In a not so surprising move, Hewlett Packard (HP) has added touch screen glam to its netbook line up. The new Mini-Netbooks 5102 comes with 10.1 inch screen with touch capability. Keeping in view the race all the OEM have gone into taking Netbooks, we will not be surprised if the next one would actually have cellular calling functionality in them, this trying to eliminate the need for carrying both, cell phone and netbook.

The HP touch screen Mini-Netbook 5102 does not inherently comes enabled with it but it works through a software specially designed for it to work. The official launch of this new hardware is expected on CES 2010 (Jan 7 to Jan 10). The Netbook is decently priced around $399 and carries all the required gizmos like Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and USB 2.0. Lenovo, HP's rival have also announced in another not to surprising move, that they have their touch screen enabled Netbook S10-3T available for launch and display at CES 2010. I guess CES 2010 will be a show to look out for all hardware enthusiasts.

In his answer to the question of usability of touch screen by consumers, Kyle Thornton, Business Netbook Manager at HP, responded,

If I hand this to a businessperson, maybe they would say 'Oh, this is a nice feature, but I don't need it.' If you hand it to a student, it's a different [mentality] where they have grown up on touch devices

Since it is just a start, there will be very few applications widely available for touch screen Netbooks but then again, there is always a first time. HP does not have its focus on software development but they have given an opportunity to the developers to do the job for them.