HP DreamScreen “taxes the processor”

David Pogue:

The frame is dog slow, too. Ten seconds to start up the Clock. Eleven seconds to open Settings. Five seconds every time you want to change widgets, which requires going to the Home screen.

(“We’ve learned that we’ve taxed the processor too much,” says the product manager, Ameerd Karim. He says the company is readying a software patch that may help.

If you knew this, why did you release it? Why wouldn’t you fix this first?

H.P. won’t confirm or deny it, but I’ll bet a hundred bucks that the DreamScreen was originally intended to have a touch screen. That theory would also explain those bizarre software designs, like having to walk down a screen full of options to reach the O.K. button. In the touch-screen conception, of course, you’d just tap O.K. with your finger, one step instead of seven.

Somewhere along the line — maybe when the economy crashed? — I’ll bet those plans got shelved to keep the price down. But if the DreamScreen truly is a “platform,” as H.P. says, then maybe there’s hope yet for the Touch DreamScreen.

Usually for these firms, it’s one shot and your out. I suspect the DreamScreen will live on as a cult item where someone will hack it to do beautiful things but it won’t be HP.