According to the videos on HP’s website, it does seem to be a multitouch interface. You resize the tiles by putting two fingers on the screen and pulling them apart. That seems multitouch to me.

It does seem that they have not implemented the TouchSmart software very well in respect to the things you wish it had on it i.e. rotation. It would be interesting if it was closer to Microsoft’s Surface technology. I also don’t like that the shell is basically a program run on top of vista. When you switch to Vista you can see that the TouchSmart software is residing in your taskbar at the bottom. I wish they could have implemented it better so it seemed more integrated with the machine.

Besides the ability to write with a stylus and use your fingers the TouchSmart software seems only to be a shell that is giving a different graphical representation of your start menu. Basically a magnification of the icons. To me it seems like a nice kitchen computer, but so much else needs to be done with it first to even be competent at that. I would like the ability to have a recipe on the screen and swipe across the screen to get to the next page. Something like Apple’s preview where you could read the recipe regardless of the format it was in. Doing it through Microsoft Word would not be a good option. It would be nice if you could access Skype through the TouchSmart shell as well. I am not sure if you can add programs to the menu or not.

Hopefully it will become more feature rich in the future. I like the idea and form factor, but I agree that it seems “plopped”. Once it becomes an interesting mini-OS in its own right is when I will think about getting it.

PS: One reason to get Vista, Windows Media Center >>> Front Row