HP sounds cool with spreading WebOS love to third parties

Leo Apotheker at D9 (Photo by This Is My Next)

In a video of a brief exchange of words between HP’s CEO Leo Apotheker and tech blog This Is My Next, it seemed to be suggested (or not) in a phrase of words that are open to highly subjective interpretation, that HP is willing to consider the idea of opening up and licensing WebOS to third parties… Sorta in a way Microsoft licenses Windows Phone 7 and Google works with hardware makers over its Android OS. And this is great news for those who want to see a WebOS device made by someone other than HP… your dreams may one day, possibly, become a reality.

It’s a win-win situation if HP actually chooses to give the green light to such a move because it allows them to focus more on the software and behind-the-scenes side of WebOS while having a small portfolio of their own WebOS devices… and they can make money or get ideas by licensing out WebOS. But the complexity of the situation comes into play when you begin to wonder who exactly these ‘third parties’ will be. I can name several potential candidates. First off, Apple and RIM are out of the question, since they have their own iOS and Blackberry OS respectively devices, and have been focusing exclusively on their own operating systems for years now. Now, some are pointing to the folks at HTC (which stretches out to Samsung and Motorola as well, the two other big players in the market), maybe Samsung or Motorola might enter the fray, but I would doubt HTC’s participation… they’ve already got their hands full with Windows Phone 7 and Android already. I would think Nokia and Dell are two companies to watch in the long-term as potential candidates to take up WebOS, since Nokia is phasing out Symbian for Windows Phone: they might want to consider adding a second OS to their (typically vast) lineup of phones once they’re settled down with Microsoft WP, and Dell has shown interest in making phones, having not been so successful with Android-running phones and recently dipping its toes into the Windows Phone pond.

2012: Year of the 14 inch notebook

What's the future of HP's laptops with Ivy Bridge?

Following Intel’s announcement that everything on notebooks will be ultra-low voltage beginning from their Ivy Bridge processors and their keynote this morning at Computex predicting ‘Ultrabooks’ (a creative new term coined by Intel for ultra-portable laptops with low power consumption) will fill about 40% of the market with Ivy Bridge powered, less than 0.8 inch thick, sub-$1000 laptop models by the end of next year, we’re looking at the possibility of 2012 becoming the year of the 14 inch notebook.

Why 14 inches you ask? The 14 inch laptop market has recently been viewed somewhat as the “no man’s land” (although apparently still very mainstream in some Asian and European markets). The debut of netbooks meant you’re rather be going with that tiny and super portable 10 inch Mini netbook, a skinny 13 inch MacBook Pro or ultra-portable equivalent or sorts, or ‘big screen’ 15.6 or 17 inch Pavilion model for being the two-in-one work and movie notebook.

If Ivy Bridge were to live up to its ‘low voltage’ claim (and I’m sure Intel will be putting in effort to accomplish that between now and CES 2012, if they haven’t done it already), a 14 inch notebook that used to be a thick neither-here-nor-there model between 12 and 15 inch notebooks, could end up replacing both your ultra-portable and bigger notebook if made thin enough.

Imagine Intel’s claim: 40% of the market, 0.8 inches or less thin. As thin as a 12 inch ultra-portable might end up, it will likely also use a smaller battery and ‘ultra-ultra’ low-voltage Ivy Bridge chip… a 15 or 17 incher, despite being so thin, would still be huge in terms of surface area. And forget about netbooks if you’re a power user… having used the first HP Mini 2133 netbook and Mini 5101 (which has now been succeeded by the Mini 5103, with the possibility of a Mini 5104 coming soon I believe), they’re great for students, weekend outdoor users or casual web surfers but they can’t run stuff like Photoshop or run quick enough for people like me when I go on a press conference coverage frenzy.

