Big Picture Big Sound had the opportunity to check out HP's recently announced TouchSmart IQ800 series PC at last week's Holiday Spectacular press event where numerous manufacturers were showing off their wares for the upcoming holiday season. Seeing all the electronic gadgetry on display, it really was beginning to feel a lot like Christmas. HP's multimedia PC, however, was a real eye catcher and stood out from the rest of the crowd.
As a longtime Mac user, I can honestly say that the HP TouchSmart IQ816 is the first Windows PC I have seen that makes me feel even the slightest twinge of jealousy. The overall design of the TouchSmart is similar to Apple's iMac all-in-one design, opting for an allover black finish instead of the Apple white, but the touch screen, user interface and integration with online services bring it to a new level.
The sleek, glossy black, all-in-one desktop PC doubles as a television with its 25.5-inch Full HD 1920 x 1080 touch-enabled widescreen LCD, built-in slot-load Blu-ray Player, dual-format NTSC or over-the-air ATSC high definition TV tuner, and integrated stereo speakers. Running Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit edition with Service Pack 1 on a powerful 2.10Ghz Intel T8100 Core™2 Duo Processor, the multimedia-ready machine sports HP's TouchSmart interface that allows users to graphically scroll through photo, video, and music libraries stored on the machine with a simple stroke on the screen or using the Bluetooth wireless keyboard and mouse. The built-in webcam can capture still images or video clips that can be directly uploaded to YouTube.
