The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission has announced a recall of 70,000 lithium-ion batteries used in Hewlett-Packard and Compaq laptops. Apparently, there have been at two reported cases where the batteries caught on fire.
WSJ’s Nick Wingfield interviewed the headhunter who brought Tim Cook to Apple. Back in 1998, it was Jobs who had to convince Cook—a cyclist with a “cool, unflappable demeanor”—to leave Compaq. Good play, dude. [WSJ]
Reviews are pouring in of the HP 2133 sub-notebook (now dubbed the Mini-Note) which is now up on Amazon. It costs more than the Eee PC or Cloudbook, but you can actually configure all the specs yourself, and the aluminium chassis tells people you spent more on your ultraportable. It’s a bit bulkier and heavier, but the screen’s higher (1280×768) res means less strained peepers, and its full keyboard is way less crampy than the competition.
According to these—allegedly “leaked”—photos, the black and aluminum 2.5-pound HP Compaq 2133 UMPC laptop looks like the Asus Eee PC’s cooler cousin.
• A security researcher published code that is capable of bricking most HP and Compaq laptops. That doesn’t sound too good. [Slashdot] • Microsoft continues to rename everything in sight, this time folding IPTV, HD DVD, and Media Center into one group called Connected TV. [News.com]
HP and Sprint are adding built-in EV-DO Rev. A support to four of HP’s Compaq notebooks, the 2710p, the 6510b, the 6910p and the 8510 series. The press release says integrated support, and we’ve checked with HP and confirmed that it really is integrated EV-DO support inside the laptops and not just a bundled EV-DO card. You’ll still have to pay a Sprint Mobile Broadband service charge though—no freebies here. [Businesswire]
