A powerful mouse killer

Desktop computers with separate hard-drive cases will soon be a thing of the past, say experts, replaced by sleek, touch-screen computers with large, built-in LCD screens.

Ushering in the new trend for all-in-one touch-screens is the HP TouchSmart610 PC.

First impressions are good: it features an impressively bright and sharp 23-inch HD widescreen LCD screen, which is capable of displaying full 1920x1080-pixel HD resolution thanks to a powerful ATI RadeonTM HD 5570 graphics processor.

During the test, the TouchSmart610 displayed photos and videos beautifully. The touch screen responded well. (Actually, its wireless mouse and wireless keyboard allow you to control the PC with ease, but it was also convenient occasionally to press the OK button or other buttons to interact with applications by tapping the screen directly.)

The test unit ran on Windows 7 Home Premium, with a Microsoft Touch Pack for Windows 7 and HP TouchSmart interface installed on top of the OS.

To make the most of the touch screen, you need to use the provided HP TouchSmart interface. The home screen of the TouchSmart interface provides you access, via a row of icons at the bottom of the screen, to various touch-optimised applications such as the music player, video player, DVD player, photo viewers and games. More touch applications can be downloaded from the HP website using the App store, which is part of the interface.

I liked the fact that the 23-inch screen can be tilted back at several angles for viewing comfort; it also has an integrated webcam for video chatting.

The TouchSmart610 comes with all necessary connectivity thanks to a 1 Gig LAN port and built-in wireless adapter. I managed to connect it to my wireless router easily, and tethering the wireless mouse and wireless keyboard to the main unit was a breeze.

I love the slot-in Blu-ray drive built in to the right side of the screen. This plus the 23-inch HD screen made it great for watching Blu-ray movies. Meanwhile, the DVD player of TouchSmart application also plays BD movies, which run perfectly smooth. Topping off the media package were the built-in speakers, which sounded great, especially for movie viewing.

The TouchSmart610 comes in several configurations, depending on the processor, RAM and storage size.

The machine I tested was one of the more powerful options, featuring an Intel Core i5 650 3.20 GHz processor and coming with 4 gigabytes of RAM. A good option to increase the system's performance would be to go for the 8 GB of RAM.

Measured with Windows 7's internal benchmark tool, the TouchSmart610 achieved impressive scores.

On a scale of 1.0 to 7.9, the PC got 7.1 points for per-second processor calculation.

Almost as good was the 6.7 points for both desktop performance for Windows Aero, and 3D business and gaming graphics performance.

And it got 5.9 points for both memory operations per second and disk data transfer rate performance.

HP TouchSmart610 PCs start from Bt54,900, VAT excluded.

      Key specs:

Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit)

CPU: Intel Core i5 650 3.20 GHz

Memory: 4 GB

Hard drive: 1.5 TB

Graphics: ATI Radeon HD 5570 graphics with 1 GB memory

Optical Drive: 4X Blu-ray Disc Player, SuperMulti SATA Drive with Lightscribe Technology, Double Layer (8.5GB) 8x DVD±R

Networking/wireless: HP Wireless NIC 802.11b/g/n Mini Card (2x2); Integrated 10/100/1000 BaseT network interface (Broadband Ready)

6-in-1 Digital Media Reader: 6-in-1 Memory Card Reader [supports Secure Digital (SD, SDHC), MultiMedia Card (MMC), MMCplus (MMC+), xD (Extreme Digital Card), Memory Stick (MS), Memory Stick PRO (MS PRO)

Dimensions (WxDxH):

58.5 x 10.3 x 45.1 cm

Weight: 12.1kg