HP TouchSmart IQ505a PC (Intel Core 2 Duo T5750 processor 2.0GHz, 4GB RAM)

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The initial interface is broken up into two rows, one "large" set of scrollable application tiles for your frequently used programs, and a smaller strip down the bottom for lesser used ones. You can drag-and-drop using your finger to reorder these icons either in the one strip or between them, and a simple tap of an icon loads that program. The bottom row features a number of links to Windows games, a clock, weather, RSS feeds, and an embedded version of Internet Explorer, whereas the top strip gives access to Music, Videos, Calendar, Pictures and Notes, a Post-It note-style application that allows you to draw with your fingers, use handwriting recognition for text, or keep voice notes.

There's a whole host of missed opportunities here, though--there is multitouch capability, but it's limited to the home screen where it uselessly scales your menu options and photos miss out. Although the interface will allow you to browse through folders in an iPod touch-esque manner, there's no such treatment once you enter the folder, only allowing you to view gallery style. While it supplies some buttons for rotating, recoloring and so forth, there's no multitouch way to rotate, zoom or sort images.

The included music player is fun and easy to use, and can even use your iTunes playlist if you want it to, but the lack of an onscreen volume control is a bit of a downer. Also, the option to run music in a public jukebox mode allows you to add more to a playlist, but not delete or shuffle which will hamper its effect as an otherwise excellent source of party music. You can set a song playing and then leave the music player to do other things, and it will keep playing in the background until you hit the always present pause control. It just seems a bit odd that the aforementioned volume control isn't omnipresent as well.

The video section is similar in function to the photo gallery, but if you've previously set a song playing in the background, it's not smart enough to pause it when you playback a movie. From here you can also record Webcam movies if you desire, which are stored in WMV format--however, there's absolutely no way to delete them within the confines of the interface--you have to exit and find the relevant folder in Windows Explorer.

The video section also gets slightly out of control if you've a lot of movies to sort through, and we found ourselves pining for a better organized interface. The Dates view, for instance, is really useful only if you're the type that's just storing personal videos, or who takes a video blog. Otherwise, it'll get polluted with other content you may have downloaded.

The Folder view is also an issue, which doesn't so much allow for navigation as show the individual folders the interface has discovered with videos in them. Problems start to arise in this mode if you've been slightly fastidious about organizing your video content. For example, say you had a folder called Season 1 stored under another folder called Red vs. Blue. Say you had another folder called Season 1, but this time it's stored under a folder called Pure Pwnage. Both different video series make sense from a file organization standpoint--however, HP's interface will only list both Season 1 folders, with no context about where they're stored, making navigation a guesswork at best.

Slightly better is the Videos mode which simply shows all cataloged video files in a similar manner to the "tiles" view in Windows Explorer. While this allows quicker identification of movies than the Folder view (assuming the file is named correctly as a thumbnail is included), if you're in possession of quite a few movies, the consistent drag motions required to scroll through them all can get tiring.

Finally, while the calendar allows you to tap and create an event, you can't then drag that event simply to another day, week or month--you have to double tap the existing event to edit it, and then change the day manually using the drop-down calendar on the right-hand side.

All of these are only minor points, but it's painful to see obvious things overlooked, and they're magnified by the fact that a touch interface is meant to be flexible, integrated, intuitive and simple.

In truth, if we hadn't seen what the iPod touch and Microsoft's concept Surface table could do, this would all be pretty amazing. A number of companies are now piling money into research in order to fill the touch void, with the vision being that there'll soon be many public-facing screens used as either an information resource, control system, or both. Things are certainly heating up in this arena, and should Windows 7 be any good and the multitouch support being built into the OS follow suit, then the next TouchSmart PC could be very interesting, indeed.

On the crapware side, things are reasonably thin for a change--although advertising has taken on new heights with the Welcome Center graphics being seized by Norton, pleading that you really, really, really should protect your machine with its software. We turned it off.