From what I can tell, the photos program in the TouchSmart software monitors the Desktop and Pictures folders for photos, and gives you the option to play them from a removable drive. What I haven't yet found is any way to monitor other local or network shares for photos.

Until the software is upgraded to do this (or until I figure out something that I'm missing), you'll need to copy photos from your MediaSmart Server to your pictures folder to play them through the TouchSmart software. If this is unappealing, you can always setup slideshow playback of photos on a network share through Windows Media Center.

Mind Over Matt'er - Technology musings, opinion, and more straight from TechLore's head geek.

Brandon said: First -- thanks for setting up this website Matt! Great stuff here, and I only see it getting bigger as people become more enamored with the TouchSmart products. As for this particular problem, I spent literally hours trying to bypass the local-only searching for Photos & Music. No luck. I searched the web extensively, nothing. I called support, they pretty much told me it wasn't possible. I worked in the registry, tried just changing the "location" of the Photos/Music directory, it must be hard-coded in the software because it just simply will not work. It appears to be looking in the following places: 1. C:\Users\[USERNAME]\Pictures 2. C:\Users\[USERNAME]\Music 3. C:\Users\Public\Pictures 4. C:\Users\Public\Music 5. The Removable Disk (SD Card) Only, I have not tried an external HD as of yet. Vista connects to these just fine, it's the Touchsmart Apps that do not. Also, adding them into the Windows Media Player Library OR iTunes Library (per the manual) still does not get picked up by Touchsmart. It's as if the software prevents anything from being loaded that isn't on the C drive, or removable. Maybe it's intentional and this is why the two IQ500 models are differentiated by a larger hard drive. Short of renaming the C drive to something else, and mapping the C drive to my fileshare, I think I've exhausted most of the options. Very disappointing if you ask me. I don't want to copy & maintain of all of my photos/music, all of my computers in the house access the same directory on a file server I built. I could not find anywhere to send feedback to HP on this...anyone know? Leaving feedback via support is invariably a dead end.

I've also been playing around with the TouchSmart Photo app to do something similar, particularly since all our photos are also located on a fileshare in our MediaSmart Server. I think you exhausted more ideas than I came up with, and I also hit a dead end. For now I've dropped the TouchSmart Photo app and have been doing photo viewing and slideshows through Windows Media Center, since it supports viewing photos over a network share. As a workaround, you could set up a folder syncing app to keep a network share and a local folder in sync. It doesn't solve the problem, but it would keep your photos in sync locally so you could use the built-in photo app.

I agree its disappointing, but don't forget, HP just kicked off their third-party developement initiative, and now that devs can create touch specific apps and integrate them into the TouchSmart software, it's only a matter of time until someone comes up with a more robust photo manager/viewer for the TouchSmart. The foundation is laid, now all we have to do is support these developers and wait for them to work some magic. 

I know the HP folks are watching the forum. I have know doubt they'll see your feedback. :)

Mind Over Matt'er - Technology musings, opinion, and more straight from TechLore's head geek.

I joined the forum for this point too, i could not believe at first that i don't find the option to add network attached folder to the photos or videos but after i called support i was stunted that its not supported. I never saw any pic or any viewer in windows that cannot read any drive in windows mapped or not. I am waiting for an update before my return expire date to return my just today arrived i816.

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That should help with the munchies :)

This worked great!