Soon after HP acquired Palm last April, then CEO Mark Hurd stated the company’s desire of taking webOS “beyond smartphones.” The company today gave the world a better look into the operating system’s future beyond smartphones at its “Think Beyond” event in San Francisco, lifting the curtain on a 10-inch webOS tablet. But for those who think that tablets are just as far as HP is willing to go with its “beyond smartphones” strategy for webOS, the world’s leading PC vendor is out to surprise you.

HP Executive Vice President Todd Bradley surprised one and all by revealing that the company “plans to bring the WebOS to the device that has the biggest reach of all: the personal computer.” But he refused to share any details. However, people have already begun speculating how HP might go about putting this plan into action. Currently, the popular belief is that HP will most probably use webOS as a secondary, instant-on OS besides reserving it for its TouchSmart all-in-one PCs and web-connected printers.

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HP Pre 3 Goes Giant With a 3.6-inch Screen

HP is targeting the Pre 3 as a “business”-class phone, even though it’s got the same body shape as the previous Pres. It has their largest keyboard, a larger 3.6-inch 480×800 display, and a 5-megapixel camera.

It will be 802.11b/g/n, HSPA+ and EVDO world phone, 8GB or 16GB storage, memory (same as) Pre 2, and a processor that runs at 1.4GHz. So it’s definitely a larger phone for people who think the HP Veer is too small.

When you put the Pre 3 on a Touchstone wireless charger dock, it goes into exhibition mode, which shows you a clock, a calendar, or whatever else you want to display.

HP Veer Is a Tiny, Tiny Palm Phone With a Slideout Keyboard

The HP veer has the same body-shape as the Palm Pre and Pre 2, but is smaller—the size of a credit card. It’s got a 2.6-inch screen, Flash, 5-megapixel camera and a slide-out keyboard. It’s HSPA+, which means it’s AT&T or T-Mobile. It will be available in early Spring.

HP Touchpad Is Their 10-inch webOS Tablet

The TouchPad is 1.6 pounds, 13.7 mm thick, measures 9.7inches (1024×768), a 1.3 megapixel webcam, video calling, and HP’s Beats branding. Specs are pretty similar to the iPad. Other stats:

802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth, 16 or 32GB, and twice the memory of Pre 2 (1GB, I believe.) Also, a 1.2GHz dual core processor. (Or, rather, 2.4GHz if you measure both cores.)

Here’s how webOS works on a tablet. The cards are still there, representing open applications. You close apps the same way you do on webOS phones, by flicking them off the screen.

Synergy also syncs your info from your webOS phone and the Touchpad tablet.

The interface definitely looks like a blown-up webOS, with the dock at the bottom, cards for multitasking and their notification/status bar on the top.

There are also accessories like a Touchpad stand and a Bluetooth keyboard. The dock also charges via Touchstone, their wireless charging dock (which charges even inside the case).

The Touchpad also syncs with your Pre 3 in that they share text messages and phone calls over Bluetooth, so you don’t need to dig out your phone if you’re on your tablet.

Using apps is the same as on older Palm phones. You launch apps using the dock on the bottom or using the app launcher screen.

Emailing supports multiple accounts, of course, and looks very similar to email on the iPad. The left side gives you the list of messages, and the right side is the actual message. You can also slide everything over, giving you the ability to select between accounts.

HP is also emphasizing the fact that the TouchPad supports Flash. FLASH.

Notifications are unobtrusive, because they pop up on the top right notification bar, and you can dismiss each one by swiping them off to their side. If you actually want to deal with a notification, you can tap in and open the proper application.

Cool keyboard option: There are four different sizes, from S to XL, depending on how large your fingers are, which is pretty great for personalization. Typing is one of the worst things on tablets. Also good is the inclusion of the number keys on the keyboard.

TouchPad also includes social networking inside their photos app, like Facebook. And you can print from the tablet to network printers on your home network. You can also view and respond to Facebook comments from inside your photo as well (if you had uploaded it to Facebook).

The TouchPad is going to have magazines and newspapers, such as Sports Illustrated.

And, of course, a Kindle app.

Palm’s also demonstrating a Skype call from a Pre 3 to a TouchPad.

Gizmodo is the world’s most fun technology website, focused on gadgets and how they make our lives better, worse, and more absurd.

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Citing sources from upstream players, DigiTimes says Acer expects 3-4 percent of its total notebook shipments in the first quarter of 2011 will be affected by Intel’s buggy 6-series chipset. Hewlett-Packard expects to be hit a little harder, noting internally that it could affect up to 6 percent of its shipments. The damage is done and there aren’t many options for OEMs left holding the bag — they can eat the loss, or shuffle around their lineup and try to make up the difference. HP is choosing the latter.

