HP Envy 13

* Choice of Core2 Duo processors
* ATI Radeon HD 4330 discrete graphics with dynamic switching
* 13.1-inch screen
* Either a 250GB HDD or 160GB SSD
* Action keys
* Claimed battery of up to 18 hours
* Supermulti DVD drive
* 1.67kg
* Aluminium and Magnesium chassis
* Pricing starts at $3,199 for 250GB HDD and 2GB RAM
* Launches October 22

HP Envy 15

* Intel Core i7 Processor
* Up to 16GB DDR3 RAM
* 15.6-Inch LED backlit screen
* ATI Radeon 4830 discrete graphics card
* Night vision VGA webcam
* Claimed battery life of 18 hours
* Supermulti DVD drive
* 2.35kg
* Metal etching on the lid and palm rest
* Pricing starts at $2,799 for 500GB HDD and 4GB RAM
* Launches October 22

HP Mini 311

* Less than an inch thick
* 1.36kg
* Imprint finish (black swirl or white swirl)
* 11.6-inch LED backlit widescreen
* Atom processor
* NVIDIA ION graphics
* Altec Lansing speakers
* 92% full sized keyboard
* 250GB HDD
* 6-cell Li-ion battery (claimed 7 hours battery life)
* Starts at $899
* Launches October 22

HP dm1

* 11.6-inch LED screen
* Starts at 1.46kg
* 92% full sized keyboard
* Intel Pentium processor SU4100
* Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 4500MHD with up to 1295MB shared video memory
* 250GB HDD
* 802.11n WLAN
* Windows 7 Home Premium
* $999
* Launches October 22

HP dm3

* 13.3-inch LED screen
* Aluminium chassis
* Starts at 1.91kg
* Intel Centrino2 processor
* Optional NVIDIA graphics card
* Up to 500GB HDD
* VGA webcam
* Optional external BD disc drive
* Claimed 10 hours battery life
* From $1,299 with 320GB HDD
* Launches 22 October (except 160GB SSD version, coming November)

HP Mini by Studio Tord Boontje

* Starts at 1.06kg
* 10.1-inch VGA or HD LED screen
* Imprint 3D design
* 92% full size keyboard
* Broadcom Crystal HD enhanced video accelerator
* 6-cell Li-ion battery for claimed 8 hours battery
* Windows 7 Starter Edition
* Starts at $799
* Launches October 22

HP ProBook 5310m

* 23.5mm thick
* 1.72kg
* 13.3-inch LED backlit screen
* Intel Core 2 Duo SP9300 processor
* Claimed 8 hour battery life
* Optional Gobi-powered mobile broadband
* Wi-Fi
* Bluetooth 2.1
* 2-megapixel webcam
* 3D Drive Guard
* Starts at $1,499
* Available now

Essentially it’s been consumed and digested by the rest of HP:

Many people assumed that Voodoo had designed these notebooks, when in reality we did not. However, it’s clear that our influence has reached almost all corners of the company. Go back years and look at how HP’s products have changed; it’s pretty incredible.

So, what happened to Voodoo? Well, we’ve been looking way ahead into the future. Voodoo has been transitioning from “desktop & notebook” manufacturing to something beyond. Does this mean you’ll never see a Voodoo or VoodooDNA desktop or notebook again? Hardly, I’m sure you will. ..but while we hash this out you will continue to see products with our fingerprints released from various areas of HP. [Emphasis ours]

That’s a guess, not a confirmation, stated in the tone of a man who’s very clearly moved on. Voodoo might continue to live on through HP or whatever, but colour us surprised if you see another actual Voodoo PC. [Rahul Sood via Engadget]

As you can see, HP put some work in getting the internal layout of the Firebird to be as simple and clean as possible. A couple of interesting details not revealed in the leak are that the Firebird actually has 3 GPUs—two discrete Nvidia cards in SLI configuration for performance needs only, and one integrated GPU for Windows to run on. The external power supply is a big reason why the machine is 80% less power hungry than most gaming PCs, while the hot-swappable drive bays and sub-30db noise level are also nice touches.

But even more impressive is the price. Considering you’re getting a 2.83 GHz Core 2 Quad, 640 GB of storage, Blu-ray, 4 GB RAM dual SLI graphics cards and liquid cooling, it’s not bad that the Firebird 803 will only run around $US2100 when it becomes available. There will also be a Firebird 802 available which will lack the Blu-ray and only have 500 GB of storage for $US1800.

LaptopMag has a full hands-on with a prototype unit, which should be on display at CES. They’re generally impressed, as for all the bold changes in form factor, this hunkering monstrosity still seems to retain its usability.

