Soon you'll just need to wave or flick your hand at a PC to tell it what to do

Dec 6, 2013 08:54 GMT  ·  By

Leap Motion is a gesture control technology that “looks” at what your hand is doing and relays commands to a PC. HP has decided to install it on its various all-in-one and desktop PCs.

Leap Motion started out as a small rectangular device that had to be placed in front of your monitor for the whole shebang to work.

It uses motion sensors to keep up with your hands and individual fingers, while an algorithm “understands” what to do with them.

The most fortunate thing about the device was that it was really small. Not tiny, but small enough that it could be included in peripherals and other hardware.

HP is betting on this, having decided to release all-in-one and desktop personal computers whose keyboards have integrated Leap Motion functionality.

Well, not so much release new systems as add the feature to the existing lineup, like it did for the Envy 17 gaming notebook.

The list includes, among others, HP's Envy Recline, Phoenix and TouchSmart series, plus the Pavilion TouchSmart lineup.

All of them will come with the Leap Motion keyboard. According to the company, there will be 11 devices in total, at least at first.

Or you could just buy the Leap Motion keyboard separately and install the adjoining software on whatever PC you already own, although this won't really make HP's day.

In case you were wondering, HP will, indeed, pre-install the Leap Motion software on its PCs, along with lots of other proprietary programs.

We'll let you decide for yourself how many of them qualify as bloatware, just like the decision between getting an HP Leap Motion PC or just the Leap Motion keyboard is, in the end, yours. After all, while some might appreciate a new AiO, others may like to find just the keyboard under the Christmas tree instead.