HP used to be a company that made stodgy computers that only your 60 year old father would like – if he knew how to use it. In the last year they have really gotten their act together on the design front and are coming out with some pretty slick hardware these days. Leading the pack is their innovative all in one Touchsmart PCs, which takes aim directly at Apple’s popular iMac line, adding slick touch-screen functionality in the process. I’ll start by saying, that I’m not a fan of touch screen anything. I think the iPhone’s interface is really slick, but I hate the fact that you always have to take it out of your pocket and watch what you are doing whenever you use it. I also hate the idea of getting fingerprints all over your beautiful iPhone screen and frankly every touch screen device I’ve ever owned eventually has calibration issues. So for all of these reasons I wasn’t sold on the idea of bringing this technology to a desktop computer.
Multimedia, Browsing and Touching
To reiterate the beautiful screen point, HP sent me a 22.5 inch HP TouchSmart IQ506 to review. The minute you turn it on, you are in for a treat. This 1680 by 1050 pixel screen is absolutely stunning. The viewing angle is fully adjustable with no glare or mirror effect at all. Why would you want to mess this up getting finger prints all over it? I’ll tell you why, HP has strung together a really nice touch screen interface that lets you control all of the machine’s multimedia media with the touch of a finger. There’s a little home icon that when pressed brings up a unique, some pieces of which were taken straight from apple. You can view your entire music catalog in using a cover flow style interface. You just scroll your finger across all your album covers to select what you want. It’s a blatant rip-off of Apple. But it works brilliantly and is fast. The HP Home Screen contains all of your apps including a customized Browser that needs a lot of work, I.E., a Video Player, Photo Viewer, Games, Digital Clock and other dockable items. You can set the screen so that you have three main apps on top and a scroll bar at the bottom. The onscreen keyboard works pretty well with the custom Notes app.
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