HP confirm the TouchPad webOS-based tablet will launch in the UK in July, and give it a very competitive price too. It’s going to be quite a battle between the TouchPad, the iPad 2 and the PlayBook over the next months!

Don’t tell HP that netbooks are dead, that tablets are the future.

Like so many old-guard PC companies, HP continues to hang on to the little ‘puter that could. And you know what, it’s doing a fine job of proving there’s life left in this market.

HP’s Pavilion dm1z is hardly a netbook that looks like it is swinging for the fences. It is modest and unassuming, a cleaned-up version of so many netbooks from years gone by. It aims to be your miniature workhorse companion and tries to look good while it’s along for the ride.

Perfectly at home in either a boardroom or an indie coffeehouse, the clean, rounded design of the Pavilion dm1z is both attractive and simple. Even the interlocking circle pattern embossed on the lid doesn’t call much attention to itself, a subtle nod to style in an otherwise demure system.

Inside, things are different. HP takes the increasingly popular route of using the AMD E-350 CPU, the Intel Atom competitor, to backbone the device. This gives the dm1z upgraded graphics — a Radeon HD 6310M — and it’s backed by 3GB of RAM, a 320GB hard drive, and an 11.6-inch display with 1366 x 768-pixel resolution. There’s no optical drive on the 3.4-pound netbook, but HP includes an external DVD burner. For an extra $130 you can upgrade to an external Blu-ray drive.

Performance is solid compared to other netbooks: AMD’s E-350 runs rings around the Atom, boosting performance about 50 percent over Atom-books (although many Atom netbooks fail to complete most benchmark tests altogether), and the improved graphics, while they won’t make the Pavilion your choice for a Portal 2 marathon, can at least get you along the Oregon Trail with aplomb.

Complaints? I basically have none. The keyboard and touchpad aren’t the best, and I’d prefer a fourth USB port, but I — and anyone — should be able to get by with the stock dm1z just fine as is, and without spending too much, either.

WIRED Solid performance, battery life (4.5 hours), weight, and price: Just about the perfect netbook in every respect. Love the little touches, like LEDs showing mute and Wi-Fi on/off status right on their respective keys.

TIRED Shallow keyboard. Touchpad buttons miss lots of clicks. Not a tablet.

Photo courtesy of HP

Specs can sometimes speak for themselves, and any computer would be lucky to have all of this stuff under the hood: a 2.93-GHz Core i7 CPU, 8 GB of RAM, a terabyte hard drive, a Radeon 5570 graphics card, a TV tuner, a slot-loading Blu-ray player and DVD burner (with LightScribe), and both 802.11n and Bluetooth built-in.

But the computer in question is not a high-test gaming machine, it’s a touchscreen all-in-one desktop, the latest in HP’s TouchSmart line.

The TouchSmart 610 represents perhaps the top of the line of all-in-ones on the market today. Its feature list is untouchable and its benchmark scores run rings around everything else in the category, but that’s just the beginning.

The 23-inch display (1920 x 1080 pixels) is unbelievably spacious, and it features a first-of-its-kind swiveling system that lets it recline from dead-upright to a 60 degree angle. Why would you want your monitor screen to point nearly at the ceiling? Why, so you can use it standing up. This clever design feature makes the machine much better for use while standing than other machines, as the usual hunch-and-squint required to read them is avoided. I’d suggest the 610 is perfect for displaying recipes in the kitchen, but I don’t know what kitchen would be big enough for it.

My only real complaint from a hardware standpoint is that the swivel hinge is surprisingly difficult to manipulate. The sheer size and weight of the machine really makes it a three-handed job, and I expect users of less physical stature won’t be comfortable making regular changes to its positioning. Even I was worried about knocking the whole thing over when trying to simply kick the viewing angle back a bit.

My only other complaint about the 610 is aimed at its price tag. While $899 gets you in the door, you’ll have to shell out almost twice that for the full effect, and that’s a tough sell in a world where most vendors are putting out solid all-in-ones for around $1,000. Demerits given for greed.

WIRED Amazing performance for an all-in-one. Beautiful design and gorgeous, responsive screen. Thumping audio courtesy of Beats by Dre.

TIRED Simply too expensive. Access to rear USB ports is tricky. Swivel mechanism needs a little spit and polish. Included keyboard is too thin; keys have minimal travel.

Photo by Jon Snyder/Wired

The Veer is ridiculously small. Almost Zoolander ridiculously small.

When you first grip the thing in your hand and try out the keyboard, you think, “Oh man, this is never going to work.” But after a few initial typos, it’s actually not that bad at all.

At 3.25 inches long, the Veer is tiny, stealthy and unassuming. It’s so small, it’ll even fit in the coin pocket of your jeans. The back of the black model has a rubberized texture that keeps your brain from mistaking it for a large, smooth pebble.