A 14 inch laptop would then be the perfect size… paired with the new features of Intel’s Ivy Bridge, could run for at least 6 to 8 hours using a bigger battery (more sizable than one on an ultra-thin 12 inch laptop at least). If the market ends up having laptops of all sizes (from 11 to 17 inch displays) that are ’0.8 inch or less’ in slimness, the factor going for 14 inch models would be those juicy 1600 x 900 displays, a perfect compromise between size and resolution. They might also end up using new ‘standard’-class Ivy Bridge (Note I said class, not voltage… since low voltage is the new standard voltage), which means a lot more performance than on a ‘low-low’ voltage processor (assuming Intel continues to split a line between upper and lower tier processor models) on say, a 12 inch notebook.

With all that said, I can’t wait to see an Ivy Bridge HP Envy 14 that’s slimmer than a current MacBook Pro. I’ve also gained a newfound curiosity as to how HP’s 2012 EliteBook models would look like, as like many of our readers, I’d really like a high-performance EliteBook that measures less than an inch thin, yet I’d also still like to be able to do this to it… I’m not sure if a slimmer EliteBook body would be able to handle such abuse. Double reinforced titanium-alloy rollcage anyone?

HP quietly releases affordable Pavilion g6s laptop

HP Pavilion g6s

HP has updated another of their laptops with Intel’s Sandy Bridge processors, among other changes, but this time in a low-profile manner by sneaking out the affordable Pavilion g6s. This 15.6 inch laptop sports a ‘traditional’ chiclet-style laptop keyboard sans number pad, choice of Intel Sandy Bridge processors, from dual core Core i3 to Core i5 to the highest end dual-core Core i7 processor, configurable up to 6 GB of DDR3 RAM, 750GB hard disk and choice between Intel Integrated Graphics or either a 512 MB or 1 GB AMD Radeon 6470M dedicated graphics card. The laptop also comes with Altec Lansing branded speakers and you get to pick between five paint jobs: gray, red, blue, purple or pink.

Sadly, the only bummer is the rather low resolution of 1366 x 768 for a 15.6 inch display, but then again, it’s an entry-level/budget laptop. HP says that prices ‘start from $550′ although the base price for the configurable model starts at $580 for some reason.

Intel: ULV is the new ‘standard’ notebook processor; EliteBook redesign anyone?!

Intel Ivy Bridge in 2012

Well, this is big news: Tech/business website Ars Technica is reporting Intel’s big shots announcement at a San Francisco conference to move ‘standard’ laptop processors to have the TDP’s of current ultra-low voltage (processors), between 10 to 15W TDP. Traditionally, standard processors in laptops had a TDP of 35W while ultra-low voltage models (the stuff you see in things like the TouchSmart tm2, various Asus ultra-thin models, and other thin-and-light laptops) had TDP’s of 17W… so lowering the new TDP of ‘standard’ processors to 10-15W would mean very power-efficient processors that sip battery life. Considering Intel’s plans for their 2012 Ivy Bridge processors, I don’t doubt this as a possibility at all.

So while we’re all still awaiting for an official announcement from Intel, that they will utilize this new standard of theirs in Ivy Bridge processors, let’s take a look at what these new more energy-efficient chips would mean in our notebooks:

