It doesn’t usually take much to identify the type of person that’s suited for a netbook and the type of person that’s suited for a budget laptop, but unfortunately not all of them can self select — we’re pretty sure a lot of folks who picked the former option would be pretty pleased to trade up for this here Compaq CQ61 right about now, the followup to the well-received Walmart-destroying CQ60. Compaq is becoming HP’s “value” brand in the US, and we’d say the CQ61 is a pretty nice way to flex those wallet-friendly credentials for a wider audience than the Walmart set. It’s built on a 2GHz AMD Sempron M100 processor, ATI Radeon HD 4200 graphics, 2GB of RAM and Windows 7 Home Premium, with a WXGA 15.6-inch screen, 160GB HDD and DVD burner to boot. HP was a bit cagey on what sort of battery life to expect out of the included 6-cell (our guess is not much), and of course the laptop won’t be winning any beauty pageants, but it’s a pretty nice score for the truly cash-strapped student or anyone else who needs a full-fledged laptop on the cheap without all the netbook compromises. Still too rich for your blood? Compaq’s CQ4010 slim desktop weighs in with relatively similar specs and a $319 pricetag.
While we don’t normally find ourselves terribly jealous of laptops designed for massive rollouts at medium and large businesses, the new ProBook and 6545b (15.6-inch) and 6445b (14-inch) almost have us ready to reassess that assumption. They’re pretty boring AMD-powered workhorses on the surface, but HP has reworked the keyboard tray so that it automatically drains spills through the laptop and out through the bottom — without running past any of the vitals. It’s not foolproof, but it’s a great first stab at making us all a little safer from accidents — and hopefully finds its way into consumer lines sooner rather than later. We’re similarly jealous of the new energy management software that HP has packed on here, which has a configuration panel that provides battery-squeezing estimates based on various settings, letting a user pick a goal for battery life and set the specs to match. The corporate end of that is an IT app that lets a business actually set its own power consumption goals and constrain user laptops to match — we don’t know how well that would play out in practice, but the delicious string-pulling it entails is enticing. Prices start at $799, and there are naturally configurations as far as the eye can see. Check out a video of the spill-proof-ness in action after the break.
While the hardware on the outside looks to hardly be a departure from the norm for HP’s TouchSmart line, there’s some exciting stuff going on under the hood. Of course, multitouch is the big buzz this season with Windows 7 onboard and those fancy Surface apps are fine to play with, but more important is what HP is doing with its own TouchSmart application. It’s added panes for Hulu, Netflix, Twitter and an HP Music Store powered by Rhapsody, which work in nicely with the rest of the touch-friendly apps onboard and a bit of underlying Microsoft technology keeping things humming — like a nice big handwriting pane for quick Rhapsody searches. There’s also a voice controlled recipe app that can capture recipes from popular recipe sites and read them out loud to you, and the photo app can hook up with a phone over Bluetooth and pull off photos. The other big new touch is the addition of HDMI and composite inputs, specifically for use with gaming consoles on the colorful 20-inch (300) and 23-inch (600) screens. What we would’ve really liked to see at this point would be a bit of that stylus-friendly capacitive Wacom tech, since a computer like this is dying to be turned into an easel, but this infrared camera-based stuff will have to do for now. HP had to hit these friendly $899 and $1,049 respective pricepoints somehow. Specs are nothing too special, but TV tuners, discrete graphics and Blu-ray are all in the offing. Meanwhile, HP’s tossing all that fancy new software onto the TouchSmart tx2 convertible multitouch tablet, which starts at $800, and the dv3 is also getting a touchscreen as rumored — thought details are slim there. The tx2 and 600 launch on October 22, while the 300 lands November 1.
The HP TouchSmart 600 is sort of like a girl I “dated” in fourth grade. I can’t say I loved her, but I can say that I really, really liked her a lot. But the TouchSmart never wore braces.
Price
Starts at $1,050 on October 22nd. $1600 as tested.
