HP TouchSmart 600xt All-in-One PC

As touch remains best for casual interaction with the PC in a family room or kitchen, HP also throws in a wireless mouse, plus a low-profile wireless keyboard that you can tuck beneath the case when you're not using it.

Our $1600 test configuration included Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit), a 2.13GHz Intel Core 2 Duo P7450 processor, 4GB of DDR-1333 memory, a 750GB hard drive, and 1GB nVidia GeForce GT230M graphics. Those components helped the TouchSmart 600 achieve a WorldBench 6 score of 92, which is right in the middle of our top-performing all-in-one PCs. It's pretty much equal in performance with the Core 2 Duo T8100-equipped TouchSmart IQ816 (81) and the Lenovo IdeaCenter A600 (87). (When it comes to all-in-one speed, nothing we've tested so far has matched the 24-inch Apple iMac's WorldBench score of 111.) As for gaming, however, the TouchSmart 600 simply can't match those all-in-one PCs; it struggled to break a playable 30 frames per second at 1680 by 1050 resolution, in either Enemy Territory: Quake Wars or Unreal Tournament.

Even with Windows 7, touch remains an entertaining luxury rather than a killer feature; and if you can do without it, you can get a machine for a lot less cash with features and specs that are otherwise comparable. But if you're ready to reach out and touch Windows, the TouchSmart 600 lets you do it in a way that's both fun and effective.