The idea of a touchscreen shoehorned into a traditional laptop form factor still seems a bit strange, but like it or not, they're coming. And as such, HP's Spectre XT Touchsmart is a pretty good way of doing it if it has to be done. Instead of using some cheap display panel, the company opted for a 15.6-inch bonded IPS …

HP's computer business is in a state of bizarre limbo, but that's not stopping them from plodding along with a new batch of desktops—tragically or not. Luckily for us, they look great, and perform better than ever.

Crafting a new computer is tough. Everyone loves touch—fingers are winning interfaces. But pawing an upright monitor is physically tiring. So? HP's design team cleverly brought the monitor down to you. And we've got their concept sketches.

You think you're better than me, TouschSmart 600? You think because you're now configurable with Core i7 720QM (1.6 GHz) or i7 820QM (1.73GHz) processors—starting at $1700—that you've defeated the long-standing caste system separating man and machine?

HP just popped a video of CTO Phil McKinney demonstrating the "slate" we showed you first at CES 2010. McKinney affirms that this is not just some will-o-the-wisp, but in doing so, might've taken away some of its allure.

Time to get back to the tablet range of yesteryear: HP's TouchSmart line-up. They've added three new models to the family—the 12-inch tm2, 15.6-inch dv6t and 17.3-inch dv7t.

The HP TouchSmart 600 is sort of like a girl I "dated" in fourth grade. I can't say I loved her, but I can say that I really, really liked her a lot. But the TouchSmart never wore braces.

HP puffed its chest when announcing the Photosmart Premium web-connected touch-enabled printer, and I understand why. You can print coloring books, movie tickets and news reports without even owning a computer. It works, and works well.

I scored one of the only copies of Windows 7 Touch Pack out in the wild, and it really blew my mind, bringing the full power of Microsoft Surface to touch-enabled Win 7 PCs. Have a look:

After playing around with HP's new web-enabled printer, it's clear they didn't take any shortcuts with the hardware, equipping it with a responsive, capacitive touch panel. But besides the same types who buy digital photo frames, will anyone use this?