HP Berlin 2008: Hands On With The HP TouchSmart IQ500

Every once in a while, a product comes along that makes you stop and check where you were when you first saw it. At the “Connecting Your Wold Event” in Berlin this week, HP announced one of those products – the HP Touchsmart IQ500.

So, if you’re a tech enthusiast (which I guess you are as a WGS reader) then, like me, you’re probably already experiencing “touch fatigue” – it’s seemingly everywhere at the moment, from the iPhone/iPod touch and a plethora of imitators through to various hints on touch capability coming in Windows 7 - if I was smart, I’d give up blogging and start a screen cleaning business, because those fingerprints are going to be everywherein the future! Anyway, it looks like touch is a trend that’s here to stay, but with the TouchSmart IQ500 HP have succeeded in creating a machine that looks so good, you really want to get your hands all over it.

First though, a history lesson – touch interfaces on PCs are pretty new, right? Maybe came along with the Tablet PC a few years ago, yeah? No. HP first introduced a PC touch interface back in 1983 with the HP 150 PC, when life was all green screens and Rubik cubes. Back then, dreams of pulling together a badly rendered spreadsheet with cells you could actually touch seemed pretty exciting to your mum and dad, but strangely, the phenomenon of number prodding didn’t catch on.

Fast forward to 2007 and HP had another go, with the TouchSmart IQ770, launched at CES with a Bill Gates keynote. HP admitted this week it was “a kind of experiment” and certainly had a certain “experimental” aesthetic, with one HP executive I chatted to admitting that “Not even it’s mother would say it was beautiful”. There were a few touch applications – a clock, calendar and a post-it note application, but the touch applications were a little thin on the ground. Still, it sold in decent numbers and consumers were positive about the opportunities that touch presented. So, HP went to work on the IQ 500, putting the ugly stick back in the cupboard and vowing to develop a series of applications that would prove truly valuable to  customers all over the world.

The result is the HP Touchsmart IQ500:    

The slim lines of the IQ500 hide a lot of hardware – an inbuilt 22″ high definition widescreen display, Intel Core 2 Duo processor (T5750 or T5850), your choice of an Intel Graphics Media Accelerator X3100 or NVIDIA GeForce 9300 M GS HD, a big hard drive and 4 gigs of RAM – that’s a lot to pack in to an integrated unit.

Two models are available soon – here’s the breakdown:

(So those of you in the UK will see that once again, the US to UK price comparison is not fun…)

The product shots look great, but don’t really compare to seeing the machine in the metal – the form factor is really slim – you basically see all screen and very little computer. You do need to be careful where you position it however – high gloss piano black plastics, and a very glossy screen mean that reflections can spoil the viewing of your favourite websites!

The system also has a few lovely design touches – a very low profile wireless keyboard which slots tidily underneath the PC and my favourite – a small upturned lip at the base of the screen hides a downlighter which illuminates the keyboard when you’re working at night – great touches throughout.

All of the IQ500′s touch applications are accessed via a separate application which runs on top of Windows Vista. Shipping with the unit are the following touch-based applications, all of which are accessed by scrolling horizontally with your finger.

• Music
• Photo
• Video (including Webcam application)
• Calendar
• Weather
• RSS Reader
• Web Browser
• Clock
• Notes
• Vista Games (Purble Place, Solitaire et al)

Whilst the application themselves are pretty straightforward, elements of the user interface are exceptional – imagine being able to easily enhance and crop a photo simply moving sliders with your finger, creating music playlists by scrolling through your sleeve artwork in a fan view, then and dragging and dropping tracks again with your finger. All sounds a bitiPod Touch? You’re right, but the thing is, this is a PC, not your iPod and HP are ahead of Apple and Microsoft in bringing this kind of experience to your desktop.

The plan is to ship a version of the IQ500 with a TV tuner, so you can record and watch TV directly on the PC – no details are available on what tuners will be available though. You can use the PC with Windows Home Server too, giving you the freedom to watch music and video streamed directly from your server (the music application picks up your iTunes library, which, if you have a MediaSmart Server, will be held on the server itself), and with the release of WHS Power Pack 1, you’ll be able to edit photos directly on the server without fear of corruption! 

Check out the TouchSmart PC in use, via the following YouTube videos:

What’s missing? Well, let’s hope we see HP release an SDK in the future to allow third party applications to join the list of in-box apps – take the learning from the home server community and you’ll know that add-ins can really bring a platform to life. Whilst there’s more available than the last TouchSmart PC, they’re still only covering the basics for today’s digital lifestyle.

That said, the applications HP have included work really well, with a new experience that feels as unique and original to me as when I used the Media Center interface for the first time via remote. It’s generally responsive (sometimes selecting icons can take a pretty fim tap), and animations and transitions are smooth – it’s great fun to use, and, when you need a “regular” PC you can simply close the TouchSmart application and use the wireless keyboard and mouse – simple.

So if you’re looking for an additional PC to put in the home with great looks, no cable headaches and a big show-off factor, you could do a lot worse than the TouchSmart IQ500.

More Info: HP | YouTube TouchSmart Channel