HP Launches new touch-screen PC
June 10, 2008 - By Guest Reviewer
Day one of the HP Connecting Your World conference kicked off with an interview style keynote speech from Todd Bradley, Executive Vice President, Personal Systems Group, by local ZDF TV presenter Cherno Jobatey.
Todd highlighted some of the key areas of HP’s success in the global market making them the leader in the industry. Interestingly HP are the largest hard drive and memory purchasers in the world and spend an estimated $3.5 billion on research and development - unlike their competitors.
He also discussed how the youth market is their most important because they are driving innovation in a global space. So much so that HP have teamed up with MTV to help drive them to this market and today David Roman announced the launch of a new reality game show to run on MTV called the Engine Room. This new reality show will run in 25 countries and teams compete against each other using their PCs to solve a number of challenges.
It is Todd’s understanding that more user generated content will be created in the next 5 years than in the history of mankind and while consumer sales are critically important commercial sales are too with more than half of HP’s sales going to the enterprise market.
Consumer and Commercial Notebooks
The highlight though of the keynote was the introduction to HP’s new consumer and business products. Ted Clark, Senior Vice President of the notebook global business unit, had six new consumer and ten new commercial laptops on display. HP’s aim with these new laptops is to ship one per second worldwide.
A massive task but with features such as liquid metallic finish, ProtectSmart technology that protects hard drives in the even of dropping and new aluminium exteriors, HP’s design team have delivered some awesome looking machines.
Luxury Computing
HP have also spent a lot of time marketing luxury computing and the Voodoo range, which we’ve covered here before, challenges imagination and delivers true luxury products to those who want only the best. Rahul Sood, CTO, Voodoo Business Unit, came on stage to demo the brand new Voodoo Envy133 laptop which truly looks amazing.
At only 0.7” thick and made completely from carbon fibre this new laptop is now competing directly with the MacBook Air. It’s a 13.3” LED backlit display with flush glass meaning there is no border to the display.
Where the Voodoo Envy133 kills the MacBook Air is in the ethernet adapter. Unlike the Air the Envy133 comes with an ethernet adapter directly into the power supply meaning you can connect to a wired network without having any special adapters. Truly genius.
Surprisingly the Envy133 will retail for only $2099 (R16,500) making it cheaper in many respects than its competitor.
The Movie World
Unknown to many, HP is very supportive and helps in the creation of films in Hollywood. The relationship between HP and Dreamworks has been a long and fruitful one and Jeff Wood, Director of Product Marketing, today showcased the new HP DreamColor monitor that they developed for Dreamworks studio.
Most traditional monitors use 8-bit technology allowing 16-million colours but the DreamColor monitor utilises 10-bit technology allowing pictures to be displayed at a massive 1 billion colours. As you can expect, this technology is not cheap and this monitor will cost you around $5000 (R40,000).
Coming to a Touch Screen near you
The winner of the show however was the launch of the new 22” HP TouchSmart IQ500 PC. A true touch-screen PC that brings digital life to the touch of a finger. I have to say I am blown away by this PC. I had predicted and assumed that Apple would be the first to deliver true touch-screen computing but HP have proved why they are the leaders in desktop computing.
HP TouchSmart software brings a new level of fun interaction with photos, videos and music by making it easier for you to fully enjoy your media. For example, the TouchSmart music application allows you to smoothly browse music collections by album art. With the TouchSmart photo application, you can now crop, edit and share photos as well as upload them to HP’s Snapfish online service directly from within the application.
You can also watch and record TV shows with Windows Vista Media Center and the integrated TV tuner card.
This is a fantastic addition to desktop computing but I am concerned about pricing. There was no official announcment on the cost and availability of the product but I’ve heard that this PC will cost around R40,000. As and when I can confirm this I will but in the mean time have a look at the machine in action below.
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(4 votes, average: 4.5 out of 5)
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Filed Under HP - Berlin 2008, Hewlett Packard
[...] of this event you can catch it all over here and be sure to read the keynote address which we covered here for a detailed synopsis of the new innovations from [...]
Ah, No , true touch computing would be if the entire OS and included Apps. and also apps that could be purchased were touch enabled, like …… i dont know…… maybe the iphone or ipod touch. Nice try HP, your ad is kind of misleading , get MS or maybe Adobe to include PS Elements-touch enabled the you might be on to something.
how much does one of these fine piece of electronic cost?
Well the pricing will vary depending on the country you live in and the availability. In the US I think it’s retailing for around $5000. Again, I have no confirmation of this but this is what they expected it to be retailing for.
USD $1,149.99 (office depot)
is there a camera?