‘Pah iPad, don’t forget me’ says HP TouchSmart

After the success of the first touch-enabled notebook aimed at consumers, HP has honed the design with the arrival of the HP TouchSmart tm2. It’s a convertible notebook comfortable both in laptops or tablets form thanks to the swivel screen and it’s multitouch enabled for all zoom, scroll and rotating manoeuvres.

The idea behind the HP laptops machine is that it’s adaptable for all environments and includes a digital pen for writing on the screen when in tablet form for note taking purposes.

It runs a low voltage Intel Core 2 Duo processor with a discrete ATI GPU and the rest of the specs are the consumer’s choice when you get to the online store. The six-cell battery offers a reported 9 hours life, there’s a finger print reader and it’s all wrapped up in an aluminium chassis thermodynamically designed to keep the computer cool.

It’s out in the States now in all sorts of colours and starts at $949. Doubtless a UK and EU version will follow.

Omnifone strikes music service deal with HP laptops

Omnifone has clinched a potentially lucrative deal with Hewlett-Packard to pre-install its MusicStation music service onto HP laptops and computers.

The deal which will cover 10 European countries comprising of Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK will give music lovers the benefit of downloading from a library of 6.5 million tracks.

For £8.99 a month, MusicStation subscribers can download an unlimited number of tracks, plus get 10 DRM-free tracks each month to load onto any music device.

Spotify’s Premium service which would be its closest competitor in the UK, is £9.99 a month and while that does allow you to make tracks available offline, you’re not allowed to keep them.

MusicStation like Spotify, similarly has a mobile phone presence on networks such as Vodafone and features on Sony Ericsson handsets, making it a suitable rival for the current streaming music favourite.

Omnifone’s download service may not be the only new music provider to head to the UK in the near future. Sky Songs and MySpace Music already make up what is fast becoming a crowded market, but it’s the speculation surrounding an Apple streaming music service launching in the Spring that should make the digital music market a little more interesting.

The MusicStation service which will be packed into 16 HP computers and laptops across Europe from this week, offering a free 14 day trial with the opportunity to sign up to the full service.

HP announce plans for projector-integrated laptop

HP laptops could be working on the ultimate laptop for mobile Powerpoint pros: a notebook with a mini-projector built straight in to the lid.

According to Monty Wong <snigger>, vice president of personal computing systems for HP Taiwan, HP is planning to produce a laptop with a mini-projector, similar to those seen in some phones recently, possibly built in on the lip of the screen in place of a webcam, so you can beam out presentations and video without any extra set up.

Intriguingly, the report also says that HP will push forward with tablet PCs this year, suggesting the slate concept seen at CES could become reality.

Microsoft and HP announce touch-screen ‘Slate’ tablet

Microsoft and HP laptops have unveiled a new touch-screen tablet computer they hope will overshadow a similar device that Apple is expected to launch this month.

To add insult to injury Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer referred to the gadget as a ‘slate.’ Technology pundits think Apple will call their gadget ‘iSlate’ after filing for the trademark.

The 10inch HP tablet is a touch screen computer that runs Windows 7.

It doesn’t have a physical keyboard and is geared towards customers who want one device for reading books, browsing the web and playing computer games.

‘It’s a beautiful little product,’ Steve Ballmer told the audience at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. ‘It is almost as portable as a phone and as powerful as a PC.’

The tablet will transform into an interactive eReader using Blio reader software. This will allow embedded videos and create audio books using text-to-speech technology.

New HP laptops leaked ahead of grand unveiling

A shedload of new HP laptops have been leaked ahead of what we presume will be their formal announcement next week. Including desktop PCs, there are 14 new HP releases in total!

No full specs available at present but we do have pricing information, and here are some highlights…

The 14-inch HP Pavilion dv4i, a Windows 7 laptop with a flush display and fingerprint reader that should retail at £499. Up next is the 10-inch Mini 210 HD Edition, which will come in red, black, silver and blue, boast Intel’s brand new Pine Trail platform (a 1.66GHz N450 CPU), plus GMA 3150 graphics. Another goodie here is that this one is expected to ship with Broadcom’s Crystal HD video playback chip. The Mini 210 HD is expected to cost around £249. Logic Buy (the point of origin for all this info) is reporting that these models should ship on or around January 7th, though keep in mind that all of this information is extremely unofficial, so don’t blame us if it all changes!

