Touch screen technology gives you a new way to interact with your computer. Chances are that you've used a touchscreen at an airport or supermarket, or on your cell phone, but is it worth the extra investment for home users?

With computer touchscreen technology, you literally touch the screen to make selections. Gone are the days of moving a mouse around until the arrow points to your selection and then clicking it; you can touch your selection on the screen to choose or activate it. You've got two choices to have this functionality at home: integrated touchscreen monitors or touchscreen monitor kits.

Integrated Touch Screen Monitors
When most people think of touchscreen monitors, they think of integrated touchscreen monitors like you see in food service, retail settings and other commercial applications. Because integrated touchscreen monitors are so expensive, they’re used primarily in commercial settings where price is less of an issue than it is for the home user. Integrated touchscreen technology tends to be more reliable than external touchscreen kits. The least expensive integrated touchscreen monitors start around $500, and go up from there.

Turn Any Monitor into a Touchscreen Computer Monitor
Newer in the field of touchscreen technology are external touchscreen kits. These kits are clear touchscreen films in plastic frames that fit over your existing monitor and connect to your computer via a wire. When you install the software that comes with your external touchscreen kit, it tells the computer how to process a touch and what action to take when you touch the film. These touchscreen films may require a special pen or other device to register the touch with the screen.

How Touchscreens Work
Touchscreens are manufactured with three main types of technology: a resistive system, a capacitive system or a surface acoustic wave system. While the differences in technology aren’t important to the average user, one small difference is noteworthy: a resistive system or a surface acoustic wave system work with almost any touch, while a capacitive system requires you to touch with your finger. This means that you must use a finger to touch a capacitive screen, so if you’re wearing gloves or want to use another input device to use the screen, such as a stylus, it won’t work.

Whether or not this technology is valuable to you depends on how proficient you are with a mouse. The most obvious advantages lie in editing, engineering and graphic design, where users can draw directly on the screen or trace areas to highlight by hand. If you're mostly using your PC for word processing or browsing the Web, you'll still need that keyboard for typing, so a touchscreen may be less valuable to you.