HP Touchsmart: feel things differently

There is no doubt that the touch is the flavour of the season, thanks to the hype created by the iPhone. Hewlett-Packard, India has unveiled next-generation HP TouchSmart IQ500 series PC.

Sporting a sleek design with piano-black finish, the PC has HP software designed specifically for touch. Users can browse music collection by album, crop, edit and share photos as well as upload them without using keyboard or mouse.

Powered by Intel Core 2 Duo processor, the PC has a 22-inch diagonal widescreen display.

The insides of the TouchSmart also include 4 GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 9300 M GS HD graphics card, ATSC Tuner, Webcam, Bluetooth 2.0, Firewire and an 8x DVD burner. It also comes packaged with a wireless keyboard and mouse, as well as a Vista Media Center remote. There's also an ambient light at the bottom of the computer which glows so you can see your keyboard in the dark.

The screen of the Touchsmart isn't touch sensitiveas hte name suggests; it's actually a beam of light in front of the screen that recognizes where your finger is when you break the plane of the light beam. The interface, which is all developed within Vista, can be customized in many ways, allowing you to pick from a variety of content to be displayed on the home screen. There's also a finger painting app, photo browsing and editing app, music player, movie player, RSS aggregator and calendar.

The design of the computer is another noticeable upgrade, which makes you want the Touchsmart for reasons other than utility. The folded design is supposed to resemble a messenger bag, and it doesn't look half bad. The HP TouchSmart IQ500 series PC will be available at a price of Rs 87,990 or around $1500 approximately.