Hasta La Gadget!

We joked about HP printers running webOS almost the second we learned about the Palm acquisition, but it turns out that’s actually part of the plan: HP CEO Mark Hurd told analysts that webOS would hit a “variety of form factors, including slates and web-connected printers” on the company’s Q2 financial results call today. webOS tablets were obviously a no-brainer, but printers are slightly more intriguing, in a way: while we’re not overly surprised HP wants to leverage webOS on its line of advanced touchscreen printers, we’re very curious to see what that actually looks like in practice — a printer with Synergy-level Facebook integration for easy photo printing? A printer that can play 3D games like Need for Speed? A printer that can… multitask? The possibilities are amusingly endless, if you think about it — and HP’s printing and imaging division is a $6.4 billion dollar business, so the money and motivation to push this idea into strange new places are certainly there. Speaking of money, HP’s doing just well on that front in general: profits were up 25 percent this quarter to $2.9 billion on total revenues of $30 billion, so yeah — Palm certainly has the money and resources it’s desperately needed. Now it just needs some new products and sharper execution.

HP says webOS coming to slates and web-connected printers originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 18 May 2010 18:09:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Don’t you just love it when a plan comes together? Just a week after hearing that HP would soon be refreshing its TouchSmart tm2 convertible tablet with Core i3 and Core i5 options, in flies this: an Amazon product page confirming as much. The 12.1-inch, 4.72-pound TouchSmart tm2-2050us is currently in pre-order status, rocking a 2.13GHz Core i3-330M processor, 4GB of DDR3 RAM, a 640GB hard drive (5400RPM), Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit), a WXGA LED-backlit display, Intel’s integrated graphics set, Altec Lansing speakers, a 5-in-1 card reader and gigabit Ethernet. You’ll also get a brushed aluminum finish, inbuilt webcam and fingerprint reader, 802.11b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth, a trio of USB 2.0 sockets, HDMI / VGA outputs, audio in / out and a battery good for around four hours of use. You can get in line now in exchange for $949.99, and if we were the betting type, we’d surmise that a Core i5 version was just around the bend.

[Thanks, Daniel]

HP’s $950 TouchSmart tm2 surfaces at Amazon with Core i3-330M originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 15 May 2010 23:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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AMD got serious with its VISION guide to buying PCs last September, but we’ve yet to see it actually put into practice until today. In addition to a new spate of laptop chips, the company is finally coming clean with the desktop CPUs that we’ve seen whispered about, touched and even benchmarked for weeks now. Frankly, there’s not much here we didn’t know already, but we’re guessing that AMD’s just aligning its official launch with the plans of Acer, ASUS, Dell, HP, Lenovo and all the other big names that’ll be introducing rigs based on this silicon in short order. Regardless, bargain gamers should greatly appreciate having the dual- and quad-core Athlon II range as well as the quad- and six-core Phenom II crew hitting the scene in official fashion, offering plenty of performance (for most, anyway) at a fraction of the cost of Intel’s swankest Core i7 chips. And yeah, we’re pretty stoked to see AMD getting its chips into so many desktops — it’s been awhile since there was even a semblance of an AMD / Intel balance in the customize-to-order sections of the world, and it’s about time that changed.

Continue reading AMD comes real clean with 2010 desktop platform: Phenoms, Athlons, Radeons, oh my!

AMD comes real clean with 2010 desktop platform: Phenoms, Athlons, Radeons, oh my! originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 12 May 2010 00:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The acquisition of smartphone maker Palm could have an impact on HP’s plans for its “Slate” tablet.

The Slate could be re-branded “Hurricane” and released with a new operating system based on Palm’s WebOS, according to a blog post on the Examiner.com web site. The Hurricane could be released in the third quarter of the year.

For tablet enthusiasts who want a device that’s not created by Apple, the HP Slate — a tablet with iPad-like styling — seems like a promising alternative. But the Slate’s development has been slow and rocky. Apple has already sold more than 1 million iPads while HP has been trying to finish its product.

HP introduced the Slate to gadget enthusiasts through a video in March. The company didn’t announce technical specifications for the device, but it released two short video clips that indicated the device would run Windows 7.

The Slate would also have a built-in camera, video-recording capability, USB port, an SD card reader and support for Adobe Flash — features pointedly aimed at the iPad, which lacks all five. A leaked company document suggested the Slate would cost $550 or $600 for the 32-GB and 64-GB models, respectively.

But late last month, HP said it was acquiring smartphone maker Palm. Jack Gold, an analyst with J. Gold associates says Palm’s new operating system, WebOS, created for its Palm Pre and Pixi phones could be a good fit for the HP tablet. Later, TechCrunch reported that HP could kill its Windows 7 tablet and instead find a way to launch a product that would use WebOS.

The latest suggestion that HP might re-brand the Slate as Hurricane seems to bear out the rumors of a WebOS-based tablet.

A HP spokesperson declined to comment, saying the company does not talk about “rumors and speculation.” The HP and Palm acquisition closes in July, and till then, the two companies are expected to continue to act independently, according to government rules.

Examiner.com doesn’t have a track record when it comes to gadget rumors but, if you take into account the buzz from different sources, it is likely that HP is re-evaluating its plans for the Slate. The question is, how long can the company afford to wait with Apple already charging ahead with the iPad?

See Also:

• HP’s Windows 7 Slate Strikes at the iPad
• Leaked HP Slate Fails to Impress in Early Peek
• HP Offers Another Peek at Its Tablet, Specs Leaked?
• Gallery: 8 Tablets That Aren’t Made by Apple

Photo: HP

Shortly after announcing a blockbuster deal to acquire Palm, HP confessed that it would be “doubling down on webOS,” with near-term plans to “scale it across multiple connected devices.” We took the liberty at that point to assume this meant that a larger webOS-based device was at least sitting around in the rear of someone’s mind, and now it sounds as if Palm loyalists may actually have something tangible to look forward to. According to an unsubstantiated report over at the Examiner, an “insider at HP” has informed the site that “a webOS tablet under the code name HP Hurricane could be released the third quarter of this year.” This all lines up well with what we’ve heard over the past few weeks: HP pledged to take webOS to places it has never been, strong whispers emerged that the HP Slate was being shelved, and now, people close to the HP camp have given a name to a purported webOS tablet slated for Q3. There’s obviously no telling if this is simply hot air being blown, but we wouldn’t be shocked to see HP nail down a webOS slate in time for the sure-to-be-rockin’ 2010 holiday buying season. Or maybe we’re just crossing our fingers, humming aloud and praying to our lucky stars that this all pans out.

[Thanks, Mike and Trever]

webOS-based HP Hurricane tablet rumored for Q3 originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 08 May 2010 19:05:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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