[CES 2014] HP’s workstations have come a long way since 2009 when the first Z was introduced with a dreamcolor display. The lineup was expanded from 2011-2013 with products like the world’s first workstation ultrabook, Zbook mobile workstations, first all-in-one workstation as well as extension of HP’s Z brand to professional displays. So what’s next for the company’s workstations? HP has unveiled that today. It has announced the HP Z1 G2 all-in-one workstation, which happens to be the world’s first and only AiO with a 27 inch diagonal display. Its the company’s most powerful AIO, touting Windows 8 Touch and Intel Thunderbolt 2. The company says that this workstation is ideal for workers and specialists in CAD design, university education, graphics arts and more.
The HP Z1 G2 offers sheer power though Intel’s 4th generation Haswell processors with support for up to 95W processors and four DDR3 RAM slots, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, HDD, SSD and mSATA, for external data access, as well as its diagonal 27 inch LCD white LED 2,560×1,440 pixel resolution display with capacitive touch technology that offers an experience similar to touchscreen displays found in high-end smartphones. Available operating systems include up to Windows 8.1 Pro 64 and Linux, and two base units of the workstation will be offered, one with touch and the other without. A 2 megapixel webcam is built into the display. Power for all this is provided by a 400W internal power supply unit.
Customers can opt for up to Intel Xeon E3-1280v3 processor and up to 32GB ECC or 16GB non-ECC unbuffered DDR3 RAM. Intel HD graphics are integrated, though customers will have the ability to choose between NVIDIA Quadro K610M, K2100M, K3100M and K4100M graphics cards. Other features include an optical Blu-ray and DVD RW SuperMulti writer, two USB 3.0 ports, 2 Thunderbolt 2 ports, four USB 2.0 ports and a card reader. Intel Thunderbolt 2 technology makes the HP Z1 G2 better for 4K video workflow, seeing as its almost four times faster than USB 3.0. The workstation is capable of supporting up to six daisy chained Thunderbolt storage devices.
HP has focused a lot on making it easier for users to service the workstation, which is why the Z1 G2′s tool-less design and easy access to internal components is going to be much appreciated. The HP Z1 G2 workstation is expected to be available later this month.
HP Z1 G2 27 Inch Diagonal All-In-One Workstation Announced original content from Ubergizmo. 
     |
[CES 2014] The folks over at Steiger Dynamics are certainly going out on a limb here, having announced the new MAVEN Home Theater PC which is touted to be the “most powerful Home Theater PC”, at least in its class. The asking price of $999 a pop will set a new standard when it comes to Home Theater PCs in the modern day living room. Boasting of a sleek design as well as extremely silent operation, it makes it a snap to integrate with the different kinds of home theater components that you have lying around. When you merge it with the likes of a large screen Full HD or 4K TV, the MAVEN should be able to see off the likes of Blu-ray players, DVRs, Desktop PCs and gaming consoles.
[CES 2014] Toshiba joins the club of OEMs which are featuring Chromebooks in their computer line-up. So far, and to the surprise of some, Google’s Chrome OS has had more traction than expected, especially in the education field. That’s because Chrome OS computers are simple, easily manageable and difficult for students to hack – thus making them a platform of choice for many schools, hotels and other places where users are given a short-term computer. Toshiba is coming to this market with a cautious approach and has taken a good look at the competitive landscape before launching its own product.
[CES 2014] CyberPower Inc. has a treat for the gaming masses at CES this year, where they hope to change the way your living room “plays” this year through the debut of their stylish Steam Machine series. Running on the Steam OS by Valve Corporation, the CYBERPOWERPC Steam Machine will come with the kind of hardware which delivers a full desktop PC performance without looking out of place. No sir, it will in fact, come in an advance stylish form factor. With the revolutionary Steam OS, you will be able to have full control over your entire Steam game library right from the living room itself.
[CES 2014] SanDisk has just unveiled the 64GB SanDisk Connect Wireless Flash Drive that ought to raise an eyebrow or two – after all, this particular USB peripheral will offer users additional options when it comes to expanding their wireless memory connectivity to their range of mobile devices. Apart from that, the recently released software updates will also be able to further enhance the performance and functionality of both the SanDisk Connect Wireless Flash Drive and Wireless Media Drive. 
[CES 2014] Lantronix has just announced its brand new xPrintServer Cloud Print Edition. This will be the latest member of the patented, award-winning xPrintServer family for mobile printing, where it also boasts of being the very first and only print server that has been certified by Google which will offer support for Cloud Print technology, in addition to any other compatible device that plays nice with Google’s Chrome browser and Chrome operating system which is known as ChromeOS. 
NVIDIA has officially launched Tegra K1 (thought to be Tegra 5 previously), which is the first Tegra chip to feature an architecture that is identical to its PC counterpart. For NVIDIA, and for the mobile industry, this is a historic day which marks the first time PC, console and mobile graphics, at least as far as NVIDIA is concerned. The architecture in question is code-named Kepler and it is well known on PC for having increased NVIDIA’s compute power density drastically. Although the mobile version has less graphics compute units to accommodate size and power requirements, it still has every feature that the GeForce Titan has. Because of that, while other mobile graphics vendors are proud of their “Open GL ES 3.0” compatibility, NVIDIA can run the “full” Open GL 4.4 API that drives PCs today. In the PC world, ES 3.0 is still pre-DX10, while GL 4.4 is DX11. 
[CES 2014] With the explosion of smart devices connecting over WiFi, having travel routers have gone from being a superfluous element to being money-saving objects. Since many hotels charge “per device”, I have seen quite a few people get into situations where they got charged separately for the laptop, smartphone and tablet in the same room. The D-Link WiFi AC750 has been created exactly to avoid these types of situations by letting you share an internet connection (3G, WiFi or Ethernet) with all your devices. 
