HP TouchSmart: The Social PC

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Social networking has been the talk of 2006, but so far there's been little talk about how to make the PC more of a social fixture in the home. Now HP has a new and very different-looking computer that's been designed from the ground up to claim its rightful place in the family.

What's different about it? Well, to begin with, it's the design. Weighing in at almost 40 pounds, it's designed to be an attractive, eye-catching piece of furniture that will look at home in your kitchen, living room, family room, or anywhere else people congregate in your house. The unit is black and silver with sleek lines and a large 19-inch LCD screen as its centerpiece. The base houses a wireless keyboard that tucks neatly away when it's not in use. The CPU (an AMD Turion 64 X2 Dual Core) is housed in a slim notebook PC-sized chassis that sits as the base of the monitor. Ample storage is provided by a 320GB hard drive. Graphics are game-quality excellent, thanks to the NVIDIA GeForce Go 7600 graphics card, and everything about the system is optimized for a top-notch media experience. The front panel has a few smart buttons for quick, simple access to music, photos, video, and common applications. A slot-loading DVD burner (that also uses HP's LightScribe technology to label your DVD) makes it convenient to play or burn a DVD. The entire feel of the unit is more like a consumer electronics appliance than a PC.

But the real essence of the machine is the combination of software and hardware that makes it a socially friendly place. With a single click from the main menu you can access the weather or your email, check the day's schedule, or just watch TV. The TouchSmart runs the new Microsoft Windows Vista, which only adds to the attractive, modern feel of the machine. A built-in webcam and microphone, along with accompanying software, make it an inviting place to send a quick video email or record a voice message for someone else in the family. The calendar provides you with a central place to manage the family's activities or leave a quick note or even a voice recording for someone. The idea behind the unique calendar application is that the PC becomes the central place for a family to keep organized and in touch.

You can imagine the type of family usage HP envisions. A cook will be able to look up a recipe on the Internet, watch a video clip of how to prepare the dish, order ingredients, and even record and watch a TV cooking show all from the kitchen PC. (The unit has a built-in NTSC TV tuner and over-the-air ATSC high-definition television tuner.) A photo album can keep a slide show of family favorites going, and there's software to create custom media from music playlists and video clips.

Input is another strong suit in this "more social" PC. You've got your choice of using the wireless keyboard and mouse, a stylus, or the remote control device depending on what you'll be doing. Bluetooth and wireless LAN 802.11a/b/g make it a relatively cable-free existence, and there are slots for CompactFlash, Secure Digital (SD), Memory Stick, and xD media, to name a few. One of the fun features is the option to install the HP PhotoSmart printer right into the base of the machine and print those snapshots you love.

The TouchSmart PC represents a design breakthrough, a PC that doesn't feel like an outsider in the family room. And despite the state-of-the-art features, the unit will sell for less than $2,000. There are a couple of notable omissions. The calendar doesn't import and export from Outlook, so it's sort of a world unto itself, which makes it tough to use as the family calendaring headquarters. An iPod dock might have been a nice addition; so would some sort of VoIP or Internet phone functionality. And the TouchSmart takes up a bit too much real estate for me to feel comfortable with it in my kitchen or family room. I'm thinking that if you're going to go to the trouble of integrating technology in the kitchen, for example, you're going to want a mounted PC that drops down from something like a cabinet, not a machine that's going to hog valuable cooking space.

HP's got the speeds and feeds as well as much of the functionality and design that busy connected families are going to want, but it suffers because the machine you want in your kitchen (cooking and communications) is different than the one you want in your living room (entertainment and media). It's going to be a slow cultural change before PCs claim their rightful place in these rooms. For now, the HP TouchSmart is a very unique PC for an early adopter of the PC lifestyle. It combines Windows Media PC entertainment functions with a nod toward calendaring and messaging—the cornerstones of family life. It's going to take a few iterations to fine-tune the concept.