Not enough USB ports on your notebook? Or wanna charge more than one device using a USB wall charger? Well, this might come in handy for some – the official HP USB hub. It houses 4 USB ports and has a single cable which plugs into any USB port. So you can plug in four times as many things into a single USB port (don’t expect super high speeds for data transfer though). The design is also quite stylish and it’ll probably go along with HP Pavilion notebooks the best (in terms of design) – matte black on all five sides and a mirror finish on the “Hewlett Packard logo” side, as you can see above… and the HP logo is holographic, by the way.
In other news… with the Sony Vaio P already shipping, Sony has been putting that “fits in your pants pocket” concept everywhere, including propping up a mannequin wearing a pair of Levi’s shorts with a Vaio P front plate (means it’s just the lid of the netbook and not as thin as it looks in the picture above) in the back pocket. Sure it’s nice to have a little netbook that you can bring along everywhere and quickly whip out at the coffeeshop to blog a bit, tweet a little and type out some short articles… but that got me thinking as well – is it even PRACTICAL to have a netbook which fits (though not entirely) in terms of width, but sticks half-way out of your pocket?
What do you do when sitting down? How about when you’re walking around? The netbook isn’t exactly so slim that it blends in… and it sticks out half-way too (see the picture above). Well, it gives a whole new definition to the word “Square Pants”, doesn’t it? How about pickpockets? Common sense tells me bringing your expensive netbook out for a walk, in this manner, will make you one of the primary targets of a pickpocket (imagine; shiny overpriced netbook sticking out of the back of someone’s pocket); next to the guy holding two smartphones in his hand strolling without a care in the world to the nearest diner. Intriguing questions and true situations, no?
*Picture courtesy of HP
HP updated their Pavilion dv7t entertainment notebook PC today with a few new features. The notebook now features a true 16:9 widescreen LCD, which measures 17.3 inches diagonally (A tad larger than the original dv7′s 17 inch screen) but only with maximum resolution of 1600 x 900 pixels. You also get to choose between a 512 MB or 1 GB dedicated graphics card (both by ATI) and a black or silver-white design. There’s a Quad-core configuration as well.
With the HP Firebird 802 feat. Voodoo DNA pre-production models, prototyp-ing and testing all in the rage over the past few days, I couldn’t help but notice HP seems to be shipping their Firebird 802 units (again, let me remind you, pre-production) with the exact same keyboard as their Touchsmart PCs. And oh, a mouse which looks eeriely identical as well. The ONLY difference is that the Firebird 802 comes with a small, flash-drive sized USB wireless receiver for the mouse and keyboard, while the Touchsmart’s wireless receiver for both seems to be built-in… hmm strange
There are both good and bad sides to the external receiver. Bad news first, many people would expect the receiver to be built into that fancy chassis, which by right should have enough space for such a tiny device. The good side to this is… I suppose most buyers of the HP Firebird 802 will be gamers, who usually tend to have different “tastes” when it comes to keyboard and mice. So if this same keyboard and mouse is bundled with the retail version, I still doubt many real gamers would roll with them instead of using their own keyboard/mouse. Also, the keyboard and mouse here aren’t exactly meant for gaming you see… (see below)
Well, in terms of ergonomics and usability, the Touchsmart’s (and for now, pre-prod Firebird’s) keyboard and mouse are more suited for casual use. The mouse is a three-button one with a scroll wheel, no DPI adjustment, side buttons or any fancy gaming features here, folks! The keyboard, especially, is more for typing and office use rather than gaming. Will we see HP including the same “Touchsmart mouse and keyboard” boxed with finalized, retail Firebird 802′s? Only time will tell… and we’ll find out once retail Firebirds start shipping…
BUSTED! Left 4 Dead works nicely with all settings maxed out on the HP Elitebook 8730w Mobile Workstation PC. The unit I used for testing had a T9400 2.53 GHz Intel Centrino 2 processor, 4 GB of RAM, 1 GB of graphics (Nvidia Quadro FX3700M), Windows Vista Ultimate and a lovely 17 inch Dream Color display. And the game settings were as follows:
- 1920 x 1200 full HD resolution, played on full screen
- Film grain – Maxed out
- Anti-aliasing – 16X MSAA
- 16X anisotropic filtering
- Vertical sync and multicore rendering OFF
- Shader detail – Very high
- Effect, model/texture and paged pool memory – All high
The game ran smoothly at around 30 to 40 frames per second. In “normal” scenes, things were buttery smooth and in “horde” scenes (Where tons of zombies rush at you), frame rate dropped to 20-24 FPS – depending on your eyes, you may or may not notice it – but the difference wasn’t large and the game was still more than playable (I could smoothly spin round and round while spamming my machine gun without much frame stuttering).
I did notice, however, the graphics card would take a little “breather” now and then – the screen image would freeze for about 2 seconds before going back to normal. On the positive side, it doesn’t happen often; around once or twice per entire campaign (with 5 scenarios).
After 3 hours of non-stop gaming (using a gaming mouse + notebook keyboard), the Elitebook 8730w did feel slightly warm around the palmrest area and upper left side of the keyboard, and very hot at the bottom. Core Temp reports processor temperature hovers around 58 to 64 degrees Celcius when gaming but don’t worry, the magnesium-alloy casing does a good job at keeping the exterior deck comfortable warm (versus blazing hot).
