning my wedding, I could have annotated things and saved them to One Note for my wedding planner files.  

But this is also good for recipes, marking up articles and sending them to others, critiquing websites about what you like and don’t like to prepare for your website refresh.

Playing Games

Playing games on a PC is more fun with touch.  Candy crush, anyone?  How about Solitaire?  I have to say, playing Candy Crush on my 23″ monitor is like playing it in life-size!  A much more immersive experience!

Features

• Beautiful 23″ diagonal LED antiglare screen (very wide – can review two documents at once)
• 16:9 aspect ratio with 1920 x 1080 full HD resolution
• 16.7 million colors for vibrant pictures and video
• 8,000,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio
• 8 ms response time – great when watching videos or playing games
• 10-point multi-touch capability (see picture below)
• ENERGY STAR-qualified – uses only 17W for typical use and .05W in active-off mode and has PowerNap to conserve energy 
• Adjustable stand – can stand the monitor upright or all the way down to nearly 180 degrees.
• 3-year Limited Hardware Warranty² and 3-year Advanced Exchange Service³
• Has a MHL port so you can display your smartphone or tablet directly on the monitor
• Includes VGA, USB, DP, and HDMI ports to connect with a multitude of PC’s and devices (laptops, TV’s, etc.)

Pros:

• I like being able to easily arrange the monitor easily to whatever angle suits me best
• Signing my signature on documents has been a joy – I love how easy it is!
• I am so used to using my touchcreen on my laptop, now I can easily navigate around on my PC touchscreen monitor as I do my laptop
• With a MHL cable, I can project my smartphone onto my monitor and see it on a bigger screen.  Great for writing texts, watching movies, and more
• The touchscreen monitor looks sharp – very modern
• It’s heavy enough that it won’t topple over, it’s very sturdy and well-built
• It is so much easier to manipulate photos for photo placement in my Microsoft Office documents now

Cons:

• Sometimes things on the screen are too small and touch is not as precise as a mouse – I couldn’t check off the little boxes on my email to mass delete
• If your hands are messy, they can leave smudges or streaks on your PC – don’t really see them…until the screen is on PowerNap
• To switch the inputs, you need to use the hard buttons on the side of screen to change inputs, no touchscreen menu is available
• A touchscreen monitor will cost you at least $150 more than a non-touchscreen PC, but the pricing gap is getting closer

 

A Mom’s Perspective