The secondary screen got mixed reviews. It’s sharp, at 800×480, but a bit too small for displaying such finely resolved text. The Voodoo’s multitouch trackpad has evolved, and it’s apparently lovely and the placement is a welcome change for occasional mouseless gaming.

The Firefly concept is not currently slated for production, but seeing as Voodoo and HP don’t currently have a desktop replacement notebook of this calibre, we’ll probably see something similar ship before too long. [LaptopMag via Electronista]

The shrink ray they blasted the Blackbird 02 with works much of its magic by dumping the power supply outside of the system and killing expandability, kind of like a game console—very PC gamer un-friendly. But the specs, as Engadget has ‘em, are fairly respectable, the somewhat piddly GeForce 9800S cards aside. (Why no GeForce 9800 GTs?)

* NVIDIA nForce 760i SLI chipset
* Core 2 Quad Q9550 2.83GHz processor
* 4GB of RAM
* Dual NVIDIA GeForce 9800S cards
* Two 320GB SATA drives
* Blu-ray
* 5-in-1 card reader
* 6 USB, 1 FireWire, 2 eSATA, 1 S/PDIF and 1 DVI dual-link
* Bluetooth
* 802.11n WiFi

Obviously, we’ll reserve full judgments until we get our hands on it (likely at CES), but given all the compromises needed to get that firefly form factor, we’re not holding our Crysis-coated breath. [Engadget]

You know the Envy is well designed when you experience the initial unboxing. Generally, we’re bored by the very notion of “unboxing” these days, but word is that Voodoo’s chief designer is a packaging fanatic, you can totally tell by the elegantly nested, extra-heavy packaging that so carefully holds such a light, thin little notebook.

Once you have it out of the box and ready for action, you really notice how closely the Envy resembles a miniature black MacBook Pro, with a few distinct design choices to separate itself from an Apple: It’s got a continuous glass face with embedded screen, so the whole front except for the webcam is seamless. And it’s made of carbon fibre, which means it can be thinner (at the widest point) than a MacBook Air, but have a removable battery like a MacBook Pro. The carbon fibre, along with a rather noisy fan, lets heat dissipate easily, so there’s no sudden burning sensation on your legs when you’re using it on your lap. The carbon fibre is slick but smudgy. It didn’t take long to make it look used, though a quick wipe will make it good as new—for like five minutes.

Sizemodo: Voodoo Envy 133 vs MacBook Air

To put it as bluntly as Voodoo boss Rahul Sood puts it, “This laptop is not a gaming product.” It’s not going to play Crysis at all, though it might achieve other, lesser games with the settings dialed down. You can tell it’s not a gaming laptop because of the fact that Vista gives it a 3.1 rating out of 5 due to its integrated graphics and shared video memory; that PCMark gave it 2100 (the world’s hottest machines top 15000); 3D Mark won’t even test it because its adequate screen resolution is nevertheless too low to test; and it’s not covered with flared plastic and blinky LEDs that go from green to red as you take hits during a game.

As you might know, the basic design was Intel’s. The original Metro concept had some shortcomings though. It was made of plastic and had some questionable heat management. “There’s no way you could sell the Metro because it would fall apart,” says Sood.

Besides heat management, the key was to make the Metro design capable of carrying a removable battery that is nonetheless super thin. And it’s a good thing, because the battery life on the Envy isn’t great. In the most extreme situation, where it was powering the outboard DVD player and playing a movie, I could only get it to run for an hour before completely crapping out. That means no watching movies on airplanes, I’m afraid. In other less strenuous tests, the battery dwindled fast. Let me make this clear: The battery life on this baby sucks.The DVD player connects in an ingenious way. It uses an eSATA port that doubles as a USB port. Since eSATA doesn’t yet have a bus-powered spec yet, the Voodoo guys figured out a way to draw power from the USB part of the jack, while doing data i/o through the faster eSATA jack. Sood says that they actually patented this technique and that’s good for Voodoo, since it’s certainly bound to catch on.

The little laptop even has an ExpressCard slot, which makes up for its lack of SD card reader—SanDisk makes a very nice multi-card reader for ExpressCard. It also means it won’t take up a USB port to run a 3G modem, if you can get an ExpressCard version instead.

As you may recall from the launch, it has a few other gimmicks, like a slightly oversized power brick that, for its bulk, contains a mini Wi-Fi router, so you can plug Ethernet directly in. It also ships with a smart HDMI-to-VGA dongle for people who want to use it in presentations but don’t want to convince corporate IT dudes that HDMI is in fact a viable video standard.

It also has a pseudo-multi-touch “pinch” feature like on a MacBook Air (or an iPhone), but instead of a smooth flow, I noticed it was kinda jerky. It could still come in handy, but to be honest, I am not sure how handy the Air’s multi-touch is at this point. I consider all of this proof of concept for now.

