HP announced new TouchSmart IQ800 Series

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HP has announced a new version of its TouchSmart desktop computer that allows you to touch the screen rather than use just the keyboard or mouse.

The TouchSmart IQ800 Series has two models: the IQ816 and IQ804, they have slight specifications differences, and they are obviously 3.5" bigger than the IQ506t Series.

The new TouchSmart IQ804 and IQ816 feature a 25.5-inch 1920 x 1200 touchscreen with various TouchSmart-specific apps, a TV tuner with remote, integrated webcam, Bluetooth, HP Pocket Media drive bay, and an ambient light to illuminate your keyboard, but the IQ804 confusingly has a higher-clocked 2.16GHz T5850 Core 2 Duo on a 667MHz bus with 2MB of cache while the IQ816 has a 2.10GHz T8100 Core 2 Duo on a 800MHz bus with a 3MB cache -- we'd bet the IQ816 benchmarks faster, regardless of the slightly slower chip. On top of that, the IQ816 also bundles in a Blu-ray drive / dual-layer burner and upgrades the IQ804's GeForce 9300M GS graphics to a GeForce 9600M GS chip

The new model will be available in the UK in November, will cost £1499, and come with a dedicated support service for customers confused by the new touchscreen interface.

Out of the box the computer will come with a set-up procedure similar to Apple's Mac OSX that will guide people through the process.

You can go check the specifications on HP's website, but we thought that it would be most interesting to talk about how it feels to play with this. The concept is actually quite interesting, and I have to admit that although I'm skeptical that this would be a blockbuster in retail stores, it's quite fun to play with. The user interface homepage is where HP has done a better job. It's very finger-friendly and the UI is intuitive. It could use a little more graphics processing muscle, but it's fine as it is

HP also used its event to announce the launch of a number of Pavilion laptops and the expansion of the HDX laptop range. The new models will be based on the Dragon 20-inch laptop announced last year, however come in 16- and 18-inch variants.