HP, being a technology oriented company, comes up with some nifty gear on occasion but their latest innovation, dubbed the “Wall of Touch” sports some mighty impressive technology that harnesses 9 43″ LCD displays with some optical touch screen functionality all wrapped up in an impressive package.

You’re unlikely to see it in your house any time soon but hey at least someone is working on it right?

Source: Wall Street Journal

Touch-screens are at a bit of a cross-roads. Gadgets are a logical place for the functionality given their user-friendly approach but in the PC realm there aren’t exactly many shining examples of the technology being implemented.

The MSI Wind-Top AE2220-25SUS hopes to change all of that with its All-in-One design sporting a peppy Intel Core 2 Duo CPU and that touch-screen you’ve been pining for. Benchmark Reviews has the full story:

The small footprint doesn’t just shelter a 1080p HDTV LCD display, it also incorporates touch-screen functionality along with an integrated HD web cam and high-fidelity 5.1-channel SRS Premium Sound. Blu-ray Discs can be played back from the MSI Wind Top AE2220, and a digital tuner is also built-in for receiving over-the-air HD broadcasts allowing the DVR functionality within Microsoft Windows 7. Ideal for every workspace conceivable, the dual-core 2.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T6600 processor handles compute tasks and 4GB of DDR2 system memory ensure there’s no delay in program responsiveness, while a 500GB hard drive offers high-capacity storage space for saved data and recorded audio or video multimedia.

Quite nifty specs wise with the distinctive feel of a PC for the study/office.

Fan controllers serve as a sort of peacekeeper whereby you can install those insane high airflow fans and tame them down to a respectable level where you can hear yourself think. Unfortunately most of them are a nightmare of dials to turn.

The NZXT Sentry 2 Fan Controller lets you control everything with a few touches of the finger. Overclock3D tests the controller’s prowess:

Further displays of the plus and minus abilities. Naturally it maxes out at 100%. On the other end of the scale the lowest value you can reach is 40%. Initially this seems strange, but logically it makes perfect sense. Low RPM fans will end up stopping around there, and if you want to reduce the speed of a high CFM fan below 40%, you might as well use a quiet one anyway. Thankfully NZXT have included a feature that a lot of fan controllers skip, and that is the ability to turn the fan off totally. With modern PC Chassis having multiple large fans, it’s great to be able to shut some of them up when you’re just browsing the net, or doing gentle tasks, but still have the ability to keep that graphics card cool when the gaming heats up.

A slick addition to give any case that futuristic look, even if all it does is a rather mundane task.

With Windows 7 just around the corner you’re bound to be hit with the deluge of new computing hardware hitting the market that makes use of many of the operating system’s features.

The Dell Studio One goes for the all-in-one approach and tosses in a touchscreen so you can smudge your screen and not get so worked up about it. It even packs an Intel Pentium E5200 processor paired along side Nvidia’s GeForce 9400M so you can expect decent performance…just not anything ground breaking.

A nifty machine that mixes decent hardware which makes it a nice office/productivity/stick in the kitchen PC.

Source: PC Perspective

Shuttle has had a long string of successful mini-PC designs and could be counted on creating something powerful, and quite toasty, in an insanely small form factor. This time around they’ve taken a different approach.

The Shuttle X50 All-In-One PC crams Intel’s Atom 330 dual-core CPU into a rather svelte machine that would fit into most any location. Think Computers has a look:

This is for sure an All-in-One computer! The entire thing basically looks like an overly-large monitor or TV. Let’s start with the screen on the X50 it is a 15.6-inch widescreen panel giving you a maximum resolution of 1366 x 768. One thing that set’s the X50 apart from other nettop’s is that this screen is actually a touch screen, although it is single touch, unlike the HP TouchSmart PC.

Perfect for the kitchen or…well anywhere you need a bit of computing action.

Its been a long time coming, well a few months is an eternity in gadget years, but Microsoft’s Zune HD has officially launched. Given the amount of hype surrounding it you’ll find plenty of coverage around the web. Here are a few of the choice links:

Zune HD unboxing @ engadget
Zune 4.0 software @ Zune.net
Zune HD Review @ Zune Scene
Zune HD Teardown @ iFixit
Zune HD Disassembly @ anythingbutipod

Microsoft has also announced that they’re working on adding applications like Facebook and Twitter to the Zune HD meanwhile old Zune model owners have a new software version 3.2 to look forward to with as of yet announced fixes or enhancements.

Microsoft’s upcoming Zune HD personal media player made a bit of a splash over the past few months coming in with a feature set that surpasses anything else on the market today or in the foreseeable future. Of course you’ll have to pay for all of those advanced features but it might be less than you think.

The device is rumored to come in at the $220 price point for the 16GB player while 32GB will set you back $290, or so goes the Best Buy product terminal cell-phone picture-grab-o-rama over at Gizmodo.

Not bad considering its HD Radio, OLED touchscreen, 720p video outputting self, although a larger capacity player would be nice.

Creative’s Zii chip made a bit of a splash when it was announced, given its 3DLabs pedigree the system on a chip has some impressive capabilities for the mobile crowd. The company has launched a video showing their Zii Egg Developers platform off running Google’s Android OS.

Slick is a succinct way to describe it although an OS fine tuned to their chip’s capabilities would have been an even niftier demonstration.

Tablet computers fill that sweet little niche of gadgetry where you feel infinitely cool walking around and using one bringing many geek kudos…while everyone looks at you as an oddball.

HotHardware has a look at the Asus Eee PC T91 swivel-screen Table Netbook. The computer sport Intel’s Atom platform with that touch sensitive input magic we all seek. Here’s a look:

This so-called "netvertible" sector is still in its earliest stages, making the T91 one of the first netbooks available that also doubles as a full-fledged Tablet PC. Furthermore, it’s one of the few netbooks coming out that sports a display smaller than 10 inches. If you’ll recall, the first wave of netbooks hovered around the 7" – 9" display range; these days, most netbooks are 10.1" with many of them scaling up to 12" in size. Granted, the internal specifications haven’t changed much over the years, but still, the T91 is also one of the few options for buying a new netbook at the sub-10" level.

A nice looking machine but it doesn’t exactly have the horsepower for the medical or industrial fields so that leaves it a very small market to cater to.

Creative Labs announced their Zii system on a chip processor about six months ago. The chip was designed by their ZiiLABS subsidiary and sports a pair of ARM processing cores strapped to some 3DLabs graphics wizardry for a chip that should be at home in just about any modern portable gadget.

Of course the first device comes in the form of a personal media player named Creative Zii, which is undergoing testing by the FCC, has been uncovered.

The Zii sports a touch screen interface, bluetooth and WiFi support, and will likely support a wide number of media file types to playback. As for a release date? Your guess is as good as any.

Source: epiZENter