HP Touch Smart PC - Tech Review

HP Touch Smart PC - Tech Review Male 1: I have to say in many homes now; the computer really is kind of a central place for the family to access the things like calendars and their music and then video files. Well absolutely, I’ve been waiting for so long at a time but its almost to the point where computers becoming an appliance, its like something that you might have in your kitchen like your fridge and your microwave well you’re going to have this there now as well. Well this is form HP, this is called their Touch Smart PC and this really is a family computer and you’re right, this is something that you would have on your kitchen desk or even in the family room and get everybody in the family access to. It’s a full Windows Vista computer has got like half a terabyte of hard drive space on there, a couple of gigs of RAM and all those types of specs there but its— Male 2: And that’s not almost important anymore is it really? Male 1: No, it is, it is how the interface works with the family. This is a full touch screen, you can see its actually all built into one screen and the computer and you can either use the stylus or your finger and right now at the HP Smart center and this is where you’re family would go to find out what's happening to see things like the weather. Obviously, photos are probably an important part of every family’s life. You can go down there and check out photos, print them out, share them what have you. This is a really cool feature here, the calendar and by clicking on that again like if I use the stylus of my finger, it’s going to bring up a calendar that allows you to communicate with the family. If you’ve got a few kids on the go, everyone’s in and out of the house all the time, there is a great way to make sure that everyone’s on the same page. Male 2: Well it’s funny but if you think about it, you have those things in every house, which is essentially the message board. Typically in the past it has been a little white board right where you can put, “Pick up the kids from soccer at 3:30” you know “oh mom, the cable company called, you haven’t paid your bill again, disconnect.” But the idea is that you have that message board, well this, that one little feature in this whole thing becomes that message board. Male 1: And that’s what this is right here, the message board, you can see it got all sorts of little notes, I wrote this early here, and AJ is a nice guy. Its too bad you can't see it, you got the calendar on the side here, I can click on one of the days and then I can go in and then actually if I want to write in different events. You know pointless maybe like the kids got a piano lesson and some soccer and taking it one-step further, you can also write little sticky notes as well. Male 2: When you got that up and running again, I’ll just show them something on this side, which I though was kind of cool. Because it is a full media smart TV as well, you have the ability to be able to put the full television into this, so again this might be on your kitchen. You can see on the side here, we’ve got the cable antennas as well as the HD kit or antenna as well which is kind of cool for all that new standard now but essentially while this is in the kitchen while you’re cooking or something like that. You can put your favorite show on, even your favorite cooking show for example. Male 1: So again, I’m back here on the message board, I’m going to click on write note, and here I can select different color felts, a little sharp there, I can say AJ clean the room. But then you hit done and this little sticky note goes up into the message board, what's even cooler is I can leave audio notes or it has a built in webcam and I recorded this earlier, check it out. I’ve got a lot of cleaning to do— Male 2: But I thought that video feature was really cool because that takes it into a whole another level. You couldn’t really do that with a white board in the past but now everyone can leave little video messages for what they’re doing today. Male 1: And you can select two as going to as well because you can setup everyone in an account time here, so you can have it go to everyone or you can just have it go to yourself or one of the kids specifically. So if you can really personalize the whole experience and like in using the TV there, you can record all your favorite TV shows and watch on here and it’s got a really good sound system on here too. You can hook up surround sound if you wanted to. Male 2: Yes, on the back here if you have a look, its got all the different outputs that you need, so its go the 5.1 audio out as well that it has the digital COAX cable out as well so can get the full digital surround sound if you’ve got that system hooked up in your place. Male 1: And it’s running full Windows Media Center on here too, so you are able to listen to all your favorite music and obviously, the whole family can share the music library. And down on the bottom here you can even customize the little icons; you know what time I can hit here for the internet, I can play a game of solitaire if I want. Here I’ve got Windows Live Local as well, if I need to get directions to a meeting or going to be soccer—for the kids. And again, it’s a full computer so I can just click out here and you can see that it’s a regular— Male 2: Regular goalkeeper, you can run any operating system that you wanted too, one of the things that I like as well one of the modes that we have in right now is also the ability to touch the screen as well. So you can actually set it up so that it actually has the big touch screen. Male 1: Yes, that’s what we have here, the big buttons, I guess the one downside, this thing will get smudgy pretty quickly especially with kids with grainy like fingers, so that’s probably a good reason to use the stylus pen and then it does fit right in here on the top. So theoretically, there's a place for you to go and hopefully not to get lost. Male 2: You know but if it’s on your kitchen, dude wipes it down, that’s what I’m thinking. Male 1: That’s what you’re thinking? Yes. Male 2: Do you know where all the cleaning stuff is? Male 1: Apparently, dude because I have to clean the whole place. Male 2: And just quickly on the front here, you’ve got all the connectors here too if you wanted to plug in your digital camera to dump some photos in. It even has digital memory card slots like pre well all computers have now and the nice thing is that it have some inputs for firewire and also S videos. So if you’ve got like an old cam cording or if you want to get some tapes to convert over to DVD, you can do that with all the hardware and software that’s included here and you can get control of everything that you have. Male 1: Yes and its also very flexible, so if you have this short people in the family they can bring it down, if you’re standing up you can raise it also, so very user intuitive. Male 2: So this is called the HP Touch Smart PC, you know for a family environment, it’s not something that I’d put in a high performance office environment. Male 1: Right, no. Male 2: Or you know high performance gaming but a great way for you to bring the whole family together so that you’re all communicating and on the same page.