
HP TouchSmart tm2 with Sandy Bridge: where for art thou?! (oh this picture above shows the existing tm2, in case you get too excited)
As of today, seems like HP has given a touch of Intel Sandy Bridge love to all its laptop models, from the humble Pavilion series up to the envy-instilling Envy models, and from their stylish ProBook business models up to the top-end EliteBook line… all except the little notebook in the corner, the EliteBook 2760p‘s faraway cousin, none other than the convertible tablet HP TouchSmart tm2!
Announced in January last year with a paltry Intel Core 2 Duo processor and ATI Radeon 4550M graphics, the TouchSmart tm2 received a much-needed refresh not long after in the autumn of 2010 with the ultra-low voltage dual core 1.33 GHz Core i5-560UM and Intel Radeon 5450M graphics. We haven’t heard anything since then…
…which gives us good reason to believe the HP TouchSmart tm2 might be in for a ‘next generation’ Sandy Bridge processor refresh once Intel releases their traditional ‘interim’ processor update, which should occur at a time spread far enough from Sandy Bridge’s initial announcement in January, but also not close to Intel’s Ivy Bridge processors (which should be launched in 2012) so they don’t instantly become outdated (and get buyers angry). That puts the announcement of Intel’s Sandy Bridge “1.5″ sometime in August or September.
Of course, one could argue HP could just stuff in the existing Sandy Bridge 1.4 GHz Core i5-2537M, or even better a 1.6 GHz Core i7-2657M; both are ultra-low voltage processors. But why haven’t they? If they were going to do that, they would have announced a refreshed TouchSmart tm2 with Sandy Bridge already this morning, along with the updated Envy 14 and new Pavilion dv4.
Updated graphics will also likely appear too, if you’re a critical thinker =) . I’ll make an intelligent guess that it’ll be the AMD Radeon 6470M… one does hope that an Apple-like move will not be pulled off, that is to let Intel’s Integrated Graphics substitute a dedicated or integrated dedicated card (like they did to the 13 inch 2011 MacBook Pro).
And did anybody mention a splash of black paint would be nice (and definitely sick looking!) too? Well, at least it’ll be a refreshing change from all those silver and beige laptops out there.
What do you think? Are you excited to want HP to get a refreshed TouchSmart tm2 out there like some readers? Or how about an Intel Ivy Bridge equipped TouchSmart instead in 2012?