I agree with nonofx for the need to add custom icons. I added MS Word and MS Excel to the list of programs and it automatically recognized and added the word icon, but not the excel icon. I have plenty of other programs that I would like to add/use the program default icon in the touchsmart software because the default list does not provide an accurate depiction of the program for quick reference.

There has got to be a way to change icons in the Touchsmart interface. Seriously.

Well that sucks. HP needs to add this functionality to a future update. This should have been a feature to begin with. Whoever decided it was a bad idea to let the user customise the tiles needs to get out of the home computing business. Or at least give us more than 21 icons to choose from. Those icons must be stored somewhere and it would be possible for HP to make a fix so we can add our icons.

If I can't fully customize the Touchsmart interface I will just stop using it. It is very cool but once I fill up the tiles many will all look the same.And that is totally lame. There are some really cool high res icons out there that I could use but HP decided I don't have the sense to know how to download hi-res icons. HP deciding that we couldn't figure that out on our is sort of patronizing. This needs to be fixed.

Well I have hopes that the Touchsmart software will improve. Seems like it was a little rushed. We need more customization control. We should be able to change the colors of the gui and create custom tiles with our own icons. I also hate the fact that any song,video or picture that ends up on my machine is picked up in Touchsmart. I have Sims 2 snapshots in there, that's lame.I also do a lot of video and audio editing and I have literaly thousands of audio and video segments. I don't want those in my TS. There should be a Touchsmart folder for media that you want included in the interface.

Also, why are there no media controls in the interface? No equalizer or FF/RW buttons? That is also lame.Bottom line, people like customization options and controls. This is why Window Blinds and Winamp were so popular back in the day. Most software companies, even game companies, have realized this years ago. This is why they offer up skins for certain apps and allow for easy game modding. Software companies simply can not dictate what the customer wants. They need to give the user as much control as possible.

It's a great machine. I have the iq507 model and have had no problems so far at all. I love the machine but the Touchsmart software is very disappointing. You guys need to catch up quick before Win7 comes out.

Ah, that's good to know. Thanks ;)

You can't add tiles that link to PDF files. TouchSmart lets you create tiles to exe's on the system. If an exe you want to add as a tile has a 256*256 PNG compressed icon embedded, TouchSmart will let you use it as the icon for the tile.

If you look at the exe using Windows Explorer and the icon displays nicely when you choose "Views - Large Icons" or "Views - Extra Large Icons" it should work in TouchSmart.

Not sure I understand what you mean by "the only solution". Can you elaborate a little?

The design intent for adding tiles was to enable launching of non-touch-optimized programs from a touch-optimized environment - no more, no less. The fact that pdf and lnk files work as well is a side effect of implementation details. The side effect is lucky in that it allows for more than the design intent. The side effect is unlucky in that it doesn't allow for enough customization because it is a side effect.

The feedback that more customization is needed for tile icons is noted already.

Indeed. And with the 2.8 version of the shell, you can do just that. It's a little convoluted, so I'm not sure everyone will be able to do it (it's a hidden folder), but the 2.8 shell will look in

%LocalAppData%\Hewlett-Packard\TouchSmart\SmartCenter 2.0\Icons

for files that contain images and list those among the custom icons.

You can get the 2.8 shell here: http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/softwareDownloadIndex?softwareitem=pv-7274...

I'm not sure what you are trying to do - do you want the icon to be just one of your many movies (a random frame from one movie), or do you want the icon to periodically update and show a random frame from each movie's content, or do you want the icon to show a movie-cover for each of your movies periodically?

Thanks for the clarification. Unfortunately, that is not something that the TouchSmart program (the one that displays the tiles) or the TouchSmart Movie program (one of the tiles) was designed for. In theory you could extract a thumbnail frame from a movie and use that as the icon for the Movie tile, but even that would be more effort that it's probably worth. Sorry. I'll take this as an enhancement request, but I can make no guarantees whether it will be implemented or when.