You may not be able to do this very easily, but controlling Windows 8 should be a breeze

It seems Microsoft is not content with Kinect being an Xbox exclusive. 

The company revealed a desktop version of Kinect at the Consumer Electronics Show a few weeks back, but Microsoft is not planning on stopping there. From the looks of it, the company is hard at work on integrating the technology into laptops.

This news comes courtesy of The Daily, who had a chance to get a peek at a pair of prototypes over the last few days. "The devices, which at first glance appear to be Asus netbooks running Windows 8, feature an array of small sensors stretching over the top of the screen where the webcam would normally be," The Daily describes. "At the bottom of the display is a set of what appear to be LEDs."

According to a source at Microsoft, the devices are official prototypes. The Daily goes on to say that, "In terms of functionality, there are hundreds of different ways that motion control could be leveraged in a portable. Gaming has the most obvious applications, but a Kinect-enabled laptop could also toggle between programs with the wave of a hand, or media controls could be tweaked with the wag of a finger. What’s more, motion-controlled portables could offer a new way for disabled individuals to interact with their devices."

It is most likely that Microsoft will not be making its own portables, opting instead to license the Kinect technology to hardware manufacturers, similar to what it does with Windows. Also, the company will probably not be responsible for innovation in the portable Kinect field, seemingly content to let the platform into the hands of developers.

According to The Daily, this will likely happen next month when a public preview of Windows 8 becomes available.

Source: The Daily

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