HP today announced it was selected by DreamWorks Animation to deliver the technology behind “The Croods,” pushing the boundaries of modern imagery for this prehistoric animated adventure that is anything but primitive. Building on a relationship that began in 2001, DreamWorks Animation relied on HP for nearly every facet of technology animation in the production of “The Croods.”

DreamWorks Animation leveraged technical resources throughout HP to create the most advanced graphics to date for the family comedy, which made its debut in South African theatres last Friday. HP Converged Infrastructure, comprising servers, storage, networking, services, management software and workstations, as well as HP printers and digital rendering, provided the seamless, high-performance foundation needed to meet the studio’s artistic demands.

“Cutting-edge digital manufacturing requires a huge amount of compute power and orchestrated collaboration across our studios,” said Derek Chan, head, Global Technology Operations, DreamWorks Animation. “HP Converged Infrastructure ensures that our filmmakers have the technical resources they require to bring their creative vision to life and deliver amazing films to our audiences.”

Servers meet massive compute demands (more…)

HP at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, announced the HP Slate7, an affordable Android Jelly Bean consumer tablet that provides customers with easy access to Google Mobile services.

The Slate7 will have a 7 inch screen and weigh 368 grams (13 ounces) – putting it up against the current king of Android 7 inch tablets – the Nexus 7. The HP Slate7 features a stainless-steel frame and soft black paint in gray or red on the back. It also is the industry’s first tablet to offer embedded Beats Audio, for the best-sounding, richest audio experience available on a tablet.

The HP Slate7 delivers the Google experience with services like Google Now, Google Search, Gmail, YouTube, Google Drive and Google+ Hangouts for multiperson video chat as well as access to apps and digital content through Google Play. (more…)

Say what you will, but HP has had a dismal record in the Post-PC age. From losing their spot as the top PC manufacturer in the world (then regaining it again according to the latest results), to making a total mess of Palm division, HP is in urgent need of reinvention. According to the latest Canalys results, HP would be number two behind Apple if tablets are counted as PCs, and the tablet market is just growing more every day.

A few years back HP bought Palm for $1.2 billion, and subsequently made some pretty great phones with the WebOS operating system – which had massive potential. But even with that potential, it never translated into a sales success. With the arrival of the previous CEO, Apotheker, the whole WebOS division was killed in August 2011, only 16 months after buying out Palm. Clearly HP has lost out on the Post-PC race since then, and now HP is going to adopt Android for its upcoming devices.

(more…)

HP today extends its business tablet portfolio to SA with the announcement of its next-generation convertible tablet, the HP EliteBook Revolve —a touch-enabled notebook that pivots to let users share their work and folds to go mobile as a tablet.

With the ability to transform to a convertible design, the HP EliteBook Revolve is designed for business customers who require both an ultrathin notebook and a touch-enabled tablet. Driven by a third-generation Intel Core processor and optimised for Windows 8, the HP EliteBook Revolve offers the performance and visuals of a full-power notebook alongside the flexibility to quickly switch to a tablet with a touch-enabled display.

HP also released a new HP Multi-Tablet Charging Module which quickly and easily charges and stores up to 10 tablet PCs with just one power outlet. Suitable for a range of different work environments, the module secures all docked tablets with a locking mechanism and a keyed lock on the fold-back doors.

(more…)

The PC world has officially gotten Ultrabook fever – machines with ultra low voltage processors, solid state storage and super sleek bodies, all made in a similiar style to Apple’s Macbook Air. The first ones were not especially great, but recent offerings are indeed looking better and better. But HP‘s latest Ultrabook now ships with Intel’s latest Ivy Bridge line of processors, and a more feature rich set of ports than Apple’s offering.

Measuring in at 14.5 mm, the machine is indeed very thin – but HP also gave it a USB 3.0 port, an Ethernet port, HDMI port and a Kensington lock – all things the Macbook Air lacks. The new more efficient processor also enables the Envy Spectre XT to reach 8 hours of battery life, which still needs to be proved in reviews.

The display is a 13.3 inch size, with a 1366 x 768 resolution. The US price is $999, so HP is firmly going after Apple’s new favourite notebook with this one. Like all ultrabooks the memory cannot be upgraded, so professionals who need massive amounts of RAM will still stay away.

(more…)

HP has had some tough times in the past year – after their then-CEO Leo Apotheker announced that HP would be stepping out of the PC game, their sales figures took a small dive, but luckily he got ousted before such rash moves. HP is now once again back in the number one spot when it comes to overall PC sales worldwide.

Canalis’s research now starts to include tablet devices under PC sales, and Apple’s iPad sales has contributed significantly to Apple’s sales numbers, but even so, HP’s sales was slightly higher overall. So Apple was in second place, Lenovo in third (with big increases in sales) and Acer and Dell taking the fourth and fifth spots.

What is clear however, is that tablet devices has started to eat away at the previously very popular netbook market:

“The total client PC market grew by 21% to 107 million units. Importantly, while the pad category exhibited the highest growth – more than 200% year on year – notebook and desktop PC shipments were up too, rising 11% and 8% respectively. Netbook shipments, however, were down 34% on the year-ago quarter – the sixth such fall in succession.”

(more…)

Image from Engadget

I have to be honest – I have become quite numb in reading about all the new tablets coming out, especially the Android ones. They all seem similiar, yet only one or two stand out, like the Motorola Xoom. I am much more interested to see what HP is working on. See, HP bought out Palm (one of the great names in PDAs) a while back, primarily for their beautiful operating system called WebOS. In South Africa we are not used to WebOS, seeing as the Palm Pre cellphone never officially arrived here.

You might remember a while HP announced the “slate” with Windows 7, but apparently it was not the greatest device to use. Windows 7 is not a tablet friendly operating system – for stylus use, sure. But we are all moving to finger input, and Microsoft just does not seem to get it yet, despite their “touch packs”. In fact, the “slate” was such a disaster that HP focussed the device only to its enterprise customers, and as you might have noticed, it is not available in SA.

But lets see what we can expect from the HP WebOS tablet (codenamed “Topaz”):

• 9.7 inch screen (same as iPad), XGA (1024 x 768) resolution
• 1.2 GHz Qualcomm processor
• Adreno 220 GPU
• 512MB RAM
• Dual Camera
• 16, 32 or 64 GB storage
• And of course – WebOS

And here is the leaked image if you want some more details (from Pre Central):

Cannot wait to get my hands on this. Lets hope it does better than the Palm Pre phones…