HP Dreamscreen Review

A fancy desktop with lots of eye candy, but very limited use

Touchscreen tablets are expected to be the top selling gadget this year. With around 100 tablets announced at CES, touchscreen devices seem to be the direction to go. Looking at all the hype, HP has tried to go a step ahead and instead of providing a portable tablet; they incorporated touch-screen into their new desktop offering called the DreamScreen.

The DreamScreen is pure eye candy in terms of looks. This All-in-one desktop has a large 18.5” display with 1366 x 768 resolution. The display has a clear plastic bezel around the display frame that adds to the looks of the system. There is a large indicator right at the front bottom that looks like a power button, but works only as a power indicator. Other controls are placed on the right hand side. All the connectivity ports for USB and card reader, headphones are placed neatly on the left hand side with additional ports at the back. There is also a slot load DVD drive on the right hand side just above the control buttons. All in all, the Dreamscreen looks very good and can easily add to the décor of a room. The only issue is that it takes a wire with an adapter for power that is clearly visible behind the monitor.

The HP Dreamscreen is powered by an Intel processor and comes with a 250GB hard-drive. There is very little information about the hardware that has been shared by HP. It comes with a mouse and keyboard as well even though the onscreen keyboard of the PC is very responsive and easy to use. It has inbuilt WiFi for connectivity and also comes with an Ethernet port at the back.

The desktop runs on a Linux based operating system, which has been heavily customized.  The interface has been tweaked to be touch-interface friendly. The good thing is that HP has provided large icons to use on the desktop for various activities. You can either log in as the administrator or as an student. The student account has limited privileges in terms of installing and purchasing content. HP has tied up with various vendors to provide content on their machine across categories such as News, music, videos etc. Some content is paid, while other is free. Video streaming is free from various channels, whereas to use application for astrology, you need to subscribed etc. The User interface overall is very easy to use and quick to respond.

What we didn’t like was the operating system is too limited and restricted. It will play media of very few formats, does not remember your last sites/applications and does not even remember you WiFi connection password on restart. Moreover, a user cannot install additional applications, which is a major downer.

The HP dreamscreen is priced at Rs 19,999 and is aimed at the mid-level consumer who wants to have a good looking desktop with internet and multimedia capabilities.
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Whats Hot

- Looks
- Easy to use
- price
- touchscreen
-
Whats Not

- restricted OS
- paid subscription model
- limited media support

Estimated Street Price

Rs 19,990/-

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