Our Configuration
Intel Core 2 Duo 2.13GHz, 4GB DDR3 RAM, slot-load Blu-ray player/DVD burner, NVIDIA GeForce GT230M with 1GB dedicated RAM, 23-inch 1080P multitouch display, and a slew of inputs, including 6 USB, a card reader, coax, S-Video, HDMI, audio and composite.
What’s New
This is the third generation TouchSmart. The two-point, IR-based multitouch PC remains thematically unchanged, but the combination of hardware and software is finally gelling. The new stuff includes:
• Windows 7 • HDMI-in • Updated TouchSmart UI • Custom Hulu, Netflix, Twitter and Absurdly Cool Recipe Book Apps • HD Tuning (not CableCard) • Fully customizable LED under-lighting • Tilting webcam
The Hardware
You’ll recognize the body design as almost unchanged from the last generation, but that’s not necessarily a strike against the TouchSmart. While the body is mostly plastic, the high gloss black is unoffensive, and good for making screen colors pop like an HDTV. A majority of the TV-style input set is cleverly hidden behind a panel, should you prefer the seamless look.
As for that screen, it’s as good as any low to mid-tier LCD HDTV, but its multitouch is not quite perfect. If you pace your movements, it’s about 95% accurate at tracking your fingers. If you don’t, that number drops to 85%. And should the system be strained with a lot of multimedia tasking, the touch only gets worse. But I make this all sound a lot worse than it is. No, the screen isn’t as accurate/wonderful as capacitive tech, but it’s a lot better than resistive.
The wireless low profile keyboard and mouse are both understated and completely functional. And a decent remote gives the whole package that home theater feel for when you need to do a little IR blasting.
Audio dribbles through a soundbar sits under the screen. The quality is passable for television, but there’s potential here for improvement—the highs are tinny and there’s not real bass. Music lovers will want standalone speakers (which is too bad, because everything else is great.)
But again, I almost hate saying bad things about the build because what the TouchSmart does right is sooo cool: the software.
The Littlest Media Mogul
If you just want to multitouch your way through Windows 7, the TouchSmart allows that. But to really take advantage of the system, you’ll want to use the TouchSmart interface and the wonderful, custom apps. Sure, you can mess with photos, take hand-drawn notes and watch video clips, but here’s the more notable stuff. (Check out the video above to see some of these apps in motion.)
Netflix I couldn’t enjoy the Netflix interface more. Flick through your library, click a movie and just wait for the server to stream it. It’s probably the slickest Netflix skin I’ve seen to date.
Ambient Lighting It’s technically a series of LEDs under the monitor, but Ambient Lighting makes its way into the apps section since you can choose from the entire spectrum of colors through a touch interface. The glowing effect, while a tad cheesy, is incredible customizable.
Twitter Tweetie is my client of choice on Mac. Most all of the advanced functionality is duplicated here. And if you really want to, you can type on the onscreen keyboard. It works, but I’ll take the real thing, thanks.
Live TV/DVR It’s easy to get mixed up in the submenus and the software is obviously resource intensive, but otherwise, you’re working with a fully-functional HD DVR (sitting on top the core of WMC, as I understand it). Flicking through programming guides is surprisingly natural.
Hulu Stuck in an update loop, I couldn’t test Hulu. Given the quality of HP’s other bundled apps, especially Netflix, I’m willing to give it the benefit of the doubt.
Music The music app is super smart because it incorporates MP3s, Pandora and Rhapsody into, well, not exactly one interface but at least one basic app. Browsing albums is smooth in a Cover-Flow-like spread. Pandora is a bit disappointing in that most of the UI is spent on the Pandora logo. But it works.
Recipe Box Despite the failings during my tech demo above, this little app is embarrassingly fun. Through a built-in browser, you can rip any recipe containing “directions” and “ingredients” from almost any webpage. With one button, the recipe appears in your own book, formatted like everything else in your collection. Now, should you have your hands full, the system supports voice commands to read you the recipe. It didn’t work in my demo video, but even when it did, the system fulfilled all the stereotypes of poor voice commands and text-to-speech. Still, Recipe Box is a clever way to bring an all-in-one into the kitchen.
