New to Josh’s Blog? Make sure you follow my RSS feed so you don’t miss anymore great stuff!

While you and HP can argue the rest of the night away about the most accurate moniker for its Pavilion dv2, the dv3 is definitely an ultraportable. The AMD-powered machine comes in a plethora of configurations with CPUs ranging from 2GHz (Athlon X2 QL-62) to 2.4GHz (Turion X2 Ultra ZM-86), ATI’s Radeon HD 3200 graphics, up to 8GB of DDR2 RAM, 160/250/320/400GB hard drive choices, WiFi / Bluetooth, a dual-layer DVD burner, gigabit Ethernet, an ExpressCard slot and a satisfactory array of ports including three USB 2.0 sockets, VGA, HDMI, eSATA combo (with a third USB port) and audio in / out. Users can select from a six or nine-cell battery, and there’s even an optional fingerprint reader if you’re unashamedly paranoid. Interested? It’s available today, junior, for $799 and up. Read

New to Josh’s Blog? Make sure you follow my RSS feed so you don’t miss anymore great stuff!

We figured it was destined for a CES release, and HP has confirmed that today’s the day. The hotly anticipated Firebird with Voodoo DNA has been properly introduced to the world, and within it will come an Intel Core 2 Quad CPU, twin NVIDIA GeForce 9800S graphics cards in an SLI configuration, hot-swappable 320GB hard drives (two of ‘em) and an advanced thermal management system to keep things cool, calm, collected and quiet. As we’d heard, the rig will be available starting on January 9th for as little as $1,799 directly from Voodoo, while those too frightened to hand over their credit card information online can hold tight ’til it hits select retailers (read: Best Buy, most likely) on February 1st. Have a look at Rahul Sood and team gloating ad nauseum over this thing just after the break. Read

New to Josh’s Blog? Make sure you follow my RSS feed so you don’t miss anymore great stuff!

Here we’ve got the fruits of AMD’s new Neo platform: the Pavilion dv2 series of entertainment laptops. Starting at 3.8-pounds with a keyboard 8% short of full-sized, this 12.1-inch (1,280 x 800 pixels) ultra-portable features a 1.6GHz Athlon Neo MV-40 processor, up to 4GB of memory and 500GB of disk, optional 802.11n WiFi, and WWAN (Gobi) support. Now what if we told you that this 64-bit Vista Home Premium laptop (no need for the XP fallback here kids) measures less than an inch thick and can be configured with ATI Mobility Radeon HD3410 discrete graphics and an external Blu-ray player for $899 when it ships in March? More you say? Ok, there’s also Bluetooth, HDMI-out, an integrated webcam, and 3.5 to 4-hours of battery with prices set to start at $699. Isn’t CES wonderful?

New to Josh’s Blog? Make sure you follow my RSS feed so you don’t miss anymore great stuff!

Just when we thought HP had moved on, what with the Mini 1000 getting all the love these days, HP has returned to its original Mini-Note 2100 series of netbooks with the 2140. Supposedly aimed at businesses, the new netbook loses that sluggish VIA C7-M of its predecessors and replaces it with — you guessed it — a 1.6GHz Atom processor. There’s also a 80GB or 160GB hard drive onboard and a 10-inch screen available in 1366 x 768 and 1024 x 567 resolutions, plus that lovable ExpressCard / 54 slot hasn’t gone anywhere, but the machine remains otherwise mostly unchanged. Prices start at $499 for the base model, and OS choices include XP Home / Pro, SuSe Linux, FreeDOS and Windows Vista Home Basic / Premium. The laptop is certainly a nice step up over the Mini 1000, but we sure could use a bit more power under the hood. You know, for business.

Read – HP updates Mini 2x netbooks with Atom, 10in LCD
Read – HP Mini 2140 official site

New to Josh’s Blog? Make sure you follow my RSS feed so you don’t miss anymore great stuff!

