A HP focuses on media for 2015 PCs
October 2015 – In preparation for the holiday season, HP’s PC division and workstation groups showed off their new line of all-in-one, laptop / convertible devices for consumers and business class & workstation class computers. The binding thread for all the new releases is the ability to create and consume multi-media content. The design theme for the new products is “one life” where work and home blend for the activities and programs being used. Following this theme is the professional workstations (HP Z series) is to bring the reliability & performance of the Xeon processors with ECC memory providing 24/7/365 duty cycle to the content creation community. This is followed by the consumer products that have now been updated to support 4K displays for displaying this professionally created content.
The workstations have received a refresh of the Gen2 of the PCIe Z Turbo Drive SSD. The new drive is over 4x the performance of the previous Z turbo drive and support the M.2 slot on the motherboard freeing the x16 and x4 PCIe slots for 10G NIC cards and GPUs. The systems also have a new heatsink design for improved performance, as well as ambient temperature sensors on both the motherboard and the power supply. To help support the high usage duty cycle and improve the efficiency of the heat / air management, the cases now have a cleanable dust filters on the front bezel before the main fans.
On the consumer side there were a number of enhancements to the gaming desktop platforms, a new Win 10 tablet with a keyboard/cover, new chromebooks, laptops all supporting the latest generation of Intel and AMD processors. Most are supported by higher definition and higher durability displays than previous models. All of the consumer products at the rollout are now supporting a B&O Play sound system. There were two standout models at the rollout.
The Star Wars Special Edition Notebook is a fully licensed notebook with special design and content to target the Star Wars fan. The notebook itself supports 6th Generation Intel Core i5 and i7 processors, a full HD 15.6: screen, up to a 2TB HDD and up to 12GB of RAM. For gaming the graphics options of the Intel 520 HD Graphics or the NVIDIA GeForce 940M discrete GPU are available. For the full immersive experience is topped off with a built-in Dual Speaker audio system designed by B&O Play. The special edition has over 1,100 Images covering 40 years of Star Wars History, special packaging, a special edition wireless mouse and notebook sleeve, custom icons and sounds are also part of the system. This notebook can also support an optional Intel Realsense technology and Windows Hello technology solutions.
The highlight unit was the new HP Envy Curved All-In-one PC. This is a new desktop unit based on the Intel Sky Lake series of Core i5 & i7 processors. It is based on the 34” curved Envy display, and now integrates a multi-speaker B&O audio system (6 front facing speakers with 2 tweeters). The system is designed for media consumption with a 21:9 aspect ratio WQHD display (3440×1440) that is on a 2,000mm radius of curvature. The desktop supports HDMI and LAN connections as well as wireless interfaces. As media centric device, it has an integrated 3 in 1 card reader in addition to the USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 ports. The unit has an integrated Intel Realsense camera. The wide format allows for video editing or photo editing in full HD on the same screen as the working console window or social media posting window.