The one downfall here is that HP has designed TouchSmart to run all of the bundled apps at once. You’re truly multitasking, and that means stacking HDTV, Hulu, Netflix, photo editing, a browser, Twitter, and even more video playback. The system generally handles itself admirably, but the TV tuning definitely tips the scales on occasion (just watch the video for interface stutters). If I were to use the system as my DVR on a regular basis, I’d probably cut down the fat on HP’s apps and buy myself some resources.
Another point to mention is that, while you can customize HP’s dock with any apps you like, those not designed by HP (say, Microsoft Word) will merely link you to the full app in Windows. So you can’t work on a term paper in the fancy media interface, but then again, you probably don’t want to.
Oh, and for some reason, the back button within apps often brings you back to the same information in a different view than you started with. That’s a perfect candidate for a patch if I’ve ever seen one.
Like, Not Love
I want to love the TouchSmart 600, but I just really, really like it a lot. The functionality is all there; no one can question the full media suite of apps, like Netflix, Hulu, and Twitter, let alone the full Windows 7 OS sitting right behind HP’s optional software. It’s the light performance hiccups coupled with a less than 100% touch interface that stop me from screaming at the top of my lungs, “YOU SHOULD BUY THIS RIGHT NOW OR GIVE UP ON LIFE COMPLETELY.”
But maybe you should buy the TouchSmart 600 right now. Other than Sony’s upcoming Vaio L, there’s no all-in-one quite like this on the market. Coupled with a netbook, you’d have portability and an entire media center at your disposal. The combo, for something like a dorm room or small apartment, would be unquestionably wonderful.
With the overdue passing of Windows XP into the next world comes the cheery note that Microsoft’s ceiling on netbook specs will also be no more — and the Mini 311 is among the first to get upgraded in time for the new king of Windowstan. The already competent performer will be getting the full (non-LE) ION treatment, max memory of 3GB, an 80GB SSD option or up to 320GB of the old school storage stuff, and a choice of Windows 7 flavors up to the Professional level. This info comes from the machine’s maintenance guide, so we can’t be certain of when the upgrades will be ready for consumption, but HP’s track record would suggest the answer to that is soon.
It’s taken longer than we thought for a honest-to-goodness NVIDIA ION-powered within arm’s reach, but sure enough the HP Mini 311 accomplishes just that. Laptop’s managed one of the first reviews, and much like what the site intimated with earlier benchmarks, you’re looking at a surprisingly capable and sleek $400 netbook with good battery life. In fact, the only major complaint seems to be a trackpad that’s a bit too rough for the reviewer’s tastes — probably a sacrifice worth making if you’re definitely in the market for a new ultraportable right now. Hit up the read link for the full review.
We’ve already seen the NVIDIA ION-based HP Mini 311 perform impressively during demos, but now that the netbook is hitting reviewers it’s time for some real benchmarks — and according to the crew at Laptop, they’re more than solid. The 311 scored a 1,917 on the PCMark 05 test, almost 500 points above the average netbook, and put up a scorching 1,386 in the 3DMark06 test — 1,200 points over the netbook average, and basically the same score as a MacBook Air. That’s not too surprising, seeing as ION is just a netbook-oriented variant of the GeForce 9400M, but it’s still rather impressive — and combined with 1080p video playback, the potential for some light gaming, and (eventually) ION-accelerated Flash, we’d say the Mini 311 is looking like a real contender.
In more ways than one, the HP Envy 13 seems like a “new generation” of PC laptop for HP or even the industry. Intentional or not it bears more in resemblance with Apple’s lineup than its own predecessors, it’s part of the very first wave of computers with Windows 7 pre-installed, it places a large emphasis on battery life but still manages great performance, and it’s a “luxury” PC that actually provides some pretty good excuses for its inflated pricetag. We’ve spent a nice solid week with the laptop, so find out if the Envy 13 can live up to its promise after the break.
HP puffed its chest when announcing the Photosmart Premium web-connected touch-enabled printer, and I understand why. You can print coloring books, movie tickets and news reports without even owning a computer. It works, and works well.
