May 8, 2009 10:45 PM

I agree, DaveTN. I remember being wowed and awed when the HP Touchsmarts first appeared in stores, and dreamed of owning one. I am lucky and happy to say that it's been more or less just as cool as I imagined. I think it will be interesting to see how the competitors try to shake things up, and what HP does to stay on top.

I found a review of the Dell Studio One 19. Here are a few highlights:

"The Studio One 19's touch-screen interface responds more quickly than the HP TouchSmart's. The Dell automatically starts up with the Touch Zone interface on the screen, and it works better than HP's TouchSmart home screen, since it's always on."

I'm not sure what they mean by this. Does the HP Touchsmart's touchscreen drivers turn on at start up? Or are they referring to the equivalent of the Touchsmart suite? If so, the article is inaccurate; the HP Touchsmart suite is also "always on," if you set it to load at start up and allow it to run in the background.

"Spinning the carousel-style Touch Zone interface was smooth, and each of the icons brings you to a different function, like music playback, photo viewing, Internet Explorer, or the touch games. The two games help you learn how to use the touch interface: one is a drum machine (with cymbals, bongos, and cowbell), and the other is a rhythm touch game. The Studio One supports two-finger multi-touch for tasks like rotating and zooming in on pictures."

The touch games are interesting and sound like a fun way to learn (I was wondering what the screenshot of the kid touching the drums was!) Multi-touch is no big deal; if it's in Windows 7, and Windows 7 is coming soon, I assume (or at least hope) that HP will upgrade the Touchsmart to support it.

"The Studio One has a better Vista experience than the TouchSmart as well. The system increases the size of the icons, menus, and window buttons, so they are easier to touch. That said, the larger icons and menus leave you less visible real estate on the already smallish 1,366 by 768 screen. It's a fair tradeoff for usability, but it still could be annoying."

This does sound like a nice feature, but is it really something Dell designed? Couldn't I do this somehow through Windows accessibility options? I've never tried, so I don't know, but I can't imagine they redesigned the Windows UI just for their touch technology.

"However, the Dell comes with FastAccess facial recognition software, which lets you log in to the system just by looking into the camera...After the system learns your face after a couple of logins, the recognition process happens in seconds. One minus to this setup is that the webcam is active at all times, leaving the system open to possible misuse by malware that can spy on you literally by taking control of the camera. (You can disable the FastAccess software for privacy, but then you won't be able to login as easily.)"

This sounds cool, but very risky, lol!

In terms of performance, the article categorizes the Studio One 19 as middle of the road. It is also lacking a Video/HDMI port, and a coaxial cable hookup (as far as I can see). The reviewer says the touchscreen is better, but I think he only says that because of the multi touch. It's so new that I can't find any user communities or forums about it. Maybe those will give more information when they pop up....