• Thin and light laptops for all! This is great news for everyone! Who doesn’t want a slimmer laptop that performs the same or better than their current brick of a laptop?
• The sky is NOT the limit. We will likely see a great and sudden barrage of waif-thin laptops that measure an inch or less in thickness but they’ll likely stay that way until someone figures out how to make batteries, graphics cards, connectivity ports, and displays super-thin… and only then, we may see laptops slimmer than our smartphones.
• 1.8 inch disks go mainstream? For years, we’ve seen 1.8 inch hard disks and solid state drives in the market catering to the niche of ultra-portable notebooks, but the sad part is they never took off: 2.5 inch disks are still the staple of a big majority of laptops these days. In fact, some may even speculate 1.8 inch drives are going the way of the dodo because how many laptops announced in the past year use 1.8 inch disks (other than the recently announced EliteBook 2760p convertible tablet?). I digress but at the rate laptops could potentially slim down a bunch with Intel’s new plans, I can see 1.8 inch drives suddenly being adopted on a widespread basis to accommodate the new thinness of new notebooks (at 5 to 6 mm in height, 1.8 inch drives are almost half the thickness of 2.5 inch drives)
• Fanless designs. Lower TDP, especially the ‘cut in half’ Intel has planned,  -typically- means that power consumption and heat output of a processor will be drastically reduced. As a user of an EliteBook 2530p with a low-voltage (and self undervolted) Core2Duo processor, I can attest to the fact that the fan rarely comes on when I’m out and about with the laptop… it only comes on when I’m running a bunch of heavy programs on my 2048 x 1536 resolution Dell monitor at home, and even then processor temperature never exceeds 65 degrees Celcius. Such laptops need only a tiny fan or maybe not one at all, which can save a lot of space in terms of internal surface area layout
• Single RAM slots. Traditionally notebooks have come with two RAM slots so we could have plenty of memory to run programs… if you’ve used something like Windows Vista before, you’d understand perfectly! However, considering 4 GB RAM sticks for laptops are getting more affordable nowadays, 8 GB sticks being introduced (but still prohibitively expensive) and the fact most sub-15 inch notebook users will probably not be crunching hundreds of photos while playing Crysis 2 while having six dozen browser tabs open at the same time (so majority won’t really need more than 4 gigs of memory anyway), there’s a high chance we’ll see the ‘two RAM slots’ norm in notebooks being trimmed down to one… in consumer models, at least. A cut down in components that take up space is a must anyway if one were to make slimmer laptops.
• String two together? With a really efficient processor inside, we might see the next big (literally) Mobile Workstation and 17 inch models in general come up with battery life numbers that rival Apple’s 17 inch MacBook Pro, or at least last more than 2 hours before having us to scurry around looking for a power outlet. But people who usually buy these things normally use them as desktop replacements and 17 inches of laptop is really too much to venture outside the home/office for a full day anyway, so battery life and power consumption isn’t really a big dealbreaker anyway. Consequently, there is a small chance some PC maker out there who will realize this, perhaps HP, maybe Dell, and string two of these chips together like we see in desktops… fingers crossed for the day we can have dual quad-core processors in our 17 inch laptops!

Alright, and once again, we have the magical question! Should Intel decide to make low voltages the new standard starting from Ivy Bridge next year, will we see a drastic redesign in all laptops? Or will manufacturers just take the lazy route and stuff these chips into existing shells and cases for most part? I’m not sure what HP will make of this either, with their recently redesigned EliteBook range… with processors that encourage slimmer laptops, will we see HP foregoing their “redesign every two refresh cycles” and retool the design of their EliteBooks? Will we see the Envy 13 reintroduced in a much sleeker form with Ivy Bridge next year? Or perhaps the Envy 11 to fight the 11 inch MacBook Air and offerings from Asus and Lenovo? Exciting times lay ahead of us indeed!

HP announces 2011 Pavilion series desktops and 23 inch x2301 Micro Thin display

New 2011 HP Pavilion series desktops

HP has just announced three new Pavilion series consumer desktops today: The compact Pavilion Slimline S5, regular-sized Pavilion p7 and more powerful Pavilion HPE h8. They all feature Beats Audio and Sandy Bridge Intel processors of all sorts. With price tags starting at $330 (s5), $300 (p7) and $600 (h8) respectively, these guys are a lot more affordable (but certainly less powerful) than HP’s Z210 series workstations released last month. They should be available for order on June 15 from HP.

HP x2301 Micro Slim 23 inch display panel

HP also announced a new 23 inch LED backlit display today, the HP x2301 Micro Thin display. It has 1920 x 1080p Full HD resolution like you’d expect from most monitors nowadays but it’s main appeal is its ultra-slim profile, measuring 9.8 mm or just under 0.4 inches thin. It’s a glossy display, comes with a non-detachable base (which doesn’t seem to be adjustable in height either), with connectors for single DVI, VGA and HDMI. It should be available for order on June 10 for just $280.

The HP x2301 Micro Thin display measures just 9.8 mm or just under 0.4 inches

And it’s really that slim!