As one of the first fruits of the Windows 7 launch, The HP TouchSmart 600 rates very highly on the instant gratification scale.
With a 23-inch touchscreen, this attractive super-sized all-in-one PC has a wireless mouse and keyboard to minimise table tangle, and set-up is as easy as pressing the "on" button.
Once the preliminaries are complete, an auto prompt for wireless network connection means you can be online within minutes of ripping the machine out of its box.
While some all-in-one PCs are compact enough to squeeze onto tiny spaces such as a kitchen bench, the TouchSmart 600 has more of family room feeling about it with its large 16:9 high-definition wide screen.
Microsoft's new Windows 7 operating system offers immediate improvement to general useability with a task bar along the bottom of the screen to help you navigate around the machine, and a much simpler feel to the menus and settings. It is also the first operating system to be built with touch control in mind.
With HP's touch sensitive screen, almost anything that can respond to a mouse click should also respond to touch.
Two-finger controls that can spin photos around, enlarge the size of web pages and help you browse through different applications are supposed to make the PC easier to use, but in fact represented a learning curve that brought its fair share of frustrations and slip-ups.
Although HP's screen has a silky finger-friendly finish, we found that few of our favourite applications and websites were originally built with touch in mind, and thus lacked the precision required for a satisfying user experience. After one misfire too many trying to open a link on a favourite website, I found myself reaching for the comfort of mouse and keyboard for more common tasks such as social networking and browsing the internet.
To counter some of these limitations, HP has overlayed its own TouchSmart interface, which uses large, touch-friendly tiles for applications such as photo editing, writing memos, browsing the internet and viewing media. This goes a long way towards improving the touch experience, with large finger-friendly buttons for media files and favourites lists.
Looking beyond touch, HP's high-definition 1080p widescreen is a treat for the eyes when playing stunning sample videos, but downloading a YouTube video proved a jerky, drawn-out experience, reminding me of the dark days of dial up. While some of this may be attributable to our wireless network, we are yet to experience this with other wireless devices in our home.
Its handling of other mainstay family-friendly applications such as Skype also left us somewhat frustrated. While the inbuilt webcam captured a bright, detailed image with all sorts of fun effects to overlay onto the screen, it would constantly default to an external webcam setting, which meant it had to be reset for each and every video call - and nowhere in the settings could I find a remedy for this. The inbuilt microphone also gave a patchy performance, finally sending us scurrying back to our old, study PC.
Despite these disappointments, there is no doubt the HP TouchSmart 600 would make a handsome and fun addition to any communal family space and, for those looking for a home media centre, it also includes an optional TV tuner and digital TV receiver with a personal video recorder.
The fact that there is no killer application to make you fall in love with the touch interface is less about the failings of the hardware and more about the immaturity of the whole touch concept and the lack of applications to support it. So don't throw away your keyboard just yet.
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