The 2.6-inch touchscreen is minuscule compared to giant 4.3-inch stunners like that of the HTC ThunderBolt. But as long as you’re not dead set on streaming a lot of movies or TV onto your device, it’s just large enough to do most anything else.

The phone’s screen-sliding mechanism feels solid, but it is still easy enough to operate with one hand or one thumb. And although the super-small keyboard takes a bit of practice — and a lot of trust, because your thumb covers up half the keyboard — I was surprised at how often I was able to compose typo-free messages and e-mails on the raised keys.

Palm’s webOS really shines on a device with such a small form factor. Instead of the standard menu screens seen on other smartphones, webOS uses an array of cards that can be accessed with a single tap on the gesture pad, located right under the display. Opening a new instance of an application creates a new card. A swipe upward removes the card from the deck, otherwise it’s there waiting for you when you want to return to it. Related cards (like multiple Facebook pages, for example) stack on top of one another.

Unfortunately, the implementation suffers from a few unpleasant hiccups. Finger flicks need to be deliberate, or they won’t be registered by the device. While scrolling through the photo roll, images take a second to deblur. App loading occasionally stutters, and sometimes freezes — I found this particularly true when loading the web browser. Since games and apps functioned perfectly fine once opened, this seemed like more of a software issue than a problem with the Veer’s 800 MHz Snapdragon processor.

The HP Veer comes with a couple useful features baked in: integrated messaging and Just Type, which is standard to all webOS devices. Integrated messaging allows conversations with the same contact on different services, for instance, on Google Chat and SMS, to be synced up and displayed in the same timeline, providing a seamless record of your chats. And if you don’t feel like flipping through your cards or scrolling through your apps, you can use Just Type to begin typing an app name or search item, and the phone will bring it up for you.

The Veer can act as a Wi-Fi hotspot for up to five wireless devices on AT&T’s HSPA+ 4G network. It also takes decent photos with its 5-megapixel camera — as long as there’s not excessive sunlight, which made my shots look overexposed and washed out.

The HP Veer is a pretty great phone, despite its diminutive appearance. Wired’s first impressions of the device were spot on: This would make a great phone for a teenager or anyone who wants to stay connected, but doesn’t need a large, super-crisp display for video playback.

WIRED Fantastically small form factor fits comfortably in almost any pocket. Magsafe-style charger — why isn’t this standard on all phones yet?

TIRED If the box didn’t say 4G on it, I never would have guessed. Palm’s app store has a woefully dismal selection — only the biggest names are there. The battery is non-removable.

Photos: Jim Merithew/Wired.com

Now we don’t have much more to go on here than some analyst chatter and a lengthy article from TechCrunch, but if you believe what you read, a major player has just dropped Windows Phone 7 devices from its roadmap. And that player is Dell. According to Jonathan Goldberg, an telecom analyst at Deutsche Bank, the only remaining partners currently working on Windows Phone 7 handsets are HTC, Samsung, and LG. If this is true (and that’s a big if), that means that the seriously awesome looking Dell Lightning that we spied in leaks recently will never see the light of day — as a WP7 device, at least.

We already knew that HP was out of the game (instead focusing on webOS phones), but the casual suggestion that Dell has made for the door here is somewhat suspect. The company itself hasn’t made any statements (we’ve reached out but have yet to hear back), and while Dell has certainly concentrated a lot of effort on Android devices recently, its partnership with Microsoft is long-standing (despite dabbling in the world of open source). If the story turns out to be true, it could spell mixed (if not outright bad) tidings for the Windows Phone 7 launch, which Goldberg alleges may cost Microsoft upwards of half a billion dollars — no small fee. Losing two of the biggest computer-makers in the world can’t feel very good when you’re trying to fight your way back to relevancy, but at least on the bright side, neither HP nor Dell have a track record of making anything other than heroically mediocre handsets. Take this all with a grain of salt right now, however, as the author of the TechCrunch article provides no source for the statements from Goldberg, and… well, he’s an analyst, and they’re prone to making up all kinds of crazy things. We’re investigating, and will let you know as soon as we have more info.

Update: We’ve been pinged back by Dell’s Matt Parretta, and he was 100 percent clear that Dell was most certainly still part of the Windows Phone 7 game. In the company’s words:

Any reports, or speculation, that report Dell will not support Windows Phone 7 are false… Microsoft announced Dell as a supporting partner at this year’s Mobile World Congress and nothing’s changed. We are excited to collaborate with Microsoft on Windows Phone 7, and are looking forward to bringing customers amazing mobile experiences.

Furthermore, the analyst in question here (Jonathan Goldberg) has also reached out to us to clarify his statements, saying that he believes Dell is still a partner on Windows Phone 7, just not a launch partner. Dell was mum on release schedules, but one thing is clear — they intend to follow through on this collaboration.

