The HP Compaq L2105tm is quite unique. The 21.5-inch 1080p LCD mon­i­tor offers mul­ti­touch! The L2105tm is Microsoft Windows 7 cer­ti­fied and that means it will work right out of the box and con­nected to a Windows 7 com­puter. HP is tout­ing that its L2105tm is the first Windows 7 cer­ti­fied mon­i­tor. The mul­ti­touch mon­i­tor is geared toward con­sumers and the SOHO markets.

The LCD was spec­i­fied to run 24/7 and has a rated 50,000 hours to half-brightness. The back­light is of the CCFL vari­ety. I had the plea­sure of talk­ing to Darryl Valdes, Worldwide Product Marketing Manager for the Displays Commercial Business Segment, and he noted that HP is inves­ti­gat­ing tran­si­tion­ing toward a LED back­light solu­tion in the future. With a mon­i­tor that can run all the time, tar­get mar­kets include: retail POS, vend­ing solu­tion, retail infor­ma­tion & inter­ac­tive, wayfinder appli­ca­tions, etc.

The mul­ti­touch tech­nol­ogy imple­mented in the L2105tm is an opti­cal touch solu­tion and includes two cam­eras, an infrared light and sen­sor com­bined with a reflec­tive film to cre­ate a light field. When a fin­ger or almost any object cre­ates a shadow as it approaches the dis­play the sen­sor detects it and relays the infor­ma­tion via USB to pro­vide a mul­ti­touch expe­ri­ence. The advan­tage of this type of touch tech­nol­ogy is that it is very rugged and you can use a vari­ety of input meth­ods includ­ing a gloved fin­ger. Another ben­e­fit is good bright­ness. According to Valdes, the L2105tm has a rated bright­ness of 250 cd/m2. He also noted that HP is being some­what con­ser­v­a­tive with the rat­ing and the actual bright­ness can reach a typ­i­cal 270 cd/m2.

Other specs include: 5ms response time, 170/160 view­ing angles, 72% NTSC color gamut, 1000:1 con­trast ratio, TCO 5.0 Displays com­pli­ance, VGA, DVI-D with HDCP con­nec­tions. A sty­lus is included.