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Spotted: HP Ultrabook Pavilion ‘Folio’ dm3 in the wild

2012 HP Pavilion dm3 (Photo by Ritchie's Room)

Well, what do you know, the mythical unicorn is about to become real… originally rumored to be released before September, tech blog Ritchie’s Room has information about the upcoming HP ultra-thin ultrabook model shown by HP Australia! The new notebook, the 2012 Pavilion dm3, also codenamed the HP Folio, is said to be making its debut next month in December, at least in Australia… so book those flight tickets if you want to get your hands on one before Christmas!

The 2012 HP Pavilion ‘Folio’ dm3 is a 13.3 inch laptop (yup, 1366 x 768 resolution display, as expected) which is expected to give buyers a choice between two low-voltage Intel Sandy Bridge mobile processors (Core i3 1.4 GHz or Core i5 1.6 GHz flavors), one DDR3 RAM slot (which will give you configuration options of either 4 or 8 GB, this is supposedly user-accessible so you don’t need to pay obscene prices for a simple RAM upgrade when making the purchase) and 128 GB SSD (not sure of its size or whether it’s soldered into the laptop ala the Apple MacBook Air).

The HP Folio has a pretty full-sized keyboard, minus dedicated Home/End/Page Up-Down buttons, that’s backlit and a large buttonless trackpad. However, this ultra-thin notebook skimps on port selection quite a bit; the ports available are a single HDMI port, two USB ports (one 2.0 and one 3.0), SD slot (no word on whether it supports SDXC), Ethernet port and single combo microphone/headphone jack.

The HP Folio is said to measure 1.8 cm thin (about 0.71 inches) and weigh 1.49 kg (3.3 pounds). In comparison, the much hyped Apple MacBook Air (13 inch variant) is 1.7 cm (0.68 inches) at its thickest point and weighs a slightly lighter 1.35 kg (3 pounds). However, it seems HP is hoping to negate these tiny measurement differences by offering excellent build quality; the folks at Ritchie’s Room who handled the HP Folio commented how durable it is.

But based on my many years using a range of HP products, here’s my (speculative) take on build quality: this HP Folio is still a ‘Pavilion’ (consumer model) which means it might survive getting squeezed by books in your backpack and hold up just as well, if not better, than other branded ultrabooks and the unibody MacBook Air… but I doubt it will survive the sheer abuse and multiple beatings that a true business-class HP EliteBook can take. Treat your notebook well!

No word about pricing of the HP Folio or availability outside of Australia, but Ritchie’s Room still has plenty of huge 8 megapixel photos of the 2012 HP Pavilion dm3 ‘Folio’ ready for you to admire.

HP to continue making computers as they are now

Everyone's happy with HP now!

Whew, after much confusion as to what HP was thinking and what would happen to HP Fansite if they did, and a sprinkle of hope when they swapped out CEO’s, the verdict is in this week. According to HP’s new CEO Meg Whitman, they’ve looked at the idea of spinning PSG (HP’s computer division, essentially) off, but have decided against it, saying it was the right thing to do for just about everyone (from customers to employees) if they just kept things as they were right now.

To add a little disco ball for us party-goers who are going out to celebrate not having to buy a Dell or Lenovo as their next machine (or icing on the cake if you will), HP will also be making Windows 8 PC when Microsoft’s revolutionary operating system (versus the Vista to 7 jump) debuts next year, along with the fact they’re gonna be making Windows 8 tablets to keep costs under control (yup, if you’re still hopeful about WebOS, you should really stop now).

Alright HP, now that you guys have ironed things out, how about finally launching them Ultrabooks soon after missing the initial rumored due date? And updated Pavilions and Envy’s sporting Intel’s very latest Sandy Bridge processors (those seen in the recent MacBooks and stuff)? And perhaps updating the rest of the Z-workstation line after just doing the Z210 updates earlier this year? How about an EliteBook refresh for those of us who like stepping on our notebook screens or have been using those reliable old-school models for too long?

But we’re just happy that HP has decided to make this decision, probably one of their smarter moves since making blunders with WebOS and such. Hopefully a sign of better things to come for HP indeed!

Spotted: HP EliteBooks and business monitors at BMW AppCenter China

HP EliteBook spotted with BMW (Picture by BMW Blog)

Well, we’re decidedly alive and kicking once again, with HP seemingly upbeat about their computer division (PSG) by being the sponsor/partner of several popular TV shows that kicked their new seasons off earlier this month/late September. In particular, I’ve spotted quite a number of HP products (including the now-dead HP TouchPad) being used by various characters in several CWTV shows (anyone care to take a guess?) but more on that later. As long as HP shows signs that they won’t be doing bizarre things to their PSG division and make HP computers… well, not HP computers anymore, we’ll continue bringing to you the latest about HP stuff. We can hope for the best with their recently appointed new CEO right?!