Dell dropping Windows Phone 7 devices from its roadmap? (update: Dell responds, is definitely still in the game) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 27 Aug 2010 10:54:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A little backstory: HP has an annual in-house event for its employees called TechCon, and this year a challenge was issued to the engineers to make the best webOS app (free phones were offered as incentive). Got that? Good. This week, HP CTO Phil McKinney had a brief chat with Pre Central over Twitter, where he revealed that the contest culminated in about 500 produced apps, and that “[they] are in the final stage of selecting ‘best app’ winners.” Does that mean we should expect a large bump to the current catalog of programs? We can’t say for sure, but we wouldn’t be surprised if many of these are already available to download. Additionally, we can’t say anything as for the overall quality of submissions. Edging closer to the 4,000-app milestone is great and all but not if it includes 250 different Angry Birds clones. Still, we’re ever-hopeful and can’t wait to see what exactly it was that came from the internal coding challenge.

HP’s in-house webOS competition yields about 500 apps, says CTO originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 26 Aug 2010 12:36:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Computers, Celebrities

On Friday, Mark Hurd resigned from his position as CEO and President of HP, amid accusations of sexual harassment. Now, the woman behind the accusations has revealed her identity to the world, and has offered her condolences to her former boss.

Jodie Fisher, a 50-year-old former actress and reality TV star, knew Hurd while working as a marketing consultant for HP. From 2007 to 2009, she regularly made the rounds at HP events that she’d helped to organize, often introducing the CEO to clients, and keeping him company. Somewhere along the line, though, their relationship allegedly took a turn for the inappropriate, leading Fisher to file a sexual harassment lawsuit against the 53-year-old executive.

Continue reading Jodie Fisher ‘Saddened’ Over HP CEO Mark Hurd’s Resignation

Jodie Fisher ‘Saddened’ Over HP CEO Mark Hurd’s Resignation originally appeared on Switched on Mon, 09 Aug 2010 09:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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When it was first announced last year, the iPad received a mixed reception with many critics dismissing it as an oversized iPhone/ iPod Touch. Despite this, Apple’s Tablet device has gone on to achieve phenomenal success and carve out a market many thought simply didn’t exist.

Now, following Apple’s success it would appear other manufacturers are falling over themselves to release an iPad rival. RIM (the guys behind BlackBerry smartphones) have previously been rumoured to have a tablet in the works going under the codenames “Cobalt” and “BlackPad” sporting an 8.9 inch touchscreen display running BlackBerry 6 OS. And, whilst it had gone quiet on the BlackBerry tablet front for some time, rumours have heated up once again with the news that RIM have bought the domain name blackpad.com. And, with RIM holding a press event on the 3rd of August, could we be treated to our first glimpses of the BlackPad?

On to Palm now who, prior to their acquisition by HP, were the subject of frequent rumours around a tablet running WebOS (the OS powering the Palm Pre and Pixi smartphones). With HP already committed to Microsoft Windows with the Slate, it had seemed that WebOS fans hopes had been dashed but the WebOS tablet is very much alive once again with the news that HP have filed an application to trademark the name PalmPad. So, it would seem that not only are HP and BlackBerry keen to join the tablet revolution but they’re also acknowledging ‘Pad’ as the recognised name for such a product.

Keep an eye on the Blog and we’ll keep you up to date on all the latest tablet news and we’ll also be all over RIM/BlackBerry’s press conference on the 3rd of August to give you all the gory details.

Palm’s touting that webOS 1.4.5 is now out and about, though its support page for the version is a wacky hodgepodge of Sprint and SFR versions of the update — perfect for French expats living in the good ol’ US of A, we suppose. Odds are very good that this new build isn’t going to blow you away, but hey, an update’s an update: you’ll get “minor fixes and enhancements” for use with the PDK, a text field fix for the browser, a “rare problem” involving podcast downloads, and that’s about it. The optimist in us wants to believe that the utter lack of innovation in this latest update is a sign that most of Palm’s brain trust is invested in engineering fresh hardware at the moment — right, Palm? Right?

webOS 1.4.5 is out, promises to make your wildest minor bugfix dreams come true originally appeared on Engadget Mobile on Mon, 05 Jul 2010 14:55:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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What we really want from HP is a brand new webOS smartphone, but it’d be unfair to say we’d “settle” for a Palm Pre — especially at prices like these. To commemorate the opening of the new HP Wireless store, the company’s offering both Pre Plus and Pixi Plus, on AT&T or Verizon, free of charge for a limited time. Not only that, but these handsets feature free shipping, and the Pre comes with free accessories (including a Bluetooth headset, car charger and leather case) to boot. Meanwhile, Sprint’s still sitting in the corner all alone, expecting folks to slap down cash money (up to $100) for these handsets’ original incarnations. If you’ve been considering these devices already, it seems that now’s the time to choose… but before you sign your life away, why not read our full review?

Pre Plus and Pixi Plus free on contract, with free accessories, too originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 04 Jul 2010 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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