According to DigiTimes, HP has decided to increase its proportion of AMD-based notebooks versus Sandy Bridge. The OEM will also shuffle more previous generation Intel laptops into its shipment queue to absorb the hit from Sandy Bridge, which runs in the hundreds of thousands.

Meanwhile, both Acer and Asus recently announced recalls for notebooks sporting defective chips. And though Intel will spend an estimated $700 million to $1 billion replacing these chips and motherboards, it’s up to the vendors to pay for shipping costs related to the recall, DigiTimes says.

OEMs can also opt to continue receiving and selling existing 6-series motherboards, so long as they agree to configure systems using only SATA ports 0/1, which are both unaffected by the bug.

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A sturdy, high-end mobile workstation with a professional-grade display

It’s difficult to pick just one standout feature of the HP EliteBook 8740w mobile workstation. Certainly a bright, 17-inch, 10-bit LCD panel that’s capable of displaying more than 1 billion colors and remains visible at up to about a 170-degree offset without any color degradation is worth noting. But so is the notebook’s durable design, with its spill-resistant keyboard, magnesium-alloy chassis, and magnesium-aluminum display enclosure. Then there’s also the 8740w’s impressive performance that runs circles around our zero-point configuration.

It’s not indestructible, but it would take a lot of force to damage this notebook.

With features squarely aimed at businesses that require a color-accurate display, such as graphic-arts production and medical imaging—as well as less-than-forgiving work environments, such as a factory floor—there is little doubt why the 8740w is considered a mobile workstation. This also goes a long way toward explaining a price tag that starts at $3,000. Powered by a 2GHz Intel Core i7-920XM processor, with 8GB of 1,333MHz DDR3 SDRAM, a 320GB 7,200rpm hard drive, and an Nvidia Quadro 5000M GPU with 2GB of GDDR5 memory, our eval unit cost a hefty $5,290.

Speaking of hefty, our unit weighed a not-inconsequential 8 pounds, 6.4 ounces—add to that another 2 pounds, 2 ounces  for the chunky power brick. Much of the weight can be attributed to the notebook’s sturdy build, which reportedly meets mil-spec standards.

While you probably won’t be using the 8740w inside an M1 Abrams tank, you can be assured that the 8740w’s performance is equivalent to the M1 Abrams’s firepower. Take for instance the 8740w’s showing in our multithreaded content-creation tests: The 8740w was 69 percent speedier than the zero-point iBuypower M865TU in Adobe Premiere Pro CS3, and 80 percent faster in ProShow Producer. Before you declare mission accomplished, however, we should point out that the hexa-core 3.33GHz Core i7-980X–based Eurocom D900F we reviewed in June 2010 lands an uncontested coup against the 8740w—including a 225 percent trouncing of the 8740w in our Premiere Pro test.

When you’re not busy designing Bradley Fighting Vehicles and instead want to use one to blow things up—virtually, of course—the 8740w provides decent gaming chops. A frame rate of 49.6fps in Far Cry 2 is noticeably swifter than the 34.8fps we saw with the D900F, although the 8740w’s 71.5fps in Call of Duty 4 is just a hair ahead of the D900F’s 73.2fps.

Of course, the Nvidia Quadro 5000M—a high-end Fermi GPU with 320 CUDA cores and a memory bandwidth of 76.8GB/s—does much more than just play games. To test the 8740w’s capabilities as a graphics workstation, we ran the SpecViewperf11 OpenGL-based workstation benchmark on the notebook. While the 8740w made an impressive showing on SpecViewperf11’s individual tests, its overall performance didn’t quite measure up to what you could expect from even a relatively less-expensive desktop workstation.

The 8740w would be an awfully expensive notebook to bring to a LAN party—but you could and you’d be glad you did. Where it’ll be more at home, however, is in the hands of a professional designer, architect, or technician who needs the high level of color accuracy of its display. Just make sure the purchase doesn’t overdraw your checking account and be sure to eat your Wheaties before you pick it up and start carting it around.

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A baseline configuration runs $530 and includes a Core i3 350M processor (2.26GHz, 3MB L3 cache), Intel HD graphics, 4GB of DDR3 memory, 500GB hard drive, DVD burner, 5-in-1 memory card reader, 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, 6 cell battery, and Windows 7 Premium.

Not a bad way to invest $100, which is the premium the G62x carries over the G62m with an Intel Celeron 900 processor, 2GB of DDR3 memory, and a 250GB hard drive.

