INBOX:KITCHENS WERE never, at least a few years ago, the kind of place you'd find a home computer. The most complex device was likely to be the oven timer alarm, which, inexplicably, no one could ever work out how to turn on, or off.

These days kitchens are crammed with appliances and, more often than not, you’ll find a laptop sitting on the kitchen table. Either someone is checking their e-mail, or, increasingly, you’ll find it used as a way to access online recipes and cooking videos.

But the convenience of touchscreens are also impacting the way we access information, so why not create a touchscreen PC for the kitchen?

That’s what the Shuttle X 5000TA all-in-one PC is trying to do with this touchscreen system. At €617, this is a true, Vista-powered PC housed in a slick, slim chassis, powered by an Intel Atom 330 dual-core processor. Atom is the giveaway here – it’s a cheaper processor commonly used in affordable netbooks these days. It also has a 160GB hard drive and 1GB of memory.

However, this configuration means running the Windows Vista Home Basic operating system, best run on higher spec machines, is a big ask. The Shuttle X might have been better off with Windows XP or Linux.

An alternative might be the Shuttle X50XA which comes without an operating system and is cheaper at €540. Or you can order a higher spec X5000T build-to-order with 1GB or 2GB of Ram and 160-500GB of hard drive. But you’d be stuck with the Atom chip, which is fine for day-to-day use, but I wouldn’t try playing HD video or games on it.

Then again, there are advantages to this PC over a netbook in the kitchen. Unlike many netbooks, you get a Gigabit Ethernet port, along with WiFi and array of ports and connectors including an four-in-one memory card reader. It also has a webcam. But a big let-down is the touchscreen. Windows Vista was never designed as a touch interface, unlike, say, the iPhone, and the Shuttle doesn’t extend very much beyond clicking links on web pages. An on-screen keyboard can be used for typing in URLs but it’s nowhere near as fast or convenient as a physical keyboard.

So the question arises, why would you buy a Shuttle X 5000TA instead of using your €617 to buy a decent laptop instead? It looks like that may well be the better option after all.