Overnight (for those of us in Europe and Asia) Microsoft gave out the first details on the next version of its Windows operating system, Windows 8.

At the D9 conference in California, Microsoft's Windows head honcho Steven Sinofsky gave a demonstration of how Windows 8 will look and feel.

'Feel' is the operative word. The new edition is designed completely for touch-screens, which makes sense of the company's earlier announcements that it would be making the operating system available on the ARM processors commonly used on tablet computers as well as the AMD/Intel chips of desktops and laptops.

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The personal computer has been good to Intel. Ever since the original IBM PC the market has been dominated by what are known as x86 processors, and although it has always had rivals - AMD in particular, producing K6, Athlon and Phenom chips - Intel has always had a strong grip on the market for this technology. And when portables, laptops and then netbooks followed, they followed the PC's lead - the vast majority using Intel's x86 products.

But today there are new computers in town, and if anything they're more personal: smartphones and tablets. So very few of those devices have 'Intel Inside' - and the company's activities at this year's Computex trade show underline how much it has invested in changing that.

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Many manufacturers at Computex this year are trying to bridge the gap between smartphones and tablet computers - take the Asus PadFone, for example. Acer has several products on show, including the massive Iconia Smart.

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HP's new netbook computer will be able to detect when it is being used on a person's lap and cool itself appropriately.

Laptop cooling has long been a problem, leading medical experts to suggest that the heat generated by some models could pose a health risk.

However, HP's 11in Pavilion DM1Z comes with a 'Coolsense' sensor that senses the situation in which it's being used and makes sure that, if it's close to a user's skin it doesn't get hot enough to do any damage.

At an event in Taiwan, part of the Computex trade show, an HP representative showed the new model, which you can see in our video below.

Editor's note: apologies for the sounds of a ringing phone and a man laughing in the later part of the video. Nothing to do with our reporter, we can assure you.

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With several giant halls spread all over Taipei, Taiwan's Computex technology show encompasses just about every techology company you've heard of and dozens you haven't. This means it's hard to actually keep count of even a fraction of the new stuff that's on display, but every so often you come across items that, although perhaps not groundbreaking, catch your eye. Here's a couple I spotted today.

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