Hasta La Gadget!

DreamWorks Animation is one of the most well-known movie animation studios around. Pixar might be a bit more popular, but DreamWorks has certainly come up with some classic hits recently. The company announced, alongside HP, that their latest film used HP workstations to render animations and create graphics for the movie “Turbo.”

Specifically, DreamWorks Animation used HP’s Z800 and Z820 Workstations, as well as the company’s DreamColor displays and printers. If you know anything about the level of animation that these movies contain, it’s quite impressive. A single frame in an animated film takes hours and hours to render based on the amount of detail in the frame, and HP’s workstations were put to the test doing just that.

HP claims that DreamWorks was able to execute tasks at twice the speed than previous workstations. During the evening, these workstations were put to use by running rendering jobs, and it took “75 million render hours” to render the entire Turbo film, according to HP. Of course, that’s over 8,500 years if DreamWorks was only using one workstation, so they undoubtedly had an army of workstations that worked together to render the film in a timely fashion.

Of course, this leads to a lot of files needing stored, and HP was obviously there to deal with the “230 terabytes of files” that it took to make the movie. It’s a good thing we have compression software, or else movies would come in 60,000-disc sets. HP and DreamWorks have actually been working together for quite some time, and we even took the chance a few years ago to check out the studios and get hands-on time with the HP workstations when they were working on Kung Fu Panda, as well as Monsters vs. Aliens.

If you haven’t heard about DreamWorks’ latest film, Turbo follows the story of a snail who gains magical powers and is able to run at blistering speeds. He eventually enters into the Indy 500, and the rest of the story you’ll have to find out by watching the movie in theaters starting today.

HP workstations used for DreamWorks’ latest Turbo animated film is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2013, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Perhaps the “x2” in Split x2’s name indicates that HP worked double-time to bring the device to market before its August release date. A follow up to the Envy x2, the device is a 13-inch Windows 8 hybrid with a 1,366 x 768 detachable screen that houses a 128GB SSD. The other specs are identical to the one we previewed, but you can only get the Intel Core i3 version right now — no word on when the i5 flavor will follow. You can check out the entry-level Slate x2 at Best Buy (currently the only place you can buy one) where it’s available for $750. For those who prefer Android-powered hybrids, however, you will just have to wait until that Slatebook x2 hits the market.

[Thanks, Kyle]

Filed under: Laptops, Tablets, HP

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Source: HP, Best Buy

It’s time to get serious about HP releasing another smartphone, in this case code-named HP Brave and ready for Android excellence. This device is being teased as rolling with GSM/WCDMA/LTE abilities right out of the box paired with a 4.5-inch 900 x 1600 pixel display and a Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 quad-core processor. You know what that means? It means that HP somehow made a mistake and put a display from 2012 on a device that’s got enough power under the hood to work with a panel from 2014.

This device has appeared in the benchmarking system known as AnTuTu, meaning there’s always the possibility that it’s not entirely legitimate. AnTuTu doesn’t often have falsified results, but the ability to do so does still exist – keep that in mind when you read through the rest of this article on a device that has, on the other hand, been rumored more than once.

Above: The HP Slate 7 running Android 4.2 Jelly Bean.

UPDATE: HP denies this machine’s existence in an extremely brief statement:

“The photo is a fabrication and is not a photo of anything HP has in the works. Someone is making stuff up.” – HP Representative

Earlier this year, HP Senior Director of Consumer PCs and Tablets for Asia-Pacific, Yam Su Yin suggested that, with regard to an HP smartphone, “the answer is yes but I cannot give a timetable. … It would be silly if we say no,” she said, “HP has to be in the game.”

This new “Brave” device is said here to be working with a 5 megapixel camera on its front, a 14.5 megapixel camera on its back, and a single LED flash (again, on its back). This back-facing camera is tipped here as being able to film 1080p video, and we wouldn’t be surprised if the front-facing camera had the ability to film 720p video at least.

The list of specifications here suggests that this machine is working with Android 4.2 Jelly Bean, well within the realm of real possibility. With the Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 we’re seeing a clock speed at 2.0 GHz per each of its four cores paired with ARM-made Adreno 300 GPU power to back it all up. And it’s definitely not running WebOS.

VIA: PhoneArena; Amoeba

HP Android smartphone returns with “Brave” specifications [UPDATE: HP Denies] is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2013, SlashGear. All right reserved.

This week the folks at HP have introduced a relatively large new IPS LED backlit display aimed at taking on “extra-wide” viewing angles in several different computing environments. This monitor is designed first and foremost for a “business class” experience, but will meet most gamers everyday average high-resolution needs with a pixel count of 1920 x 1080. This display aims to bring on a tilt of -5 to 30 degree ups and downs and sits on a 360 degree swivel as well.

Viewing angles both horizontal and vertical with this monitor both ring in at 178 degrees, while the brightness of the display itself is a cool 250 cd/m2. On the back you’ve got VGA, DVI, and DisplayPort inputs as well an integrated USB hub. At a pixel pitch of 0.311 mm and working with a collection of tilt, swivel, and odd adjustment abilities, this 27-inch monitor also meets TCO Certified Edge requirements for environmental and ergonomic stand design.

The EliteDisplay E271i will join HP’s set of monitors aimed at SMB and enterprise customers while machines like the HP Slate 21 All-in-one revealed earlier this year proves the company isn’t about to be pigeon-holed as either a monitor or desktop PC-maker.

The company also recently revealed additions to their device lineup with the HP Pavilion 14 Chromebook as well as the HP Spectre XT TouchSmart Notebook, each of them aimed at completely different audiences. The SMB market continued to be pushed by HP, on the other hand, with the HP ProBook 400 and 200 series, each of them made to be thin and light, start to finish.

HP EliteDisplay E271i 27-inch LED Backlit Monitor spins for your unique neck is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2013, SlashGear. All right reserved.

If you were looking for a bounce-back in the PC market after a sobering first quarter… well, keep looking. Both Gartner and IDC estimate that shipments fell about 11 percent year-over-year in the second quarter. The two analyst groups blame the decline on sluggish uptake in a few regions, most notably China and Europe, as well as a market that favors tablets over low-end computers. It’s easy to agree after seeing the numbers. Taiwanese PC makers like Acer and ASUS faced steep yearly declines as they switched their attention toward tablets and Ultrabooks, while even top-seated Lenovo took a small bruising.

There’s a silver lining to this cloud, however. Dell, HP and Lenovo all fared much better in the US than they have in recent quarters. Gartner and IDC attribute the resurgence to the corporate world, where the end of Windows XP support in 2014 may be pushing some upgrades to PCs running at least Windows 7. It’s not quite the broader recovery that vendors are hoping for, but it may have to suffice when any help from Windows 8.1 and OS X Mavericks is months away.

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops, Apple, ASUS, HP, Dell, Acer, Lenovo

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Source: Gartner, IDC