envy

Hewlett-Packard has priced its Envy x2 laptop-tablet hybrid at $849.99 -- a small tablet-laptop hybrid that runs the full version of Windows 8.

That price may be high for consumers, but HP is pushing it as a high-quality, high-end "hybrid PC" that effectively straddles both the laptop and tablet paradigms.

It comes with many of the ports found on a PC -- USB, HDMI, SD card slot -- a top-notch IPS display, a full-size keyboard with a large trackpad (what HP calls an Imagepad) for Windows 8 gestures, and a touch display that detaches to become a … Read more

Could Hewlett-Packard trump the iPad?

With Windows 8 general release due on October 26, it's a good opportunity to take a look at the competition coming down the pike.

In this case, from Apple's Silicon Valley neighbor, HP.

It took way too long -- Apple announced the iPad in 2010 -- but HP now has a real iPad alternative -- the Envy x2.

Or, put another way, should I think about swapping my iPad for the x2?

Personal musings aside, HP has a different design philosophy from Apple -- so it's not simply a question (for me … Read more

China's largest PC maker, Lenovo, made a stunning announcement this week when it said it will make laptops, tablets, and desktops in the U.S.

So, why in the world would China's largest PC maker decide to manufacture devices here when America's two premier digital gadget suppliers, Apple and Hewlett-Packard, make virtually nothing in the U.S. and almost everything in China and/or Asia?

Needless to say, the answer is more complicated than "growth opportunities" in the U.S. -- as Yuanqing Yang, CEO of Lenovo, said in a statement.

And the move comes … Read more

We previously saw HP's big flagship Windows 8 products, the Envy Spectre XT Touchsmart ultrabook and the Envy X2, and now HP is ready to reveal a handful of its more traditional laptops. Like virtually every other Windows 8 laptop we've seen, these are due alongside Microsoft's new operating system in on October 26.

HP Envy m4 This mobile-minded addition to the growing Envy family has a brushed-aluminum design, current-gen Intel Core i-series processors, and a 14-inch display. Options include a backlit keyboard and Intel's Wireless Display.

Like all of the Envy laptops, and a growing … Read more

The venerable laptop is under assault.

And leading the assault is Apple -- which has no qualms about cannibalizing a piece of its own MacBook laptop line with the iPad.

And Apple's tablets will get even harder to resist in October when it brings out a smaller tablet, probably priced well below $399.

The $199 Google Nexus 7 and the new Kindle Fire starting at $199 -- or $159 for the original Fire -- are making it even harder to fork over $699 for a new laptop.

At the risk of stating the obvious, consumers often opt for the … Read more

The designers at Samsung and HP sure love Apple's laptop design philosophy, but the duo may want to take a step back next generation and innovate a little bit. CNET found several new computers from these companies that look just like an Apple MacBook Air. Can you tell which one is the real Apple product in the picture above?

Our more discerning readers might easily spot the differences between each of these devices, but Crave decided to make it a little more challenging by shrinking the pictures down a bit. Readers who participated in our guessing game on Facebook had a pretty easy time spotting the real Apple, but the pictures were also much larger. … Read more

Windows 8 is about to unleash a tsunami of strange devices upon us all. Call them tablets, ultraportables, hybrids, convertibles, tiny touch-based mobile computers...they're everywhere, and they're multiplying.

HP has them. Samsung does, too. So does Dell, and Lenovo, and Toshiba, and Asus, and Sony. Everyone has them. That's because Windows 8 promises a better environment for touch in mobile computing, and the promise is too tempting not to experiment. Or, alternatively, all these companies need a product out there to plant a flag into this strange soil -- a territory that Microsoft's already visiting via the Surface.

The big problem I see with them is that for every device that emerges, the landscape gets ever-more-cloudy. … Read more

Analysts are not kind to ultrabooks. Add Tim Bajarin to that long list.

Though the Creative Strategies president offers plenty of reasons for ultrabooks' woes, one of the more intriguing is that Apple products are boxing ultrabooks into a pricing dead zone.

The mid-range, between $799 and $899 -- where an increasing number of ultrabooks are priced -- "may be going away," Bajarin wrote in a recent post.

That's the upper end of the pricing range of Apple's very popular iPad. And above that, it's a MacBook market -- which Bajarin says consumers will pay … Read more