Apple's iPhone made multi-touch all the rage on mobile phones and laptop makers are apparently starting to catch up as they look for ways to add the technology to traditional notebooks. One such company is Fujitsu, which recently expanded its LifeBook line with models that sport a gesture-enabled touchpad.
Similar to the latest range of MacBooks, Fujitsu's touchpad functionality is limited to zooming and scrolling - moving two fingers closer or further apart will zoom in or out and a circular gesture will produce a continuous scroll. The 15.4-inch LifeBook A6220 starts at $1299 and comes with an Intel Core 2 Duo P8400 2.26GHz, 4GB of RAM, a 250GB HDD, ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3470 graphics, and an integrated webcam. There is also a $1499 version which features a larger HDD and a Blu-ray player.
Fujitsu also refreshed its LifeBook P8020 ultraportable notebook, adding the gesture-enabled touchpad and moving it to a Centrino 2 platform. All in all, it's good to see laptop makers are looking for intuitive ways to bring multi-touch to laptops (HP and Asus have plans of their own) but perhaps we will really see the technology take off once it is fully supported at the operating system level.