Review of the HP IQ775 19" TouchSmart Desktop PC

The iQ775 has been moving quickly since it came out towards the end of last year. It is a unique offering for PC's in the way that it has an integrated touch screen. Much like a small tablet only it is a 19" all in one. You can still use a keyboard and mouse but it opens up a few additional space saving options. In this review I'm going to give you the low down on how this all in one performs, and who will get the most out of it. First I'm going to start with some of the basics.

Hardware:

Processor: 1.9GHz AMD Turion 64 X2 TL58

Storage Space: 500GB (SATA hard drive)

Display: 19" LCD Panel (touch screen w/ stylus)

Video Acceleration: NVidia GeForce 6100 / NForce 430

Dimensions: 18.88"x 15.00"x11.37"

Integrated WiFi

Operating system: Windows Vista Home Premium

Optical drive: CD R RW integrated with DVD +/- R RW

RAM: 2GB (DDR2, expandable to 4 GB)

NTSC Television tuner

You can see it has some fairly decent hardware. It really is set up to be more multimedia than anything. It isn't really much of a gaming PC. It will hold its own at the medium intensity level but it isn't a gaming designed PC. The RAM is inadequate in my opinion. I would spend the 100 or so bucks to toss in a couple more gigs and get it to maximum, Vista just gobbles up RAM. That would likely help with the gaming issues as well.

The touch screen is a cool feature. It isn't really needed in my opinion though. It just sort of gunks up the screen with finger prints and the novelty of literally hand clicking the icons gets old. Most of the time you'll be using the PC in the traditional fashion of using a mouse and keyboard, you can integrate in some use of the touch screen with some practice it just isn't really a practical edition.

Ideally this PC would be used by college students in a dorm room or something where space is at a premium. Since you could use this as a television with the built in tuner it really does save space in that sort of situation although the 19" flat panel is a little small for television viewing. Another great use in my opinion would be in a rec room or bar. You can play great bar games on this PC, and it makes a great jukebox. It might be a little expensive to be dedicated to such trivial things, but that's where this desktop shines. At $1700 bucks I buy this PC, hook it up to my surround sound and set it up on my bar, it's great. I expect to see some price reductions around mid summer, so if you can wait I'd catch it when it goes on sale.