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New Voodoo can be the Envy of MacBook Air’s friends
June 10, 2008
Hewlett-Packard sold nearly 2m more notebooks than Dell in the first quarter, according to a DisplaySearch report today, and it will be looking to maintain that advantage with a new portfolio of products just unveiled.
HP showed off 17 new notebooks at its Connecting Your World event in Berlin today. It gave me a sneak preview of them in San Francisco last month.
On the luxury side, Rahul Sood, chief technology officer of VoodooPC, told me its high-end laptops were beginning to benefit from HP’s acquisition of the company in terms of better build quality, marketing strategy and greater economies of scale bringing the price down.
The new Envy has a tough but light carbon-fibre casing and while it looks boxier than the MacBook Air, its most obvious competitor, Sood said it was actually thinner at 0.70 of an inch. The Air is 0.76 of an inch at its thickest part but tapers away at the edges.
The Envy features a backlit keyboard, a huge touchpad for a mouse and neat features such as the ethernet connection being contained in the power brick.
It is available in any colour you desire, with laser etching, starting at $2099. Sood said Voodoo as an independent company would have charged $5,000 for the machine.
HP’s more prosaic enterprise laptops still had some interesting features. I liked the way you could semi-close the lid, wedge a business card in a slot in the front of the P Series machines and have the screen-embedded webcam scan the details and enable software to import the contact. There was also a night light that lit up the keyboard in low-light conditions.
Both Voodoo and the top enterprise notebooks featured instant-boot mini operating systems that allowed users to access essential programs such as email and Skype, without having to start Windows.
According to DisplaySearch, HP had 20.8 per cent of the notebook market in the first quarter with sales of 6.5m units. Dell and Acer followed with 15.1 per cent and 14.6 per cent shares respectively. Total unit sales of 31m were up 35 per cent on a year ago. IDC expects worldwide consumer notebook sales to overtake consumer desktop PC sales some time this year.
Brilliant! ….let’s hope now that batteries take a quantum leap and hours turn into weeks, is sad to see workers and students with extension-chargers cords across the floors of offices, train stations, airports,cafes, bathroom doors,etc., warning passers-by to watch for the cord….at least they could make them spiral-type while waiting for wireless electric links…let’s hope HP ,which is been working for a while on wireless electricity will come up with something harmless and no-microwave burner and with Open Standards plug-and-play …….at the same time,do HP still offers “AMD-Linux-Google-Open Office-etc.” ready to go as options?
in the next devices,we really need a total “plug-and play” and Open Standards and Access approach, be it with Wi-Fi or WiMax or LTE or White Spaces or whatever,let’s hope Washington D.C. and Brussels get their act together and deliver for the consumers…
Posted by: blogger | June 11th, 2008 at 9:29 pm | Report this commentlol, it’s absolutely ugly, it can’t compete with Apple’s beauty.
Posted by: Doubtful | June 12th, 2008 at 4:39 pm | Report this commentThis will not happen and the resell value of the HP will never be that of the APPLE LAPTOP they are built better and the the Solid State Hard Drives this really make them a good catch.
Posted by: pureart2000 | June 16th, 2008 at 3:37 pm | Report this comment————————————————
You can also check out this site for used Apple Laptops starting at $199.99 and up http://www.pureart2000.com check out the banner for Laptops at the bottom of the page
So Apple has a high resale value, but you’re pushing $200 Apples? Does not sound that high to me.
Posted by: More doubtful | July 1st, 2008 at 9:36 pm | Report this commentMacbook Air is fantastic………….the perfect laptop
Posted by: Arabbible | September 23rd, 2008 at 2:26 am | Report this comment