HP laptops dubbed racist due to face recognition failure

A YouTube video succinctly titled “HP Computers Are Racist” received wide exposure earlier this week; Apparently, HP’s Media Smart webcam’s Face Tracking software has trouble tracking people with darker complexions.

The African American man, referred to as “Desi,” demonstrates on the video, titled “HP computers are racist,” how the tracking software won’t follow his face but will follow his co-worker’s.

“I think my blackness is interfering with the computer’s ability to, to follow me,” he says on the video. “I’m going on record and I’m saying it: Hewlett Packard computers are racist.

CBS Technology Analyst Larry Magid says the problem is with the lighting and is not racial. HP laptops responded in a blog post saying the problem occurs when there isn’t enough light in the foreground.

“I think that it could possibly be explained by the lighting, and the fact that black skin obviously is darker, and probably needs better lighting (for the program to work), that’s true with any type of photography,” said Magid.

HP unveils Blu-ray integrated ProBook laptops

HP have launched two new laptops within their ProBook lineup, each powerful enough to act like a desktop machine, yet are compact enough to bring around the office or to travel with.  Let’s have a closer inspection at the new additions to the HP laptops range…

The HP ProBook 6445b is a 14-inch notebook operating on the Windows Vista platform as well as Windows 7. It can run on a powerful 2.4GHz AMD processor or a 2.0GHz AMD processor. In terms of RAM, it allows for as little as 1GB or it can expand to fit 8GB of RAM, allowing it to be a simple machine or a very powerful one. Remember 8GB of RAM is only powerful if the OS is the 64-bit version. In terms of hard disk space, it can go from 160GB to a large 500GB.

The HP ProBook 6545b is slightly larger than it’s brethrin, measuring in at 15.6-inches. Since it has a wider screen, it weighs slightly more – 5.9 pounds. Both models allow for the optional HP Mobile Gobi powered broadband access, but feature WLAN, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth for connectivity; it also uses HP’s native Connection Manager. Again, it has the same support for operating systems (both variants of Windows 7 and Windows Vista) as well as support for the same AMD processors. The dual channel DDR2 SDRAM RAM remains the same, it can go from 1GB to 8GB. Hard drive storage is still 160GB, 250GB, 320GB, or 500GB at 7200RPM.

Owners of Dell and HP Laptops unhappy with Windows 7 delays

A large number of Dell and HP customers are up in arms about delays to the Windows 7 upgrades promised to punters who purchased laptops earlier this year.

Many manufacturers promised customers an upgrade to the Vista successor once it landed on 22 October but weeks on from that launch, tech support forums for Dell and HP laptops are inundated with narked customers complaining that the upgrade hasn’t been delivered.

“I honestly think that this whole Windows 7 “FREE!!!” upgrade is total rubbish,” said a user identified as “mdr322″ in a message posted to a thread dedicated to upgrade complaints. “It took me 1 month to register my service tag and now my delivery date has been delayed by 2 weeks!”

“Dell is behaving very unprofessionally!” said someone labeled “Vlad G” on the same thread. “I am sure this will cost them customers.”

A first look at the HP Mini 311

The latest HP laptops arrival is the Ion-infused HP Mini 311, and early tests suggest is going to live up to the hype.

Engadget got their hands on the new Mini 311 which features Nvidia’s Ion LE graphics chip, and they found that Ion vastly improved graphics performance and provided a boost to overall performance.

In video editing tests, the HP Mini 311 converted an AVI file to MPEG-4 in 6 minutes and 14 seconds – approximately five times faster than a standard notebook.

Early trials indicate that Nvidia’s Ion graphics processor to the Atom CPU in netbooks makes a big difference, and the GPU could turn the category on its head. We’re all just waiting to find out about battery life now, hoping that the Ion power doesn’t drain the laptop in rapid time.

Dell rival HP with laptop and music offer

Dell has seen HP’s hand and raised it by offering access to free music with the purchase of a new laptop. Unlike the download-only tracks available with new HP laptops, Dell has decided to go down the subscription route and is teaming up with Napster for the promotion.

With selected Dell laptops customers will be given a complimentary subscription to the Napster Unlimited service, which includes access to 8 million music tracks, the ability to play them online from any PC, unlimited downloads on up to 3 PCs, and 60 DRM-free tracks to download and keep forever.

At the end of the year-long subscription, if you don’t continue with the paid subscription you don’t get to continue listening to any of the music you downloaded other than the 60 tracks.