TouchSmarter: Touch Screen Gadgets

Hewlett-Packard wants to put you in touch with its latest computers. Quite literally.

The company’s handsome new line of all-in-one TouchSmart PCs makes liberal use of a mouse-keyboard alternative you always have with you: your fingers. You can launch applications, play music, crop photos and handle other tasks, just by pressing against the screen.

The machines went on sale in retail stores last week. HP says early sales are trending above forecasts. The $1,499 TouchSmart IQ506 that I’ve been testing - the more expensive of two new models - may already be difficult to come by, says Vickram Bedi, HP’s product management director for worldwide consumer PCs.

As an all-in-one computer, the entire guts of the machine are stuffed underneath the display. TouchSmart belongs in the company of the Dell XPS One, Gateway One and Apple iMac. But none of the others boasts a touch experience.

Touch computing is not a new concept. It just has never really gone mainstream. HP is one of many manufacturers, for example, making tablet PCs that use a pen in lieu of a mouse or keyboard. They aren’t exactly best sellers. Apple is helping boost the visibility of touch through the iPhone.

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This entry was posted on Monday, August 4th, 2008 at 5:17 pm and is filed under Multi-Touch, News, Touch Friendly Software. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.