HP's TouchSmart sub-brand and its other AIOs should be no stranger to many PC advocates, but in case you've never come across one before, the company's laid all of them out on one side of its Global Influencer Summit in Shanghai. Models range from the TouchSmart IQ770 launched back in 2007, all the way to the recently shipped Z1 workstation and even the just-announced t410 Smart Zero Client; but the real gem of the booth is that little beige HP 150 right in the middle -- it's one of the first-ever touchscreen PCs, dating back to 1983, powered by an 8MHz Intel 8088 chip, ran MS-DOS and cost a mere $3,995.

Whilst on the topic, HP's Vice President of Industrial Design Stacy Wolff shared some interesting stats: his team found that much like laptops, there are very different screen size preferences across different regions, with the US showing strong interest in 20-inch and 23-inch HP AIOs, whereas China much prefers 20-inch over 21.5-inch and 23-inch. With the big jump in AIO market penetration in each region between 2008 to 2012 (almost doubled in Japan and the US; and an even bigger leap for other markets), HP predicts that these machines will continue to steadily increase market penetration across more price points -- this was illustrated with what it conveniently calls the "AIO wedge" on a chart. Feel free to take a gander at our gallery for more tidbits.

Gallery: Visualized: HP's all-in-one PCs over the years, one from 1983

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HP's spent the afternoon here in Shanghai to share some details about its latest products and strategy, and to our delight, there was one session dedicated to "Style Meets Function," during which Vice President of Industrial Design Stacy Wolff talked about his design philosophy and design goals for the current market. Most notably, we learned that some of HP's latest laptop designs were based on the work of its research centers from 11 different cities, and the company isn't afraid of admitting that it used consultants for an outside perspective as well.

Despite Stacy's upbeat presentation and interesting stats (apparently these days men have a boring color preference, from first to fourth favorite: black, gray, blue and white), the inevitable question popped up: One lady expressed her concern that the brand-spanking-new Envy Spectre XT reminded her of the MacBook Air a lot, so she wondered if HP's ever worried that Apple might sue.

Stacy kept his initial reply pretty brief:

"I would go back to the TC1000 [Tablet PC] from about 10 years, and that's a tablet. I think if you look at the new Spectre XT, there are similarities in a way, not due to Apple but due to the way technologies developed. Apple may like to think that they own silver, but they don't. In no way did HP try to mimic Apple. In life there are a lot of similarities."

As always, we wanted more from the horse's mouth, so we grabbed hold of Stacy right after the session and had a little chat over this topic -- you can see the full and surprisingly candid interview after the break.

Gallery: HP on laptop design similarities with Apple's: it's a struggle as we drive to simplicity

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