HP recently announced a raft of new devices at its “Connecting Your World” conference, including a range of new laptops spanning across its premium to professional ranges, including a ultra-slim Voodoo laptop that rivals Apple’s MacBook Air as the slimmest laptop available, a monitor they have labelled as the “DreamColor” which was developed with co-operation from DreamWorks engineers and promises more than 1 billion colours and a new TouchSmart All-in-One machine was announced.
It’s the TouchSmart I’ve been most interested in though. I remember when HP announced the last version, when it was very much a concept form factor – for those unfamiliar with it, it’s a touch screen display with a PC build and integrated onto the back of it, with a touch oriented software pack installed to provide an electronic “family notice board” experience, allowing “post-its” to be stuck on the screen leaving notes for family members and a whole other raft of uses.
This second version seems to follow that concept up, but this time I get the feeling that it is based more around a digital entertainment hub and social gateway. The hardware seems to be a lot thinner and better designed than last time – they’ve now produced it in a friendlier living-space piano black colour and with its 22” HD screen can be placed in pretty much any room from the living room to the kitchen. The emphasis on the ability to watch and record TV, play music and view photographs on the device reminds me more of a Media Centre PC type set up, which will appeal to those interested in that market or bring something extra to the product for those who want the device for other uses.
The device could easily become the centre hub of your “Digital LifeStyle”, blending social networking, home automation, entertainment, internet and other computing tasks (your usual word processing and office type activities), together on a single device for the entire family. Or allow other devices to connect into this centralised unit and share data throughout the household.
The inclusion of touch again indicates that more and more users want to reach out and control data with their fingertips. My only concern with this form factor is how long it will be around for, with Windows 7 bringing further advances in touch and gesture control, the form factor could easily change again between now and a couple of years time, but this is all pure speculation – the TV style format will remain popular and usable for some time yet.
It’s the TouchSmart I’ve been most interested in though. I remember when HP announced the last version, when it was very much a concept form factor – for those unfamiliar with it, it’s a touch screen display with a PC build and integrated onto the back of it, with a touch oriented software pack installed to provide an electronic “family notice board” experience, allowing “post-its” to be stuck on the screen leaving notes for family members and a whole other raft of uses.
This second version seems to follow that concept up, but this time I get the feeling that it is based more around a digital entertainment hub and social gateway. The hardware seems to be a lot thinner and better designed than last time – they’ve now produced it in a friendlier living-space piano black colour and with its 22” HD screen can be placed in pretty much any room from the living room to the kitchen. The emphasis on the ability to watch and record TV, play music and view photographs on the device reminds me more of a Media Centre PC type set up, which will appeal to those interested in that market or bring something extra to the product for those who want the device for other uses.
The device could easily become the centre hub of your “Digital LifeStyle”, blending social networking, home automation, entertainment, internet and other computing tasks (your usual word processing and office type activities), together on a single device for the entire family. Or allow other devices to connect into this centralised unit and share data throughout the household.
The inclusion of touch again indicates that more and more users want to reach out and control data with their fingertips. My only concern with this form factor is how long it will be around for, with Windows 7 bringing further advances in touch and gesture control, the form factor could easily change again between now and a couple of years time, but this is all pure speculation – the TV style format will remain popular and usable for some time yet.
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