Maxit Mag

In a radical shift in how personal computers are conceived and positioned, Hewlett Packard has given its latest PC the sense of touch and reduced important operations to fingering the screen or clicking a remote.

At a stroke, the TouchSmart PC, unveiled in Seoul last week, has transformed a boring - for many families, challenging - technology to something as easy as operating a TV set or jotting notes on a pad.

The new PC is built around a BrightView 19" LCD flat screen and doubles as a TV monitor, thanks to a built-in tuner. The system runs on Windows Vista and the TouchSmart lets the users touch various options displayed on the screen.

This machine is powered by an AMD Turion 64 X2 dual-core TL-52 processor and has 2GB of DDR2 SDRAM memory, a 320GB hard drive, and 256MB Nvidia GeForce Go 7600 graphics card. Not really powerful but it does its job.

The IQ770’s touchscreen monitor includes HP’s SmartCalendar application that serves as a bulletin board for family members: Users can write on virtual Post-its and paste them into a calendar
along with pictures. Users also can update the calendar with voice, scribbled, or typed messages.
HP’s TouchSmart IQ770 has a DVD drive/burner, decent speakers, a 1.3MP Web cam, Bluetooth, and 802.11 a/b/g Wi-Fi connectivity.

Overall, the HP TouchSmart IQ770 is simple, convenient, and flexible enough to broaden PC usage and move it into a central spot in mainstream family life. The TouchSmart PC will be available globally in the second quarter of 2007 at a suggested price of US$1799.