HP TouchSmart Blog

[#1]

As Phil McKinney said in a previous blog post, “customers shouldn’t have to adapt to technology practices; technology products should ideally adapt to customers.”

How true is that?

Today we are introducing a few new members of the Touch family—the 20-inch HP Touchsmart 300, the 23-inch HP Touchsmart 600, and a new digital signage display, the HP LD4200tm.

This is exciting technology! The multi-touch capabilities let you pinch, rotate, flick and drag applications across the screen while you do everyday things like surf Netflix and watch Hulu videos. And the HP LD4200tm lets people interact with touch technology in different environments, like airports or schools or restaurants or stores to access maps or menus or catalogues.

Also launching today is the HP TouchSmart 9100 Business PC, which lets users access video conferencing capabilities and multimedia features on a 23-inch diagonal full HD widescreen display.

One of the great things I have learned is the long history of touch with media, and I thought that today, as we launch three new touch products, I’d share some of that history with you.

It blew me away to find out that touch technology has been around for almost 30 years. The first touch product was released in 1981—the HP 2700.

This system was designed with graphic artists in mind. By using a light sensitive pen, artists could make strokes and lines on the computer screen like a regular brush or pencil.

The first touchscreen personal computer, or the great-grandfather of the TouchSmarts, came out just two years later, in 1983.

This neat little system let users activate different features on their PCs by simply touching the screen.

Later on, HP took things on a different level – a coffee table level. In 1999, the HP Misto Table was the first tabletop personal computer.  Although it was never released for sale, this interesting product was used by HP to research how customers interacted with touch technology.

All of these great innovations culminated into the popular HP Touchsmart PC launched in 2007, the industry’s first multi-touch personal computer.

The HP TouchSmart PC made movies, photos, music and much more come to life with multi-finger touch. Customers could get real-time information, web-conference and access multimedia all with the touch of their fingertips.

Of course, who could forget the exciting news that was launched last year about the HP TX2 – the world’s first multi-touch consumer notebook!

 
Weighing in at 4.62 lbs, this system made the touch technology experience possible anywhere. You can write and draw with a fingertip or a stylus pen whether you are at a desk or lying down in a comfortable bed.

Of course, touch technology isn’t just found in desktops and notebooks – we even brought the intuitive technology to the HP Photosmart Premium with TouchSmart Web. This printer is the world’s first Web-connected home printer, but also features the largest LCD touchscreen on any printer (measuring at 4.33 inches) to access online content. You can access the Web with pre-loaded HP Apps, which makes printing maps, coupons, movie tickets and more a simple touch away.

If you’re interested in learning more about our history of touch as well as our future – check out the great talk from Phil McKinney at the 2009 CES Center Stage.



It’s a great feeling to be a part of a company with so much great history and an equally bright future. I’m also excited to be a part of the brand new Next Bench community. I’ve been a long time visitor to the site, and always enjoy your enthusiasm and hearing your thoughts.

What do you think about the future of touch technology?  Where do you see it going in the next five years? I look forward to participating in the great discussions in the forums.

[#2]

Great post Frosty. 

[#3]

Alright, I hate to be the pessimist here, so I'll start off by congratulating HP for reminding people that this isn't new technology, and Steve Jobs didn't invent it, so w00tness to that.

That said, i think that while touch technology works to a pretty good extent on a mobile device, it doesn't really work on the desktop right now for several reasons...

1.) Touch works so well on phones because, when compared to the desktop, there are few functions that mobile devices perform to the same extent as the desktop. Yes, we browse the web, send text messages, and put appointments into them. But, despite owning both a Windows Mobile Device and a Blackberry Curve, both of which have Mobile MS Office, I've never used it. While both devices support e-mail, i never send anything of an appreciable length. despite taking a photo here and a photo there, I've never, ever sent more than two at a time. In contrast,  I've uploaded dozens of photos to the internet in one sitting when I'm at my laptop. These are functions that are performed better by a desktop than a phone BECAUSE there is finer control than is available on any mobile device. Don't mistake one for the other.

2.) People rarely stare at their phone for more than 2-3 minutes in an interactive context. Sure, I've watched a movie on my phone, but i'm not sitting there trying to type into it. It gets old. fast. My wrists hurt. fast. I'm not alone on that front. try making a desktop 100% touch based and after about 10-20 minutes it becomes rather counterproductive.

3.)  The one thing that Hewlett Packard has never released that I would have purchased on launch date was a desktop replacement tablet. For a company that released a printer that will spit out newspaper articles automatically, I can't believe that it never dawn on someone to make a tablet with a discrete GPU, high end CPU, and max out the RAM. I have been waiting for someone, ANYONE, to release a tablet that I can install Photoshop CSx on, open a 20-layer, tabloid-sized PSD file and have the computer look at me saying, "Is that all you got?" HP, Toshiba, and Fujitsu have made some fine tablets...whose killer app is OneNote. Make a tablet PC worth drawing into, and HP could make some serious inroads within the media design demographic. I'd dare say that if it's properly executed (and agreements with Adobe made for license conversion), HP could make some converts out of Apple users!

