Tag: hardware

Categories
Uncategorized

Do you have (HP) Voodoo Envy yet? You may soon enough

Over lunch before my 2PM meeting… more on the new HP HP Voodoo Omen and Envy from Engadget…

HP Voodoo Envy 133

Envy Side View“You think we’re tired of Omen and Envy 133 yet? Fat chance. That LCD-bedecked desktop behemoth and thintop contender (pictured) are both quite a new direction Voodoo, and their launch seems particularly good timing given Dell’s apparent reshuffling of its XPS and Alienware lineups. But forget market appropriateness, let’s concentrate on the sexy…

Yes, let’s. 😉

You’d think that I was a shill for HP today, but no.  It’s just exciting to see some great, new PC form factors coming form our hardware OEMs that are really appealing.

We’ve had a couple of HP computers at home, and my son has a large screen notebook for his game programming, video editing and whatever-else-10-yr-olds are doing with PCs (that parents manage and monitor with Windows Live OneCare Family Safety ;).  Still, I know that a number of people have been looking for new notebook PCs that leverage Vista and are very mobile.  With the attention drawn to the MacBook Air, we’ve since seen a couple of new entrants to the PC space that are svelte and, well, sexy, like the Lenovo X300. 

And now the Envy, complete with a backlit keyboard and integrated web camera, removable battery, Ethernet (built into the power brick, on the floor, thank you), USB and External SATA ports, built in 802.11n Wi-Fi and more.  Plus, an SSD-equipped model is coming this summer.

Voiodoo main siteFor a broad selection of features, price points and designs, I’m impressed with the latest announcements and sure that we’ll see more as we move through the summer and into the fall with back-to-school, and then the holidays.  Add to the Envy the new HP Voodoo Omen: as macnn reported, the new Omen has been “revamped” and targeted at high-end gaming and workstation customers…

“The full tower is based on an extremely minimalist, Mac Pro-like aluminum chassis headlined by a 7-inch secondary display used to display either useful information such as news or game stats as well as to play music and videos. An internal redesign also makes it extremely quiet, Voodoo boasts. In addition to one of the first uses of a quad radiator, copper pipes are built directly into the case walls, while the mainboard is rotated 90 degrees so that heat naturally flows upwards, reducing the strain on the components inside.”

See Engadget’s gallery of Voodoo Envy 133 images for more…

Tags: Microsoft, HP, hardware, Vista, Windows, Voodoo.

Categories
Uncategorized

So what do you call ultra low-cost, mobile PCs? How about “ULCPCs”

Engadget noted that the new class of Eee PC-like ultraportables was in need of a new product category…

“… as we were going over some back posts that since the launch of the ASUS Eee PC (and the numerous products that have followed, from the MSI Wind to the HP Mini-Note), to the best of our knowledge we’ve all yet to have any normalized, agreed-upon name for these kinds of devices. Yes, they’re technically “ultraportables” (which we usually define as being any relatively small laptop and under four pounds), but to say an Eee PC is in the same class as, say, the Lenovo X300, the VAIO TZ, or the MacBook Air would be kind of misleading.”

I’ve seen these at work referred to as ultra low-cost mobile PCs (aka ULCPCs), as noted in our announcement of extended availability of Windows XP Home for ULCPCs. 

As for the specs, the WHDC site outlines the update to the Windows XP Logo Program: on July 1, 2008, Windows XP Logo Program closes for mainstream computers, the Windows Logo Program will accept systems for the new Designed for Windows XP logo for ultra-low cost personal computers (ULCPCs). These are PCs that meet the following requirements:

  • System ships with 1 gigabyte (GB) or less of memory (RAM)
  • Screen size is 10.2″ or smaller
  • Storage capacity is 16 GB or less for solid state disk (SSD) or 80 GB or less for hard disk drives (HDD)
  • No tablet functionality
  • DirectX version 9 graphics processing unit (GPU) or older
  • Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) S4 sleep state is optional

Additional information in the Windows Logo Program Requirements version 2.2.1a for Windows XP (available at http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/winlogo/downloads.mspx)

Michael Dix said…

“ULCPCs are a new and growing class of mobile computers designed for first-time PC buyers and customers interested in complementing their primary Windows-based PCs with companion devices with limited hardware capabilities.  These machines vary, but they typically have smaller screen sizes and lower-powered processors than more expensive mobile PCs.

