If I were shopping for a new PC, my dream PC would be a HP TouchSmart laptop for all of it’s built in "accessibility" options and learning-on-the-go. There are so many aspects of the TouchSmart that would benefit our family.

Students who are kinesthetic learners, like my youngest child, do not like to sit in one place while learning—and although any laptop provides mobility, the HP TouchSmart does it with built-in accessibility features that would help both of my children access content easier.

For fingertip navigation, there's a simple scroll strip on the side to allow for easy scrolling, built-in multi-touch display gestures for easy access to sections of the computer, and a fingerprint reader for login security. These TouchSmart features would help us overcome difficulties caused by dyslexia and fine-motor issues. Since the disabilities cause spelling errors in something as simple as a password, a fingerprint reader would eliminate this problem altogether.

TouchSmart Laptops also have built-in, dual microphones, which makes the TouchSmart speech-to-text ready—with Microsoft's pre-installed voice recognition software. This would be ideal for my son who has severe dyslexia. No more messing around with finding one of our microphones to dictate, dealing with the cords, etc.

The TouchSmart also comes with a digital pen that lets users take notes, and the pre-installed software converts the written notes into text. With this feature, a note-taker classmate could take notes on the PC, the hand-written notes would be converted to text, and copies could be printed for both the note-taker and for my son--who has note-taking accommodations. With printed text notes, there would be far less concern about the readability of the notes. GONE would be the days of difficult to read, marred duplication pages! YAY!

One review on the HP TouchSmart at devhardware.com said, "The Tablet PC Input panel has been known to recognize the worst possible handwriting and convert it into digital text with no problem at all," which would enable both of my children with dysgraphia to take their own notes. That spells learning independence, a feeling of accomplishment, and improved self-esteem!

With Microsoft's Speech Tools, and Microsoft Mike (our favorite voice), we could also listen to text. This is increasingly important as my son encounters bigger, difficult to decode words in his schoolwork.

With my old laptop, we've also experienced an inability to take advantage of learning opportunities because my PC doesn't have the RAM to process, or hard disk space to install, memory intensive audio-visual learning content. Thus, given my dream computer, I'd have the RAM at 4GB max, and as big of a hard drive as could be installed—a 500GB drive on the Touchsmart. Having large capacity would allow us to take advantage of visually rich, multimedia learning opportunities on the market without pauses for buffering or failure to play at all. The large capacity hard drive would also help meet the needs of multiple users, like my personal 'need' for photo editing! (ha ha!) =D

Needless to say, my dream PC would have Microsoft Office Professional pre-installed so I could create visual lessons through Powerpoint, track educational progress through Access and Excel, and so we all could write essays and books through Word. These Microsoft tools are at the heart of our school record keeping and writing, and it'll be important for my children to learn to use all of the tools in preparation for college. No matter what PC I had, the Microsoft Office Professional suite would be required on the PC!

Given my "Dream PC", it'd have to be a HP TouchSmart Laptop with maximized capacity, which seems perfectly designed for accessible learning with disabilities!