Image Credit: HP

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Back before bulk OEMs made a made dash to scoop up boutique builders of high end gaming PCs, Voodoo PC stood as one of the elite. Rahul Sood, the man responsible for Voodoo PC, stayed on board when Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006 and served as CTO of Global Gaming for HP. The ride is finally over.

“It is with mixed emotions that I have decided to resign from my position as the CTO of Global Gaming for Hewlett-Packard, my last day will be December 1, 2010,” Rahul Sood digitally penned in what he describes as the most difficult letter he’s ever written. “I’ve struggled with this decision for many months. I have effectively been employed with one job for 20+ years (Voodoo+HP) so it is the most difficult move that I have ever made in my life.”

Sood, who has the Voodoo logo tattooed on his leg, didn’t say why he’s choosing to step down, instead heaping on the praise to those “who had a direct impact” on him over the years, including shout-outs to several Maximum PC stalwarts, including Jon Philips and rant-master Gordon Mah Ung.

“Voodoo was once a small company out of Calgary Canada, a city known for its oil and gas and certainly not for technology,” Sood said. “I remember our first blockbuster review in Maximum PC; we were awarded a Perfect 10 ‘Kick-Ass.’”

So do we (page 76).

Going forward, it’s anyone’s guess what Sood will get his hands into next, who said only that he “can’t wait to be directly involved in a product pipeline again.”

Read the entire letter here.

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First there was suspense over the status of HP’s Slate 500 Windows 7 tablet, with many fearing that the device might never see the light of day owing to the PC vendor’s acquisition of Palm, now that it is actually available for order from HP’s website there is confusion on when the company will begin shipping the device. While there are reports of pre-orderers being notified about a delay of 10-15 business days in shipment of their orders, the order status page seems to indicate a much smaller delay. The slate was originally expected to arrive on November 12.

“Due to high demand on the portable system you have selected we will not be able to fulfill the order from on hand stock, therefore we have routed your order to manufacturing for your product to be built. The average lead time to get these portables ready to ship may vary from 10 to 15 business days,” reads an email the company sent to one of the pre-orderers.

This has fueled a lot of speculation, with different blogs positing different theories to explain the delay. GottaBeMobile is blaming the delay on an unexpected bug that requires a full reboot, whereas SlashGear feels HP “may have hedged their bets with Slate 500 stock and planned to manufacture on-demand rather than face a mountain of unsold units.”

However, there is no such confusion when it comes to fresh orders. The company is now making it clear on its site that all new orders will ship in 6 weeks due to “extraordinary demand.”

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Hewlett-Packard (HP) has agreed to cut a check for $16.25 million to settle allegations that it bribed Texas school officials with expensive gifts in exchange for federally funded contracts that pay for Internet connections for schools and libraries, the Associated Press reports.

We’re not talking about $100 watches here, but pricey items like Super Bowl tickets and yacht trips. This drew the attention of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and Department of Justice (DoJ), which accused HP of fraud related to the government’s E-rate program, an $8 billion-a-year fund that subsidizes Internet access in rural communities via a surcharge on phone bills.

It’s all water under the bridge, says HP, which points out that this occurred over five years ago and that the employees responsible have since been canned.

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One of the selling points of HP’s Envy 14 Beats Edition laptop has been the Monster Beats Solo headphones you saw Dr. Dre sporting in the television advert. Due to “supply constraints,” HP is no longer bundling the cans, Engadget reports.

As for pricing, HP has gone and knocked $100 off the Envy 14 Beats Edition, lowing the starting configuration from $1,250 to $1,150. It’s worth mentioning that you can get the Beats audio experience from the regular Envy priced at $1,000 to start, albeit with a Core i3 370M processor instead of a Core i5 460M.

HP’s Beats audio technology essentially entails a beefed up EQ, a Digital Signal Processor (DSP), the inclusion of an amp, and a board layout intended to provider cleaner audio output.

Image Credit: HP

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When Hewlett-Packard bought Palm earlier this year, it looked like the final nail in the coffin of the Windows 7 tablet it had trotted out in January.  The company was now on the horns of a dilemma, torn between WebOS and Windows 7. The world’s leading PC maker eventually chose to accommodate the Windows 7-based Slate 500 in its WebOS-dominated tablet plans, albeit only as a business-oriented product.

The back-from-the-dead Slate 500 is now available for purchase. The 8.9-inch device features a 1.86GHz Intel Atom Z540 processor, a 64GB SSD, 2GB of RAM, a 3MP camera on the back, one front-facing VGA camera, and a Broadcom graphics accelerator. The  Slate 500 sports a $799 price tag.

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