HP wireless keyboard in the house!

HP Mini Wireless Keyboard with EliteBook... review coming soon!

The HP Mini Wireless Keyboard: I’ve been using this little thing for awhile now with my EliteBook. It comes in handy a bunch when I hook up my notebook to an external monitor and need something to type on… but sometimes I bring it out for fun since it’s portable and slim enough to be use on the go. More on this home/media center suited keyboard later this week when I post a full review…

Rumor: 7 inch HP TouchPad variant in August

Rumor from Taiwan: 7 inch TouchPad will be latest member of WebOS family in August

Talking about newer stuff shortly after announcing new stuff, isn’t this becoming a trend this year? Not two months ago, Intel began talking about 2012 Ivy Bridge processors barely after the first Sandy Bridge equipped computers started shipping. Now before the 10 inch (well, 9.7 inch to be precise) TouchPad is even out on the street, HP is already planning to woo and tempt folks who think 10 inches is a bit awkward to be portable, with a smaller 7 inch TouchPad variant.

Taiwan Economic News company CENS reported over the weekend that Inventec, a big Taiwanese manufacturer of computers, will be supplying HP with 400,000 to 450,000 TouchPad tablets per month (guess that gives an indicator on how those HP TouchPad pre-orders are going and what kind of sales HP expects)… and here’s the interesting bit: “and will be supplying them with 7 inch tablet PCs after a launch in August”.

We’re pretty sure they don’t really mean “tablet PCs” in the literal sense of the word… but more of a 7 inch WebOS-running ‘small sibling’ to the soon-to-be-launched 9.7 inch TouchPad tablet. And when that materializes, HP will be all set up to compete with the Apple iPad 2 with the 9.7 inch TouchPad, while the 7 inch TouchPad’s main nemesis will be the RIM BlackBerry PlayBook, as well as the numerous Android-running tablets from folks like Samsung and Motorola.

An intelligent guess says along with the 7 inch TouchPad (which I propose should be called the “HP CouchPad” instead of something awkward like the HP TouchPad 7… too many “seven” named products out there! … or worse, HP TouchPad Mini), HP will likely launch the ‘connected version’ of the 9.7 inch TouchPad with either 3G or 4G on AT&T.

And since we have all this buzz about touchscreens and tablets, there’s also a small chance a Windows-running, Intel Sandy Bridge infused TouchSmart tm2 will slip out in August along with its WebOS brethren. Given the 2010 HP TouchSmart tm2 has officially disappeared from HP’s website (2nd paragraph here), we can’t help but get our hopes up.

“Hulk smash HP Pavilion”… and it survived, sort of…

Now here’s something you don’t come across everyday: Not two months ago, I had a friend who fell from riding his bike; with some scratches here and there, he was alright but the Pavilion dv7 in his backpack… not so much. However, having tried, tested and shown how extremely durable HP’s EliteBook business models are, it’s interesting to observe and analyze the extent of damage and survivability of consumer-level models from abuse and accidents.

The notebook was an almost brand new (I think it was purchased in January) at the time, one of those metal encased Pavilions that HP introduced last year. From what I was told, the owner fell on his back, so the notebook took a good amount of scraping against your typical asphalt road through a lightly padded backpack (needless to say, the bag was damaged too), while being squashed under 260 lbs (or 118 kg) of weight (the guy used to play football).

The damage? I got to have a look at the damage in-person before it was sent back to HP, and it was mostly on the right side of the Pavilion dv7: the lid and corners was all scratched up, the right side of the lid was quite dented/deformed (but oddly enough, the metal casing did well in sacrificing itself to protect and result in a still-working-completely-fine display) and the two USB ports on the right no longer worked (not sure why, the impact must have bumped something loose on the inside). The rest of the notebook worked fine though; down to the keyboard and optical drive unit (surprising since it’s located on the right side).

Overall external damage was ‘lightly moderate’, in my opinion, and he could have lived without sending the notebook in for repair if not for those two non-functional USB ports. Lucky the owner had bought HP’s accidental damage protection (he had a bad experience with his ancient HP Pavilion dv6000 but after being convinced by me, he got this dv7 with all the additional warranties he could find on the list).

Well, I’m still gonna stick to HP’s business models, with my EliteBook 2530p having gone through being stepped on, accidentally smashed against table corners (several times), dropped onto all sorts of surfaces, partially drowned in water, sat under a ton of heavy luggage on an 8 hour flight and more general madness, yet it’s still alive and kicking… but I thought HP has really done well in improving the build quality of their consumer notebooks; I’m not sure if an older, plastic frame Pavilion model would have survived the same ordeal.

*If you have an experience to share about the durability of your electronics, do share your story via comments or dropping me a line.

Fun stuff: Blair Waldorf and her Windows-branded ThinkPad

Blair Waldorf and the Windows branded ThinkPad T410s (Screenshot from Gossip Girl, Season 4, E16)

As the weekends approach, it’s a good time to start to unwind from the hectic week and look forward to about 60 hours of blissful, non-weekday time. Now I know some may be starting to see a trend here, after last week’s muse, the $34,000 HP mouse… and I’ll try to have a weekly “Fun Stuff Fridays” post, depending if I come across anything amusing during the week.

This week, we have Blair Waldorf and her Windows-branded ThinkPad T410s from Season 4, Episode 16 of Gossip Girl… who may set a “good example” to younger kids and college students that they don’t NEED a MacBook to be stylish or supposedly ‘successful’. That’s always a good thing since I frequently come across and read about how young people nowadays think they MUST HAVE a MacBook Pro (but ironically, most of them are buying it purely for ‘the looks’, have little idea how to use OS X and plop Windows onto their machine shortly after/during purchase)

Microsoft is definitely an active product placement participant in many TV shows; I’ve seen Bing being used and Eleanor Waldorf asking someone to “Bing it” before… but this is a definite first: sticking a Microsoft Windows logo at the center of the laptop lid, similar to how Apple builds in their glowing logo it with the MacBooks (though I’m surprised Microsoft didn’t take the time to outfit said ThinkPad with a glowing backlit Windows logo, that would have been really cool, don’t you think?).

This actually brings up an interesting idea. Instead of Microsoft slapping on a Windows sticker onto almost every Windows laptop (with the exception of the HP Envy series and Linux equipped EliteBooks of course), I’d think making selected ‘Microsoft co-branded’ laptops like this one would be really nice! If they can do this for TV show laptops and the HP EliteBooks in Microsoft Stores (I first noticed this at the San Diego Microsoft Store), albeit with stickers, why not have actual laptops with built in logos for retail (either at a discounted price or marked up price, whatever floats Microsoft’s boat)?

HP EliteBook 8460w user review

HP EliteBook 8460w Mobile Workstation

Interested in knowing more about the HP EliteBook 8460w Mobile Workstation? Well today is your lucky day! One of our frequent readers, Thomas Maurer has his review up on the EliteBook 8460w after he received it last week. There’s plenty of pictures and his opinion on using the 8460w as a replacement to his MacBook Pro. What’s stunning is that the notebook gets ’9 to 11 hours’ with the 9 cell battery on a Core i7 quad core, AMD FirePro M3900 and high-res display (1600 x 900) configuration.