The All New Samsung 7 Series Features

The $1,199.99 Samsung Series 7 all-in-one desktop doesn’t have overwhelmingly impressive hardware, but it ticks all the necessary boxes: a 2.70GHz Intel Core i5 processor, 6GB of RAM, a 1TB 7200 RPM hard drive, and Harman Kardon-optimized audio. Though its internals aren’t spectacular, its design is: the Series 7 is sleek and attractive, and the 23-inch display even folds flat to be used like the Microsoft Surface. But enjoying a computer — especially an all-in-one — is about more than just horsepower and looks. It's about software — and Samsung has a lot of work to do to make Windows
 7 shine as a touch operating system on the Series 7.
The Series 7 makes a hell of a first impression. It comes out of its rather large box effectively flat, so it looks more like an HDTV than a computer until you fold it open to reveal its base. The base and frame are a brushed silvery aluminum, lending the whole machine a very high-end feel — this is one computer you’ll want prominently displayed. The base is a small rectangle, hidden behind the screen save for one corner jutting out; the power button sits on top of that piece, along with several capacitive buttons for changing inputs, brightness, and the like. The DVD drive sits there, too — it’s not a Blu-ray drive, which keeps the price down but is an unfortunate absence on a on a media-centric machine with a large display. The ports offering is otherwise nicely complete, though it’s clearly designed to be the family computer rather than a media or work powerhouse: four USB 2.0 ports, HDMI input and output, and a Gigabit Ethernet port on the back next to several large vents; headphone and microphone jacks on the left side; and an SD card reader and USB 3.0 port on the right side.
The star of the show, obviously, is the 23-inch LCD, which looks terrific when it’s off but a little underwhelming when turned on. Its 1920 x 1080 resolution is sufficient when watching from afar (after all, TVs much larger have the same resolution), but you’re not usually going to be using the Series 7 from eight feet away.
You can touch all 23 inches of the Series 7’s display, but after some time doing so I’m not sure why you’d want to. Samsung included its Touch Launcher application, which launches a touch-friendly dashboard of sorts from the Windows 7 taskbar — it has some finger-friendly apps and access to things like Twitter and Amazon Kindle, all of which theoretically benefit from touch capabilities. It also supports multitouch gestures (only two fingers, though) like pinch-to-zoom, and responds when you hit it with your elbow, which is a nice thing if you’re touching with dirty hands. For simple activities designed for touch, it works — I played air hockey on the screen against a friend, and it worked fine as long as we only used one finger each.