Sure, the Vivienne Tam Edition Mini has been available for about a month, but it’s taken that long for at least one red-obsessed netbook lover to give us a hands-on with HP’s fashion-forward “Digital Clutch.” The folks over at GearDiary loved the red and gold color scheme on the keyboard and the included silky sleeve. You know how we feel about HP’s offering — albeit the black counterpart — but save for that red paint job and artsy design on the hood, it’s essentially the same device. Be sure to hit the read link for even more pics of the floral-inflused Mini, and hit up HP’s site with your $700 to snag one for yourself. Oh, and if you dig that matching mouse make sure you bring some extra cash because that baby’s not included. Read

New to Josh’s Blog? Make sure you follow my RSS feed so you don’t miss anymore great stuff!

With CES just around the corner, it’s no surprise to hear whispers of a new lot of laptops from HP (or anyone else, for that matter). A smattering of from reports around the web have it that Hewlett-Packard is looking to debut a few new machines here in the near future, starting with the AMD-powered 13.3-inch Pavilion dv3z ($799.99), the 16-inch dv6t entertainment notebook ($679.99) and the 17-inch Pavilion G70 ($799.99). We’re also clued in on a Compaq Presario CQ60, which will tout a 15.4-inch panel, AMD CPU and not much else considering the $469.99 price tag. Finally, it looks as if the company could introduce a new “Mi” (for Mobile Internet, duh) Mini 1000 edition, which could ship as early as next week with a Linux-based OS and a $379.99 starting tag. Check the links below for all the details, and keep it locked right here for any updates from HP.

Read – HP Pavilion dv3z
Read – HP Pavilion dv6t
Read – HP Pavilion G70
Read – HP Mini 1000 Mi
Read – Compaq Presario CQ60
New to Josh’s Blog? Make sure you follow my RSS feed so you don’t miss anymore great stuff!

While most of the hype surrounding Voodoo right now pertains to the Firebird gaming tower, LAPTOP has discovered yet another undercover rig from the company’s arsenal worth swooning over. Before you go getting too excited, we must caution you that the Firefly is merely a prototype at the moment, but we all know concepts are made with the intent to commercialize. With the fine print behind us, it’s worth reading up on what this Voodoo DNA’d machine offered up; for starters, you’ll notice a 17-inch panel and a hefty 13-pound frame. There’s also a multitouch trackpad, keyboard with customizable backlighting, a secondary 4.3-inch 800 x 480 display sitting beneath the main screen, a 2.4GHz Core 2 Extreme CPU, 4GB of RAM, two ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3870 GPUs and a 250GB HDD. No benchmarks were allowed, but Far Cry 2 ran “silky smooth” even with details maxed. For the rest of the nitty-gritty, we’ll direct you to the read link, and before you get all irate that this isn’t available for purchase, just be thankful this post isn’t about yet another teaser from Mr. Sood. Read
New to Josh’s Blog? Make sure you follow my RSS feed so you don’t miss anymore great stuff!

It’d be a gross understatement to say that we weren’t remarkably excited about the HP Firebird 803 when we caught wind of it last week, but now you can safely say that our emotions have settled down after hearing the price. Granted, the $1,799 starting figure for the Firebird 802 isn’t totally unexpected — after all, the Blackbird 002 went for upwards of three large — but we still see the sticker as a touch high given the weaker innards and the lack of upgrade options. Those of you who vehemently disagree can certainly hand over your wallet starting on January 9th, or you can wait for the boxes to hit unnamed retail outlets in February. Read
New to Josh’s Blog? Make sure you follow my RSS feed so you don’t miss anymore great stuff!

How would you like to be able to shoot photos on your iPhone, and then immediately print them on your HP printer?

HP has a new product called iPrint Photo (click opens iTunes) available in the App Store that makes it very simple to print your iPhone pictures. The free download opens to a list of photo albums that looks very similar to the list in the Photos app on the iPhone. Tapping on a photo brings up a Print Photo page with a large Print button on it (see photo at right). If you only have one networked printer available, just tapping the Print button sends a 4×6 inch (10×15 cm) print job to that printer.

If more than one HP inkjet printer is on your local Wi-Fi network, tapping on a printer search icon brings up a Chooser-like list of printers that you can select one from. This is an excellent free app — it took no setup and I was able to print a picture immediately after downloading the software from the app store.

Between this software and HP’s announcement of their Mac-compatible media server, it looks like HP is starting to play nice with Apple!

New to Josh’s Blog? Make sure you follow my RSS feed so you don’t miss anymore great stuff!