Touch Screens

A touch screen is a monitor with some type of sensing device across its face that

detects the location and duration of contact, usually by a finger or stylus. All

touch screens then supply this contact information to the PC as though it were a

click event from a mouse. Touch screens are used in situations for which conventional

mouse/keyboard input is either impossible or impractical.Here are a

few places you’ll see touch screens at work:

• Information kiosks

• PDAs

• Point-of-sale systems

• Tablet PCs

Touch screens can be separated into two groups: built-in screens like those in

PDAs, and stand-alone touch screen monitors like those used in many pointof-

sale systems. From a technician’s standpoint, you can think of a stand-alone

touch screen as amonitor with a built-in mouse.All touch screens will have a separate

USB or PS/2 port for the “mouse” part of the device, along with drivers that

you install just as you would for any USB mouse.