4.) Along a similar vein, as long as toolbars and menus are the standard for software, touch will be a rough sell. My rule of thumb is, quite literally, a rule of thumb. If the control isn't, either vertically or horizontally, larger than my thumb,  it requires a mouse and touch won't work. For all the lambasting it gets, the Office 2007 Ribbon interface is pretty close to being able to make an Office UI that will work with a touch interface. Menus and 16x16 icons are not sufficient for a touch-based machine, period. Herein lies a catch-22 - do you make a touch PC that runs a 100% custom interface designed for touch and that apps that don't have a UI suitable for touch can't be installed on? Which will consumers be more apt to latch onto, their software or the shiny new hardware?

5.) Continuing in that vein, Touch technology needs a killer app. It needs something that touch input is so superior to using a mouse and keyboard for that it will make the investment worthwhile. Does HP have one of those in mind? Because as I look through my Start Menu (some 75 apps strong, including photo, audio, video, games, and document manipulation applications), the only app that I think might be nice to use on a touch UI would be Adobe Bridge...but I'm not going to replace my computer to do it, nor would I pay a premium for my next PC for it, either. If HP wants to get a touch-based machine to hit critical mass, they're going to need to find a use for a PC that isn't yet simply an evolution of what already exists.

 Let's consider another place where there was a radical shift: DVD. When DVDs came out, there were already building blocks in place, made by VHS. People were used to renting movies from Blockbuster, and purchasing them at Wal-Mart, something that wasn't common place even 20 years before. DVDs then solved problems VHS, had. VHS tapes would wear out with use (my mom's copy of "You've Got Mail" is a fine example of it). DVDs required no rewinding, the players rarely jam (I had to keep a screwdriver next to my VCR), don't require regular head cleaning, are more compact, and could be played anywhere upon the release of portable DVD players and laptop DVD-ROM drives. As an added bonus, DVDs have a higher quality picture than VHS, and, in the spirit of honesty, were easier to copy. Within five years, DVD was the de facto standard, and within a decade, VHS was about as relevant as the cassette tape. Blu-Ray was supposed to replace DVD, but besides higher picture quality on compatible TVs which are still not ubiquitous, it is still costlier to get a Blu-Ray disc than a DVD and there aren't many problems with DVDs that BD solves.

Just because $INTERFACE works well in one context, doesn't make it worthwhile in another. I mean, would it make sense to replace the steering wheel in a car with a Touch Wheel? Would fighter pilots do better with a keyboard and mouse that consolidates all the controls into "simple" menus and toolbars? Should we have a board full of switches, knobs and buttons for every function in Microsoft Word because it works so well in stealth bombers? EVERY interface of EVERY kind is designed to do the exact same thing: translate what the user envisions in their mind into something tangible, with the least effort necessary. In each case, there will be different requirements. For Point-Of-Sale terminals, the interface needs to be simple and easily teachable, because there is a high turnaround for retail cashiers and cycling through them with a steering wheel wouldn't be useful. Ask my boss' secretary if replacing her mouse with a joystick would make her job easier or more difficult, and then ask a sergeant in the Air Force if they'd like to have their jet retrofitted with a keyboard and mouse. While touch interfaces are all the rage today, that doesn't make them anything more than a marketing exec's wet dream: an interface that looks really cool and mesmerizes anyone playing with it in the store for five minutes, but makes them want a replacement after five weeks of owning one.

Again, you can call me a pessimist, but IMO touch has a CONTEXT, and the desktop isn't it.

Joey

[#4]

Well that's definitely one of the more thought out and detailed comments I have ever seen on a blog. Thanks for your  time, and thanks for sharing Joey.

[#5]

I continue to see a trend in here and it is almost an anxiousness to shoot down future accomplishments in its earliest stages of infancy, those being the innovative efforts being made in the present. How are the new capabilities being strived for ever going to find their niche for efficacy in the market if they can't survive a reasonable number of stages during R&D and chances for refinement through trial and error? For instance I have seen an almost boastful rundown of shortcomings made against the Firebird without much consideration for who the product is good for when someone feels it is not the machine for them. Yet in the case of the Firebirds the posters often commented that they would wait for its next great incarnation to make their purchase for which they were enthusiastically waiting. But without our support along the way, these things get pulled mid-stream and most likely won't even make it to stage 2 in the first place! I would really like to suggest that everybody consider how the success of early efforts benefits us later on and how much more satisfying it will be to be a part of a thing's success instead of its downfall. 

[#6]

NICe!!!

[#7]

Has anyone found a swivel Wall Mount for HP In touch? I  put mine in the Kitchen! Great TV and helps me cook!

[#8]

There are several VESA mounts that are swivel/swing arm.  Any compatible VESA mount should do as long as it’s rated to support the weight of the PC.  Let us know if you try it!