The Gadget
What the hell is it? It’s a $400 Wi-Fi printer all-in-one (yes, this includes fax). It has a touchscreen that includes a string of different branded widgets. The widgets do many things you can do on your cellphone or a computer, but they all center around printing. So you don’t just order movie tickets, you print them out, along with weather reports, blank to-do lists, Google calendars, coloring book pages from Nickelodeon and Disney, news synopses from USA Today and coupons for everything from Hasbro toys to Yoplait yogurt.
The Price
$400. Count ’em. That’s more than twice what most similarly classed all-in-ones cost.
The Widgets—and What’s Missing
In case you’re not picking up on this, regular Giz readers may not be the target audience. It’s as much an arts-and-crafts hub as it is a don’t-want-to-mess-with-a-computer resource, full of easy-access widgets that scream out “overworked mother of five,” with barely anything for “twentysomething nerd.” (Honestly, I can picture Kristin Wiig using this and making one of those weird smiles of surprised satisfaction.) Still, I was impressed by the diversity and wealth of resources this thing has—at launch.
Here’s what it still needs though, and has the SDK to provide, so listen up, developers:
• Driving directions – Google Maps is included, but for now you can just print the actual maps. A note says that driving directions are coming soon, and that just isn’t soon enough. Hurry!
• Boarding passes – Airlines widgets would be glorious: With all the emphasis on printing out boarding passes at home, how about a way to log into Delta or United and pull up your latest boarding passes?
• Email – I swear HP had some device that printed emails out for old people who didn’t like computers but liked hearing from their grandkids. Why isn’t that app on here?
• Epicurious – There’s already a recipe widget, and you can already sift through nearly 600 dishes, but that’s not satisfactory. Let’s have proven content from the culinary maestros.
• Sesame Street – As a dad, I am impressed with all the coloring and crafts that you can do with this thing, but if there’s no Elmo, someone’s gonna cry.
The Performance
I realize I’ve used up most of your attention talking about the services, and that’s because the printer itself works fine. I have criticized HP’s color palette in the past, but ever since my Epson blowout, I have given up on trying to find “the best printer” in all aspects. Epson may still have the absolute best color representation, but here I found a printer that jumped onto my Wi-Fi network faster than anything I’ve seen from Epson or Canon, and soon started spitting out out perfectly usable snapshots—not just from my computer but from my iPhone, using HP’s simple but effective iPrint Photo app. It’s a quick printer, if you don’t count the painfully long “one-time” ink initialization period or inkjet head calibration.
An odd, random note: In the gallery you may notice that it comes inside of an eco-friendly reusable bag. I was like, oh, I see, HP gets it, but then I noticed that inside that bag was another, plastic, eco-not-so-friendly bag. One or the other, HP. Pretty sure wrapping old-fashioned plastic inside newfangled recycled bags is like worse, not better.
The Verdict
Do I think you should spend $400 on this printer? Not for your bachelor pad, dorm room or group home, that’s for sure. But do I think you and the rest of the fam chip in to get this thing for mom for Christmas? To quote one of the more famous moms of our time, “You betcha.”
Possibly the easiest Wi-Fi setup experience I’ve had to date
Fast, decent print quality using HP premium print paper
Amazing diversity of widgets for printing coupons, coloring books, movie tickets and more
Designed for a full house, with kids in need of boredom relief, and parents in need of quick data and services—it’s not for everyone
The $400 price is twice what other all-in-one printers in this class cost, so basically the widgets cost you $200
Launch was great, but there’s a lot of fluff in the content lineup, and it’s missing key applications that would make it a must-have appliance
We’ve already seen plenty of leaked info about HP’s upcoming Core i7-based dv8, but nothing beats an official specs page on a company’s own server for proof, does it? Looks like this 18.4-inch monster will pack a 1.6GHz Core i7 processor (we’re guessing that’s the baseline speed, as Intel’s Turbo tech will boost the max speed of a single core far higher), 4GB of RAM, NVIDIA GeForce GT230 graphics, and a LightScribe Blu-ray burner. Oh, and it’ll weigh nearly nine pounds — but that’s a small price to pay, right?
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
Versatile media platform
Imperfect, but decent multitouch
Speakers sound pretty lousy
