Upcoming 2011 HP TouchSmart (Photo by Engadget.com)
Well, it’s no TouchSmart tm2 or tm3 convertible tablet, but tech blog Engadget has gotten a picture (a rather pixelated one at that) of HP’s next TouchSmart all-in-one desktop. It appears that the TouchSmart all-in-one design will be finally get an evolution to something with more metal accents (note the stand at the bottom) as well as sleeker in profile. We haven’t gotten any specific details about HP’s next-generation TouchSmart features and while they’re not exactly Apple iMac competitors (in price and specifications), if history is any indicator, we’re guessing they’ll sport Intel’s Sandy Bridge processors, a mid-range mobile Nvidia or ATI graphics card, Beats Audio (which seems to be becoming a ‘standard feature’ in HP notebooks nowadays) and judging from the Windows 7 taskbar icons in the Engadget picture, a full HD 1920 x 1080 touchscreen display (of currently unknown size). And also a price tag that’s probably way more affordable than the Apple iMac. Of course, HP could probably surprise us all with something completely different…
HP TouchPad price dropped by $50
Dreaming about that HP TouchPad after being convinced that things will be better in the near future? Well good news! HP has JUST announced a $50 price drop for both 16 GB and 32 GB WiFi TouchPad models, which brings them down to $449 and $549 respectively… the offer is effective from now till September 10th. Still no word on any official pricing on the ‘connected’ AT&T 4G TouchPad though (though we’ve guessed it might come in at $699 to $729). We’re already seeing one retailer online showing the reflection of this price cut: Amazon has the 16 GB TouchPad listed at $449 as well as the 32 GB TouchPad listed at a “even lower than HP” price of $547 (less than 2 bucks cheaper though!).
We’re guessing that HP wants to court new buyers into their WebOS system with the TouchPad and what a better time to do it than during this summer/back to school period.
Ideas for future HP monitors
Being the proud new owner of a used HP ZR24W business monitor and having seen the peaked interest in the recent months about HP’s (future) monitors from reader emails, there are a couple of ideas I’d like to list down for my ideal ‘next’ monitor, hopefully from HP (since I do like their no-nonsense mostly all black with some silvery accents industrial designs)
- HD webcam: This is probably the number one most wanted feature for HP’s business monitors since they pretty much lack any sort of webcam (including that very recently announced ultra-thin one); if you’re shopping for a consumer class/Pavilion monitor, not to worry, since those monitors have webcams already. It may seem like no biggie at first, like what I thought, but soon it gets a little tedious to lift up that laptop display to use its webcam (or purchase a dedicated webcam; the cheap ones are a little too pricy for what they are, that you’d rather go with a higher end HD one, which can rack up $50-$100 of additional cost over the monitor).
For the sake of catering to security and privacy concerned corporations, HP should make HD webcam equipped and webcam-less variants of future monitors. HP already does this webcam/no webcam thing with their EliteBooks, so it’s not going to be something they haven’t done before if they choose to do that with their monitors.
- Backlit monitor buttons: Yes, for Mac users, our monitors still do have buttons and for all the right reasons too. I’d like them buttons to still stick around (instead of going the route of buttonless monitors) but this time, make them backlit. They really come in handy when using the monitor in total darkness, which a surprising number of people do, especially those who work with photos and videos.
- LCD custom preset profiles: A couple of monitor user-customizable profiles would be very nice indeed throughout the product range. If you use your monitor from very early in the morning till late at night, you’re bound to have come across the annoyance of having to lower brightness and contrast so it won’t kill your eyes (unless you work in a windowless room all day long). And with pairs or trios of monitors becoming increasingly popular nowadays, it can be a chore to adjust the brightness and contrast of all monitors together… even a button that toggles between two modes (which for me, would be ‘day brightness’ and ‘night brightness’) would be really helpful and better than nothing.
- Pop-up Night Light: Since not everyone has a fancy backlit keyboard (or wants a fancy backlit keyboard), I think having a HP Night Light on HP’s dedicated monitors would be a very nice touch, especially for desktop users (the backlit keyboard of the HP EliteBook laptops also don’t work when the laptop’s built-in screen is powered off). Since there’s more room to work with and no need to make desktop monitors portable, they could do up a multi-position (and perhaps swivel enabled) Night Light so it can illuminate the keyboard below the monitor, while doubling as a webcam light when needed.
- USB 3.0 ports, all of them! I think this is pretty much self-explanatory.
- SDHC/SDXC card slot(s), maybe Compact Flash and CFast too. Panasonic is already doing it with their televisions, I’d say HP should include media card readers in their monitors! Some folks really would appreciate one or two of these slots since they work with multiple memory cards; it could also substitute or completely negate the need for a dedicated card reader (Which adds yet another peripheral device to the desk!)
- Bonus: Built-in low voltage processor and WebOS: Well, we all heard about HP wanting to slap WebOS on potentially everything in the future. They have WebOS phones, WebOS tablets, WebOS printers… I think monitors are next. If they integrated some very low voltage processors with WebOS (Think one of those dual core 1.2 GHz processors found in the HP TouchPad), which shouldn’t be too hard, one can use the monitor for web surfing or in Exhibition mode when not attached to a computer. Now THAT’s an idea!
HP EliteBook 8560w Mobile Workstation
Since the folks at HP’s public relations representative firm cite a limited of review units for laptops (Hmm… and not enough to get even one to us apparently), there’s not much of a choice but to let you readers somehow know how those latest Pavilions and EliteBooks perform… by linking to user reviews. I choose to handpick user reviews because they provide a lot more concise and in-depth (as well as honest and knowledgeable) look at things than the usual “editor at the desk writing a laptop review for a big publication because it’s his desk job”.
In this case, one of our readers, Tomas Hlatky has managed to get his hands on an HP EliteBook 8560w Mobile Workstation with dual core Intel Core i5 processor and AMD FirePro M5950 workstation-class graphics from the kind folks of HP Europe. He’s posted his extremely in-depth review on hardware website PC.sk (they’re something like the DPReview of computer hardware in Slovakia), which spans a total of 14 pages and contains a ton of pictures and extensive testing! And if you aren’t keeping up in those Slovak language classes, at least Google does a very nice translated version so you can appreciate his well written review.
I’m not a fan of spoilers, so I’ll just mention a one line summary of how things turned out: the HP EliteBook 8560w looks to be a good all-rounder but is not without fault and has quite a bit of bulk and ‘bling’ factor for a business notebook. I encourage to check out Tomas’ review (or the aforementioned Google translated version) to read all about it.
Note: You might also want to note the lack of a CFast slot on the production model, though it is interesting that space has been made internally for one.
Digitimes, a reliable Asian news source for upcoming products based on outsourcing of companies to Chinese manufacturers, has reported today that HP is planning “two or more” Ultrabooks (Intel’s fancy speak for super-thin notebooks; think the Apple MacBook Air), with these new low-voltage Sandy Bridge processors announced two weeks ago, for a launch ahead of Asus’ 11.6 and 13 inch UX21 Ultrabooks debut in September.
That’s a pretty hasty move right there, and frankly quite unexpected. In that case, folks, you might want to be on the lookout, from now till September, for a Pavilion dv1 or new Pavilion dm3 from HP, that will be under an inch thick. And perhaps you might also want to keep your eyes peeled for an updated Touchsmart tm2 convertible tablet too. Or maybe HP might call them something completely different… Envy 11 and 2011 Envy 13, perhaps?! Big news indeed!
If anything, we might just see these new Ultrabooks (I can see lots of people hoping for an Envy 13 revival already) announced alongside that mythical 7 inch TouchPad webOS tablet, hopefully!
