So the worst-kept secret is finally out of the bag - the next generation of Windows will work with touch screens. It will be faster than current versions of the system and it will take multiple inputs.

I can't help being just a little cynical about this one. Yes, I understand the advantage of a touch screen for the consumer and the end user - my own PDA is in fact an Apple iPod Touch (OK, OK, it's consumer technology but it does the job for a freelance) and I enjoy using the touch screen on that. OK, I'm an Apple fan, I get an unnatural sense of satisfaction simply from sitting there staring at it. You expect no less from us.

But let's backtrack a little. Has everyone forgotten the Tablet PC and Pen Computing? Forgive me for stating the already-widely-known but wasn't the screen on that kind of touch sensitive in a 'works if you touch it' kind of way? My impression is that it succeeded only in a handful of niches.

Meanwhile the preannouncement of a faster Windows has to be something of an own goal. Windows Vista has had a distinctly mixed press since it launched and if I'm honest my own Windows Vista laptop often gets swapped for my daughter's XP model when she's out as I prefer using the older system, And now we find next year it's going to be upgraded to accommodate a touch screen before anyone had proven this was going to be needed.

You can call me old fashioned. You can call me a reactionary and you can call me a Luddite. I'm just not convinced that a touchy-feely Windows is going to set the world alight any more than the last major upgrade managed.