HP’s Envy line of serious fun notebooks (as opposed to serious business, bleh!) have always been a bit on the tacky side. I hate to say it, but they looked like expensive toys. Now they’re grown up, in and out. (Updated with Australian pricing). More »
Joining the Dell Adamo in the annals of lightweight laptop history—and unsuccessful MacBook Air competitors—is the HP Envy 13, whose smooth lines and all-metal, svelte shape weren’t enough to keep HP from canning it for good this week. More »
The HP Envy 15 isn’t my favourite laptop around, but if you buy one configured with both a Core i7 and ATI Radeon HD 5830, it’ll arrive loaded with USB 3.0. Oooooh! [CNET via Engadget]
According to a legit-looking leak, HP is releasing 14-inch and 17-inch versions of their Envy laptops. And from what we can tell, even the 17-inch Envy will exclude an integrated optical drive. And if that’s the case, I have no issue, since it’d be better to use that space to squeeze in a larger battery anyway. The 15′s stock battery life was horrid. [HP Fansite via Engadget]
So not only have HP decided to launch their Home Server to Australia, but they’ve also decided to drop about a million new laptops onto Aussie store shelves. We’ve seen most of them from the US, but here’s a rundown of them anyway, including local pricing: More »
VoodooPC’s Envy 133, the world’s thinnest laptop, just started shipping, and we scored one of the first production units straight outta Calgary. It’s a lithe black laptop that keeps cool while running Vista, a super light machine that’s strong as hell thanks to a carbon-fibre frame. It’s the size of a MacBook Air with way more tech crammed inside, including its own second Linux-based operating system. And though it costs a lot more than most laptops that perform similar chores, it does it with a grace that I haven’t seen since Vista’s launch. It’s not a gamer’s system, but the Voodoo team deserves credit for using what they’ve learned to build a laptop that stands out when everything else on the PC market just blends in. Does it have any flaws? Yep, plenty. Here’s the full review:
Splashtop, the instant-on Linux mini-OS found embedded in many Asus motherboards as well as the Voodoo Envy 133, has been hacked to allow installation of additional apps, access to the computer’s main file system, and more. Initial impressions of the Envy have noted that Splashtop can go from off to surfing in 15 seconds with SplashTop (which Voodoo calls “IOS”), but out of the box it’s somewhat locked down and only works with a predefined list of common applications. Being a Linux system, it’s not that hard to believe that someone has successfully made SplashTop jump through some hoops, but it beats waiting for an official SDK, which has been delayed. Give it a shot on your SplashTop-capable machine if you’re not afraid of a whole bunch of terminal messiness. [Phoronix]
