News: General

HP Misto - Creating a new coffee table craze

HP Labs, Congratulations on your 40th!

by Keith R. Wheeler

2/22/2006

When the engineers at HP Labs celebrate their fortieth anniversary, it’s not just champagne and speeches. This is the same team working on new transistors, software aimed at government compliant archive and search abilities, and naturally new printers. However, based on a new concept in coffee tables, HP Labs is showing they have a family side as well. HP Misto is a coffee table with a twist - a technology twist. There’s a very large touch-screen display built-in to the top of the table. The goal is to have a group of people playing a game around the table using the touch screen for input. In addition, it could be a great tool for sharing and sorting photographs or home video. With some mapping software, your family could plan its next vacation together – and even get agreement on the route before getting lost on the way. Hewlett Packard offers no information at this time about the Misto’s pricing or availability. But, you can imagine all of those HP engineers celebrating the fact that the spilled champagne from the big anniversary party can’t ruin the screen or the computer they were just using to play a spirited game of Risk. After all, they were really playing a coffee table, not a PC.