Lora has a thorough write up about the HP TouchSmart on WhatIsNew today. Included are unboxing photos as well as shots of the HP in use. If you’re thinking about getting a TouchSmart display, you’ll want to read her overview.
I would add a couple things to her discussion. First, this thing is large. She has the 25.5″ version, which kind of reminds me of those great big Apple 30″ cinema displays. Yes, it’s a little smaller, but it sure feels big when you’re right up to it. Check out the photo above. You can see how big the display is up to standard 12″ Tablets.
What the size means is usability is that you’ll need to be up close to be able to reach the whole display area if you’re using touch. That’s not a bad thing, but something to think about. For me, that means I need to wear my glasses to keep the text clear :-).
The touch sensitivity is not too bad. It is possible to have false triggers if you keep your fingers too close to the display, but that’s pretty easy to get used to doing. In terms of the dual touch, the Windows 7 beta drivers seem to have one place where there’s a bit of “stutter” when dragging around two touch points. Lora has a shot of this in her article. You can see where I’m drawing two strokes at the same time and at one spot the paths seems to jump. I think this occurs when there’s occlusion that the optical sensors can’t readily resolve, but I’m not sure. Maybe HP will be able to fix this down the road. Here’s hoping.
I’ve also been spending a little time coding up some sample apps for the TouchSmart. Nothing’s finished, however. One program that I’m trying to finish up is a crystal glass music playing program. Imagine a set of crystal glasses with various amounts of water in them and you use your fingers to slide across the rims to generate music. That’s the idea, although it’s all virtual here :-).