But back to the topic at hand… I’m personally an avid reader of the BMW Blog (though I wish I can one day actually afford a BMW!) and one of their latest articles today talks about BMW setting up a new AppCenter in China. And what do you know, evidence that BMW and HP are still good pals (hardcore HP fans will remember BMW had a hand in the design of HP’s Z-series Workstations and HP has been a close companion in supplying servers and tech in the past). We can see an admittedly not-so-new 2009 HP EliteBook 6930p in the foreground, a HP monitor (either ZR22W or ZR24W) in the middle, and another EliteBook with its lid closed towards the background.

And speaking of EliteBooks and HP laptops, will we see HP come up with new models of laptops and desktops soon? Like before the holiday season/year end for the consumer line? And/or after CES and the new year in 2012?!

HP kicks Leo out; appoints Meg Whitman as new CEO

Well, maybe all is not lost after all… HP has just appointed eBay’s ex-CEO, Meg Whitman, as their new CEO; removing Leo Apotheker from the driver’s seat. Maybe HP will now rethink that move to split off their PC making division and we might still see new Pavilions and EliteBooks in 2012 and beyond. While that’s nice and really makes my day at least, I still don’t think she (HP’s new CEO) will bring back WebOS from the dead… or she might, seeing HP has been essentially like a long limousine trying to do tight corners and drifts; a huge company which has been changing its mind a lot, too frequently and drastically. Without Leo, perhaps things will change for the better. We can only hope.

And now, we’ll be back to grinding away and bringing you HP news on a frequent basis again, though the rumor mills have been relatively dry and slow after last month’s corporate announcements by HP.

Failure of HP’s mobile (web)OS: I saw it coming and I told you so

It’s funny (in a sad way) how the future can be so drastically affected by the past.  Yesterday’s incident of the demise of webOS and HP’s mobile division did not come as a surprise to me (though the announcement of the potential consideration of breaking off their PC division did) because it almost took the “cause and effects” right out of my mouth in an article I wrote 16 months ago here on HP Fansite.

Back then, HP was pretty much minding its own business and Palm wasn’t up for sale yet. Microsoft had just done away with Windows Mobile and was trying to create a fresh start with their Windows Phone 7 platform, on which they included HP as one of the planned phone makers. I remember I was jumping for joy, having been a long time user of HP iPAQ phones for a long time (I was on my fourth iPAQ model, the Data Messenger, during then) and Windows Phone, I mentioned, would be a great chance and window of opportunity for HP to rise again in the smartphone market.

Microsoft and HP had had a lot going on at that time and I wrote about how HP absolutely needed to stick to Windows on their phones, instead of joining the Android gang or coming up with their own OS (which they essentially did later on by buying Palm and making webOS “theirs”), for so many reasons. The most they could do was try to get Microsoft to make an exception and allow them to ‘skin’ (have a theme of their own) Windows Phone 7… but I knew HP managing their own OS would be biting off more than they could chew and was against that idea.

Yup, I said it all and pretty much saw this coming. HP did all those things, things they shouldn’t have done. I didn’t have any insider information at all (heck, Palm wasn’t even up for sale during then!) but I wasn’t guessing either – I looked at the way HP had been doing things and their performance – and an analysis of that in my mind told me no way, with their computers, printers, workstations and operations in general combined with “the HP way” of doing things, could they manage having an OS of their own.

And to add to the bag of hurt, HP backed out of Microsoft’s list of potential Windows Phone 7 smartphone makers (instead of making Pre and Pixi ‘webOS phones’ alongside iPAQ ‘Windows phones’) and back to that article I wrote last year, I did say “it’s not how well features sell, but how well you sell your features“. In the case of webOS, HP didn’t manage to sell their features to consumers very well at all.

• To name some examples, they didn’t elaborate what “true multitasking” meant and why consumers needed it (Versus Apple’s and Microsoft’s app-pausing multitasking)…
• they had “Just Type” which was counter-natural for many (because most folks KNOW what they’re going to do, hit the correct app for email/browsing/texting/notes/etc before typing stuff out; Just Type tried to sell “typing stuff out before you know what you’re doing”, which isn’t practical unless you’re an artist of sorts who always has “spur of the moment ideas”)…
• and then they had Russell Brand try to promote the HP TouchPad in spots that I saw as ‘trying to appeal to the serious user’. If they had used someone like Leonardo Dicaprio or George Clooney for that, it MIGHT have worked better. But anyone would know that Russell Brand =/= Serious user…
• plus, they seem to have forgotten Marketing 101 and I didn’t see much effort in trying to promote webOS devices to women! And just an observation, majority of iPad users I see are mostly females… college girls who want something thin and light for taking notes, mothers who get it as entertainment devices for their kids (drawing and sketching apps and whatnot). Not to sound feminist here, but just a couple of facts: there are more women than men in the world and in today’s world where women are getting just as tech savvy as their female counterparts, one would expect companies to market their stuff to both genders

Again, I encourage you to read what I wrote last year and by the end of it, you might just think ‘Oh my gosh, it’s like he had a crystal ball or time travel machine or something’. Nope, I have none of that: just sense and skill of analyzing things.