Your fingers will want to do the walking with HP TouchSmart
— -- We all walk up to a computer screen from time to time and touch it to accomplish some task. Think ATM or airport kiosk. But that's pretty rare at home. We're commonly seated with a keyboard and mouse.
Hewlett-Packard hopes to get you out of your chair with the TouchSmart IQ506 I've been testing. You can still use a mouse or keyboard with this handsome all-in-one desktop PC. But you're also supposed to get your paw prints all over it — often while standing up. The idea is to use your fingers to rummage through your music collection, pore through pictures, watch videos or peek at your calendar.
HP is pushing TouchSmart as a family-central, living room or bedroom PC. You can record audio memos or use your finger to scribble an on-screen note: "Remember to buy milk."
The IQ506 is the more aesthetically pleasing new version of hardware HP launched more than a year-and-a-half ago. And HP's improved software builds on the touch capabilities of Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system.
For now, that only takes you so far. You'll have to wait for the upcoming Windows 7 operating system to take advantage of the multitouch-type smarts popularized by the iPhone. There's no two-finger pinching gesture, for example, that would let you enlarge a picture.
Such quibbles aside, I had a positive experience with the new TouchSmart. A closer look:
•Design. HP compares the design of the new TouchSmart with, of all things, a messenger bag. I don't quite see the similarity, but the silver-trimmed black PC is nice looking in its own right. It's pretty thin overall and smaller than its predecessor. That's despite having a generous 22-inch-wide display, compared with 19 inches before. The machine has an ambient light to illuminate the keyboard, or, as HP marketers stress, "set a mood." Anything to take your mind off Vista, I suppose.
Set-up was simple. I had to plug in only a single power cable.
This isn't the most powerful PC you can buy for the money, but it's pretty well-loaded. My $1,499 test version has a TV tuner, Media Center remote control, integrated webcam, DVD burner, 500-gigabyte hard drive, 4 gigabytes of RAM and an Intel Core 2 Duo processor. A $1,299 model lacks the TV tuner, has a slower processor and smaller, 320-GB hard drive.
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