Review After years of computer journalists telling me – erroneously, I hasten to add – that my next Desktop PC will be a laptop, it’s pleasing to see manufacturers such as HP trying to make it happen.
Viewing spectacle: the Envy 17 3D is a big beast but HP has managed to keep it looking clean and stylish
What do I hate about laptops? A keyboard with lots of keys missing; a pointing device less accurate than a Star Wars Stormtrooper; a crappy graphics card that struggles with its own half-arsed display let alone a second one; gaming frame-rate akin to a slideshow; less memory than the £5 USB stick in my pocket; less hard disk space than the £40 portable drive in my other pocket; and a price tag that would buy me three Desktop PCs – better ones, too. Read the rest of this entry »
Review What a difference a year makes. Had HP’s TouchPad – which went on sale in the UK this past Friday – debuted 12 months ago, maybe even as few as seven, it would have stood tall alongside the competition.
But coming six months or so after the iPad 2, let alone the iPad 1, HP’s offering in many ways feels distinctly behind the curve.
That’s unfair, because the TouchPad, despite some minor flaws in both the hardware and the software, isn’t half bad. It has a functional, aesthetically appealing operating system, and it’s a decent piece of work physically. Read the rest of this entry »
Review This is going to be good. I reviewed the first TouchSmart 600 all-in-one home Desktop computer in January 2010, and loved it, frankly. I fondly remember Reg Hardware readers expressing their admiration for my gushing praise at the time… That was sarcasm. Enough, I’m over it.
Finger friendly: HP’s TouchSmart 610
The TouchSmart 600 was a shiny, black, all-round entertainment party box, jack of all trades and master of fun. HP seemed to have ‘got’ what a shared family computer is supposed to be all about: not so much home office as home video, less Portal 2 and more Club Penguin.
Now with the TouchSmart 610, HP is trying to help you get more out of the touchscreen by making it ergonomically better to use. More on that later. Read the rest of this entry »
Hands On HP has learned from Apple. Not simply by mimicking – or judging it to be the correct size in any case – the iPad’s 9.7in screen defined dimensions, but by avoiding the obvious operating system: Android.
Hardware being what it is, the only true way to differentiate your product is the user experience, and WebOS allows – as iOS does for Apple – HP, not another company, to define it. Google seems less keen on permitting UI overlays on Honeycomb tablets than it has on smartphones, so it’s going to become ever harder for vendors to avoid offering ‘me too’ Android products.
HP’s TouchPad: the design shows an iPad inspiration
Beyond the branding, there’s not an awful lot of difference between, say, a Motorola Xoom, a Toshiba Thrive and a Samsung Galaxy Tab 10. Read the rest of this entry »
The Pavilion Elite HPE-180 stands at the pinnacle of the HP’s home PC line-up and sports spec to match. It has a 2.80GHz Intel Core i7-860 processor, 8GB of DDR 3 memory, a Blu-ray combo drive and, to make use of all that memory, 64-bit Windows 7 Home Premium.
HP’s Pavilion Elite HPE-180: merlot trim? More vin de table than premier cru
There’s a question mark hanging over the unbranded “special edition” Nvidia GeForce GTX 260 graphics card as it only supports DirectX 10. That’s something of a shame as AMD has a range of DirectX 11 cards. So from the start, the HPE-180 isn’t quite as elite as its branding – and more importantly, its price – might suggest.
You won’t be able to tell from the photos but the front of the case is well endowed with ports and connectors as they are covered by flaps and stealth doors. Read the rest of this entry »
