HP Touchsmart IQ804 25.5-Inch All-in-One Desktop PC Black

5 comments

1. 

   W. Wagner on December 18, 2009 at 5:40 am

   I am used to running 6 monitors (stock trader), so despite the large screen it seems cramped. The biggest negative is that there is NO video output (not VGA, not DVI, not anything). If adding a second monitor is something you need to do, go elsewhere. It is my home computer, so I talked myself down from needing a wall of monitors.

   The 4 GB of memory is not upgradable, according to the literature … even if you are running in 64-bit mode. In theory, there should be no such limit. [It's a home computer, Wynn. It's a home computer, Wynn. ...]

   Otherwise it is a usable all-in-one. My PC and mouse are better than the ones in the box, but that’s why they invented USB.

   I upgraded to Vista Ultimate and got very lucky. Everything still works. A friend with an identical IQ-804 upgraded and landed in a nightmare, and all HP said was “We don’t support Ultimate.” If you need Ultimate, how lucky do you feel? Works fine here. Blew apart across town. HP doesn’t want to spend any time on your problem.

   I have a really short attention-span for PCs, and I’ve been using this one at home ever since it was first released. It is servicable, and having such a mamouth touch screen is kinda cool.
   

2. 

   Jonathanlevine on December 18, 2009 at 6:54 am

   had this for a week. i then realised i had a thousand dollar desktop , with a thousand dollar screen. Thats fine BUT, what if and when screen goes wrong outside warranty. You then need a whole new package or you cannot find a compatible screen a few years down the line. I took it back. Bring on the mouse. I never thought i’d say this. Im just plain happy with my mouse! The machine was fine for the kid in his bedroom or that challenged senior who might just get a buzz out of the all in one entertainment system.

3. 

   eclectic_in_CA on December 18, 2009 at 8:10 am

   What sold this product for me was the touch function. After a lot of research, I finally took the plunge and bought the one-in-all from HP. I nearly bought the 816, but decided not to because I don’t use blue-rays.

   Pros: BIG monitor with great resolution–my Yosemite pix looks awesome on it; it’s fast. I have yet to try out the TV tuner or the DVD player, but expect that they would be pretty nice.

   Cons: Expense, and still glitchy. I’ve only had it for a little over a week and discovered several issues. One was discovered by my brother who helped me network the computer. Apparently, it has problems with MACs so we couldn’t enable it. Another is some incompatibility with iTunes. If the HP Touchsmart is initialized before the iTunes, it garbles up the iTunes display–it goes black and you can’t seen the commands. If you run iTunes in Window Vista after re-installing the corrupted files, you get a Rundll32 error in Windows. It’s getting so that I’m thinking of uninstalling iTunes, and using my old Mac to charge up my iPod….

   I uninstalled iTunes and it didn’t fix the Rundll32 error message. What did fix it was to disable the screensaver. I have to find a permanent fix–need to do more reading.

   Also discovered that the Adobe Flash Player that came with the PC can crash–apparently it’s meant for a 32-bit system, and there’s nothing for a 64-bit system. UGH!!!!

   Also decided to copy my CDs–no iTunes. When I checked the Windows Media Player library, the music information was all wrong!!!

   Looks like I’ve bought a computer with an expensive CD and DVD player. I’m afraid to find out what else might be wrong with it.

4. 

   D. Kupferschmid on December 18, 2009 at 10:28 am

   Its no mac but i have to admit its not bad either. Vista is the weak link but the unit itself is rather snappy and performs well. The only real gripe so far is that you cannot use it as a monitor for video games. This would have been a real help and I assumed it would have worked since it doubles as a TV. When we connected the Xbox 360, there was a terrible delay that made gameplay impossible.

   I tried resolving this with HP support but they didn’t know why this was happening. Apparently I was the 1st to try this and they simply don’t have experience with this issue yet. To their credit, the support team was very responsive.

   Overall its a good machine. The touch screen works very well and the performance is good. It also looks very good mounted on the wall. If you have the extra $$$ and want a unique machine then this will most likely fit the bill.

5. 

   Javier Martinez on December 18, 2009 at 11:15 am

   I bought this computer to have as a living room family computer. The touch screen capability and sleep look made me think it would be a great media server as well since everyone could run their iTunes libraries from it as well as feed movies to the TV and record with the TV tuner.

   I’ve has it now for 5 months and:
   
   1. Touch screen is no longer working properly and the available calibration tools can’t fix the problem.
   
   2. Keyboard stops responding intermittently and had to be replaced with a wired keyboard.
   
   4. As another user (eclectic_in_CA) mentioned, if you launch the touchsmart then iTunes will not display properly. Also iTunes must be open in order for the touchsmart media player to be able to read your iTunes libraries, which then had the wrong album art attached to many albums.

   I do like:
   
   1. The size and brightness of the display
   
   2. Once we learned not to open iTunes after launching touchsmart we all got along fine.
   
   3. I currently have the touchsmart PC acting as my media server which feeds my PS3 and 2 TV’s in addition to acting as a DVR to record from 1 of my direct tv receivers.
   
   4. We can easily show pictures and videos to friends and family.

   After it’s all said and done, it delivered what it said it would….but not to full scale. You have to learn to work around it’s glitches.