Speaking of the trackpad, it’s supposed to lock down when you have two hands on the keyboard. I don’t know if I have funny shaped hands, but from time to time, I still find the trackpad acting up while I type, executing weird app and system requests, but given the fact that I have typed an awful lot with my hands touching much of the trackpad as I went along, I can easily say the auto-safety works 99% of the time.

The gimmick I am most interested in is the lightweight Linux OS called Voodoo IOS. At startup, you can select to enter Windows or choose Skype, media player, web browser or photo viewer to take you into the VIOS environment. I was eager to try this out and can say that it works as billed, though I’m still divided on its ultimate practicality.

It is very handy to hop into VIOS instead of launching Windows when you want to do something minor, like launch a web browser or Skype, but I am vexed by the fact that, to enter VIOS, you have to shut down Vista and reboot—rather than choose it as a reboot option from Vista. Once in VIOS, the apps have certain limitations: The Linux version of Skype can’t support the built-in webcam, copying photos from a memory card to the photo browser seemed impossible (if I’m wrong I’ll settle for unintuitive), and the music program worked but just made me miss iTunes. The browser was fine—a Linux version of some Mozilla variant, if I’m not mistaken. Over all, it seemed like a pretty nice Linux environment, clean and fun, with quirky interface features like a flaming Voodoo face signifying a short wait. Who knows, it may even be a fertile ground for savvier software tweakers to play around in.

Voodoo IOS app walkthrough

Overall, I can safely say that this was the most satisfying experience I’ve had with a Vista notebook, and I’ve tried quite a few. Even while I was prepping this, my Mac started acting funny and I realised that if I had to switch to it full time, it would be far from disastrous. The only reason besides the questionable battery life that I am not gushing is that this laptop costs a hell of a lot of money. The fairly basic config with an 80GB 4200rpm hard drive that I tested starts at $US2,450, and the 64GB SSD versions don’t even kick in till $US2,900. If these babies could come in even $US500 lower, I could see a value proposition, but as it is, it’s too high a price, especially when something this nice is still so far from perfection. [Voodoo Envy 133]

“We’re basically plugging into the larger businesses,” he says. “Notebooks will be manufactured and handled in Asia where there’s much broader distribution. I can’t just snap my fingers and have [the Envy and Omen] in Russia, Dubai and other places where people are begging for them. To scale the business and stay true to the brand, we have to structure it accordingly.” Regarding layoffs, he did acknowledge: “There are definitely going to be people impacted. With any change, we have to take that impact in stride and keep pressing forward.”

Rahul also addressed the concerns that some gamers had that Voodoo had abandoned its core audience. He surprised us with an interesting statistic: 25% of the Voodoo customer base are gamers, he says. The other 75% are “fortunate people who love the style and the fact that our products are so different.” On the matter of the sleek new Envy not being a gaming PC at all, he mentions that it’s not the first time, and that the hot-selling 12-inch Envy had integrated graphics too.

He stresses that the crazy Omen desktop and the Blackbird are both solid gaming platform. He also says that he’s interested in the new directions that DIY enthusiast gamers will soon be taking. “The DIY enthusiast market will change,” he says. “They’re going to focus on more efficient computing rather than speeds and feeds, to bring more value to the end than just framerates. The DIY market will evolve—that’s an opportunity for us to look into.”

We have no idea what that might mean. Could it be a line of Voodoo-branded accessories? Or simply designing systems themselves with more DIY tweakbility in mind, like the Blackbird? Your guess is as good, or actually probably better, than mine, so go ahead and guess.

HP admit that they’ve learned a lot from their acquisition of the Voodoo brand in the US, and the HDX is their attempt to bring those lessons to the market. That doesn’t mean we’ll never see Voodoo in Australia, but it’s unlikely in the near future.

Available in a 16-inch and an 18.4-inch model, the HDX range features the new Fluid imprint across the outside front cover and palm rest. Inside the HDX16, you get Vista Home Premium SP1, a 1366 x 768 BrightView Infinity Display (upgradeable to 1080p version), up to 8GB RAM, Blu-ray disc drive, Express Card Slot, integrated HD tuner, Altec Lansing speakers, webcam with microphone, 6-cell Li-ion battery and a fingerprint reader. It weighs in at 3.205kg with battery, and measures 37.85 x 33.5 x 4.32 cm.
Meanwhile, the HDX18 comes standard with the 1080p screen, 8-cell battery, with space for an extra hard drive. Both models feature the latest intel Centrino 2 Processors and an NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT with 512MB of dedicated memory.

Pricing hasn’t been announced for Australia, but they quoted a US price of $US1399 for the HDX16 and $US1699 for the HDX18. They should be shipping at the end of this month.

[HP on Giz]