“While originally intended for students and other first-time PC customers in emerging markets, we’re now seeing interest in these affordable devices in developed countries as well.”

I should say so.  I see a marker for these PCs in our own home, for our family’s casual use and travel, and at work for taking notes. 

IMHO, the 1GB of system memory is reasonable for Windows XP (which is the configuration we’ve had for our older PCs at home, and on my last Windows XP Tablet PC. I am surprised at the cap on SSD storage capacity at 16 GB: in a year’s time, I can see 32GB being quite reasonable at current price declines.  But 16GB should be more than adequate, especially when used as a primary system and application drive, leaving an SD slot populated with a 4 or 8GB SDHC memory card. 

More info at Windows XP Home for ULCPCs available until 2010.

Tags: Microsoft, Windows XP, ULCPC, Windows.

Categories
Uncategorized

Something new from Dell at D6: a tiny mobile PC

Will Red be the colour for back to school for the 2009 school year?  If my kids see this new PC, I expect we will be pressed to contribute towards the country’s economic recovery.

This from the Dell blog: a new, tiny (and I’ll assume a low cost) mobile PC, as reported on Gizmodo…

“Hats off to Brian Lam of Gizmodo as he seems to have caught Michael roaming the halls between sessions and saw he was carrying something our Ideastorm contributors will recognize. Michael positioned it as the perfect device for the next billion internet users.  While we can’t share any details, we can share these (click on them to see a larger version):

Inspiron mini

Inspiron mini (open)

Stay tuned for details.

As Betanews reported, this is the result of comments on the Dell IdeaStorm blog (with some requests for the Dell mini) where “the Dell Community has contributed 9,092 ideas, promoted 625,964 times and 68,464 comments” (something to learn from Dell’s approach)…

“… if Dell’s system were to be Atom-based, it might be less likely to carry the word “Inspiron” in its brand name. Thus one could more readily infer that this is the latest permutation of Dell’s UMPC, based on ideas it’s actually had for a few years now, coupled with some suggestions it actually sought from the general public through one of the company’s forums two months ago.”

Your Blog » Blog Archive » Something from Dell at D6

Categories
Uncategorized

Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer demo Preview Windows 7, multi-touch at D6 conference

image Fresh from the net, here’s a highlight from D6 down in Carlsbad and number one on the All Things D Top Ten list (as at right)…

“With Microsoft (MSFT) Chairman Bill Gates soon relinquishing his daily role at the software company he co-founded as it grapples with Google (GOOG), European regulators, Yahoo (YHOO), and Windows Vista critics hoping to upgrade from XP to Windows 7 (skipping the much maligned Vista entirely), tonight’s conversation with Gates and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer will be a memorable one in the history of the software sovereign.”

Of particular interest: multi-touch in Windows 7…

“So is this the next phase of how people will use their computers. Gates says it’s the beginning of an era of computing based on a new hierarchy of input systems. Today the machine is really set up for one person to sit at a keyboard. “We’re at an interesting junction,” he says. “In the next few years, the roles of speech, gesture, vision, ink, all of those will become huge. For the person at home and the person at work, that interaction will change dramatically.”


Video: Multi-Touch in Windows 7

Categories
Uncategorized

Bill Gates demos the Touch Wall to CEOs, plus video clip

While waiting for a conference call to begin, a quick post on Touch Wall demo’ed by Bill Gates at the CEO Summit this week in Redmond.

Benjamin J. Romano of the Seattle Times covers today how Bill Gates demonstrated the Touch Wall at the CEO Summit in Redmond this week…

“On Wednesday, he gave about 115 chief executives gathered at his company’s headquarters a sales pitch and a vision of the future of work, complete with a demonstration of the latest computing interface to be cooked up by Microsoft’s researchers.

“Think about the whiteboard in your office becoming intelligent,” Gates said before introducing Touch Wall, a 50-inch touch-sensing screen that he likened to a vertical version of the company’s Surface tabletop computer.”

Crunchgear covered the Microsoft TouchWall in this post, and noted that this alternative to Microsoft Surface could be constructed from just “a few hundred dollars worth of readily available hardware.” And it has a very cool demo below.

Tags: Touch Wall, CEO Summit, Surface.