HP Fansite

WebOS 2.0 and the fate of Palm’s brand

It seems that we’re hearing about Palm almost everyday lately, which is  a good sign. Fortune has just confirmed that Jon Rubinstein (Palm’s CEO, and of course Palm is now part of HP) talked about WebOS 2.0 coming later this year (2010). Hopefully it’ll be as great for productivity as it will be awesome for handheld gaming (as HP’s Rahul Sood implied in a blog post just two days ago).

In other Palm-related news, it was also mentioned today that Palm will become a sub-brand under HP (just like what happened to other companies that HP bought over, such as Rahul’s Voodoo PC gaming computer company). While this move is not unexpected, I cannot help but wonder about the fate of the iPAQ brand. Perhaps this is a sign that WebOS devices will be sold under the “HP Palm” name while they will revive the iPAQ line sometime down the road to run Windows Phone 7? Afterall, Microsoft did include HP as one of the companies during the announcement of Windows Phone 7 earlier this year…

HP Slate officially becomes HP Slate 500, appears on HP.com

Well, well, well… what’s this we have here? Just as we were discussing the HP PalmPad yesterday and talking about the potential demise of the HP Slate, with the large possibility that the PalmPad was going to take its place as competitor to Apple’s iPad. Apparently HP wants to compete on both operating system fronts when it comes to offering iPad equivalent alternatives; with a mobile, more content-consumption friendly Web OS for the PalmPad as well as full-fledged (but touch optimized) Windows 7 OS on their not-so-dead-anymore Slate. The HP Slate has appeared on HP’s official website, now officially known as the HP Slate 500 (so there’s room for both higher end and more basic ‘budget’ tablets…), which you can check out right here and here. So far, specifications haven’t changed from HP’s initial announcement of the Slate with Microsoft earlier this year, as the Slate 500 maintains the use of a 1.6 GHz Intel Atom processor, Windows 7 OS and 8.9 inch touchscreen. Pricing remains a mystery though, as well as other specifications and a release date, but we’ll let you know whenever the news breaks. Those hoping for a Windows 7 running tablet, I can see all of you heaving a big sigh of relief….

HP working with Palm real soon; to stick WebOS into slates and printers

Hey, did you hear? It’s true! Now you can stop dreaming and really have your WebOS slate/tablet in the “near future”, thanks to confirmation directly from HP via a press release reporting their Q2 2010 financial results and also their Twitter feed (they have a habit of placing the most exciting things in the oddest of places, don’t they? Like listing new processors in service manuals). HP has also mentioned that we should also expect WebOS (or some sort of variation/edition) to make its way into printers (huh?!) as well – I presume these will be all-in-one printers as well as high end business printers where using a dedicated OS would come in handy the most.

Strange enough, they haven’t mentioned anything about stuffing WebOS into digital picture frames yet… I was kinda expecting that one.

Spotted: New Intel Core i7 Quad Mobile and i5 Mobile processors

New Core i5 and Core i7 mobile processors leaked!

HP does it again! Reading through a recently posted Service Manual of the spanking new HP Envy 17, I’ve spotted three, new and upcoming Intel Core i5 and Core i7 Mobile processors that will be coming to HP Envy’s near you in the coming months (and presumably in other performance notebooks as well). The new processors include:

• Intel Core i7 840QM Quad-core processor – With a ‘native’ clock speed of 1.86 GHz and the ability to go up to 3.20 GHz using Turbo Boost, the i7-840QM is the new flagship processor of Intel’s non-Extreme line of processors. This processor is a wee bit faster than the 820QM, while maintaining 8 MB of L3 cache and 45W TDP rating. Another interesting fact is that the i7-840QM appears as an option alongside, instead of replacing, its 820QM sibling.
• Intel Core i7 740QM Quad-core processor – This looks like the love child of the existing Core i7 720QM and i7 820QM processors, sporting the 1.73 GHz clock speed of the latter and 6 MB of L3 cache of the former, and 45W TDP shared by all the existing Quad Core i7’s (except the i7-920XM). Maximum Turbo Boost speed is 2.93 GHz: that sits somewhere between the two (i7-720QM and i7-820QM).
• Intel Core i5 450M dual core processor – This is a very strange new processor indeed. Strange because it appears like a clone of the i5-520M processor with the same specifications and info on paper. 2.4 GHz dual core, with the ability to go up to 2.93 GHz via Turbo Boost, 3 MB of L3 cache and 35W TDP.

There are also a couple of implied new processors with the appearance of the three above. Here’s what I expect to also arrive (in other notebooks) at the same time:

• Intel Core i7 940XM Quad-core Extreme processor – With the i7 840QM able to hit the same 3.20 GHz ceiling as the i7 920XM via Turbo Boost, expect to see an upgraded i7 940XM mobile processor with 2.26 GHz clock speed and ability to Turbo Boost to 3.33 GHz or more.
• New Intel Core i5 500M series processors (i5 530M and i5 550M) – These new processors will maintain their 35W TDP, while giving an increase in clock speed/Turbo Boost max clock speed.

Well, go right ahead and check out that Service Manual to see those new processor options yourself, along with a wealth of information related to the Envy 17 (like how there’s no battery slice available, the fact it uses the GDDR5 version of the ATI Mobility Radeon 5850 and not DDR3 [rejoice!], how the hard drives and RAM slots are now “customer accessible” and more!). The new processors also make an appearance in the HP Envy 15 Service Manual, hinting that the Envy 15 (and it’s rather not-so-nice keyboard) is not so dead yet… well, there’s always wishful thinking that a redesigned 2nd gen Envy 15 or Envy 16 will come out this fall, right?

Why settle for Core2Duo when you can have Core i7 Quad?!

This week is turning out to be another “Apple week” again, with plenty of unrest on the internet about the recent announcement of Apple’s new MacBook Pro’s, refreshed for 2010, even more iPad hyping and plenty of iPhone gen 4 rumors. Let’s take a look at the new (2010) 13 inch MacBook Pro. It has a Core2Duo processor, compared to dual-core i5 and i7 on its 15 and 17 inch big brothers. And a mere 256 MB of graphics (Nvidia GeForce 320M). So far, the HP Elitebook 8440w is the smallest notebook (14 inch) with a Core i7 Quad-core processor. Do you think someone can push the envelope even further and put Quad core in something… smaller… as a little bird hinted recently?

Compaq Presario CQ1 all-in-one/nettop appears on HP’s site

I’m not sure what is it with HP recently, making products (or at least their product and order pages) available first before an actual announcement. But regardless, they’ve just come out with a new Touchsmart-like (similar form factor with no touchscreen here), budget net-top computer – the Compaq CQ1. The CQ1 may look a whole lot like the more expensive Touchsmart PC’s in terms of design but their similarities end there. The CQ1 has a 18.5 inch non-touch display, a dual core Intel Atom processor, 2 DDR2 RAM slots, runs Windows XP (what year are we living in again?) and has a relatively affordable starting price of $430. The CQ1 also sports its fair share of ports and a slot-loading optical drive.