HP ENVY 14 Spectre Ultrabook Launched

This January, those with an eye for design should prepare to be haunted by the beauty of the HP ENVY 14 Spectre Ultrabook experience – with new jaw-dropping unparalleled use of glass and stunning performance. 
Designed for those that expect the extraordinary, this statement in quality blends together materials on an ultrabook and captures today’s emerging spirit of entrepreneurship, collaboration and strong visual identity.
 “Sleek, midnight black glass on the outside and stark contrast silver on the inside make Spectre extraordinary, defying conventional notebook design,” said Louis Perrin, director, consumer products, Personal Systems Group, HP EMEA. “We chose the name for our first ENVY Ultrabook to evoke mystery and to satisfy those who expect the unexpected.”
Breathtaking engineering and design
One of HP’s most advanced notebooks, the HP ENVY 14 Spectre is 20 millimeters thin and weighs in at just 1.8kg(1). Beautiful yet tough it features lightweight, scratch resistant glass on the lid, display, palmrest and HP ImagePad, a material largely recognised for its use on the screens of smartphones, portable media players and LCD displays.
Featuring the latest advances in display engineering and chassis design, the HP Spectre fits a full 35.56 cm (14”) screen inside a 33.78cm (13.3”) body. It sounds impossible, but looks incredible allowing creatives to stretch content across a phenomenal high-definition (HD) (2) HP Radiance display producing higher resolution, richer colour, better brightness and wider viewing angles than traditional notebook displays.
 
An intelligent HP Radiance Backlit keyboard, using individual LEDs dedicated to each keycap, senses a person’s presence, lighting up when they’re near and dimming down when they’re not – a bright and brilliant idea only from HP that adds greatly to the aesthetic experience.
 
Astonishing Sound
The HP ENVY 14 Spectre creates a sound heaven thanks to the matching audio-grade speaker mesh and Beats Audio™, an exclusive, high-performance technology developed by HP and Beats by Dr. Dre. Its front-positioned speaker system provides pure, unrestrained sound. Whilst the ultrabook boasts an aluminum analog volume dial, giving the Spectre an interesting retro twist, and external sound on/off button, providing precise volume control, even with the lid closed. 
 
Built-in HP Wireless Audio turns any home into a stage by streaming music to multiple speakers. Uncompressed audio can be streamed to up to four external devices or directly to any KleerNet-compatible device.
Uncompromising performance
Blazingly fast, the HP ENVY 14 Spectre is powered by the latest Intel® Core™ processors(3) featuring Intel Rapid Start Technology, 128 gigabyte (GB) of Solid State Drive (SSD) (4) storage and 9 hours of battery life.(5) Eliminating the need for external dongles, the HP Spectre features an array of input and output options, including Gigabit Ethernet, USB 3.0, HDMI and Mini Displayport. In addition, the HP ImagePad provides precise multifinger touch navigation and the HP TrueVision HD(1) Webcam provides brighter, cleaner HD images.
It offers a performance-tuned software image, full versions of Adobe Photoshop® and Premiere Element and two years of preinstalled Norton™ Internet Security. A world-class design also deserves world-class service, so the notebook comes with a premium phone line for technical support that is dedicated exclusively to HP ENVY users.
Pricing and availability
The HP ENVY 14 Spectre notebook PC is expected to be available at end of March with a starting price of £1,199-(6) through selective distribution in UK.

Blackberry PlayBook OS 2.0 Features

This week at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Research In Motion (RIM) (NASDAQ: RIMM; TSX: RIM) will be previewing new features of BlackBerry® PlayBook™ OS 2.0 that will enable customers to stay even more connected and productive in their personal and professional lives. 
 
“BlackBerry PlayBook is already recognised for delivering powerful performance, true multi-tasking, advanced web browsing and HD multimedia in an ultra-portable design,” said Mike Lazaridis, President and Co-CEO at Research In Motion. “With BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0 we are building on this strong foundation, as well as leveraging our strengths in communications, social integration and productivity, to allow people to use their BlackBerry PlayBook in new ways throughout the day.” 
 
CES 2012 attendees who visit the BlackBerry booth at CES (South Hall 3 Booth # 30326) will get a sneak peek of upcoming BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0 functionality including:
 
Advanced Messaging Experience: 
• New unified inbox - a powerful unified inbox within the built-in messaging app allows users to quickly manage their personal email and work email accounts as well as the messaging capabilities of popular social networking sites like Twitter®, LinkedIn® and others – all in one place.
• Multi-tasking within email – by extending the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet’s multitasking capabilities to ‘tabbed email’, users are able to reference one email while they compose another.
• Rich-text email composing and editing – new features within the Messages app enable users to benefit from full support of fonts, formatting and editing of email threads, offering a robust email experience similar to that of a PC or laptop.
• Inbox management tools – allows for powerful inbox search across multiple email accounts, as well as the ability to set out-of-office messages and email signatures directly from their tablet.
 
Deep Integration of Social Relationships: 
• Innovative people-centric calendar – in addition to standard calendar features that help users plan and organise their day, the powerful built-in Calendar app provides the unique ability for users to view their calendar by who they are meeting with that day and review valuable information about that contact. Information is consolidated automatically from social networking sites about that contact and/or their company.
• Relationship-centric contacts app - more than just an address book, the new built-in Contacts app serves as a social hub - merging and consolidating information from multiple sources (including email and social channels) into one contact file for each person in their address book.  Each contact file includes information such as recent status updates, conversations, related news articles and mutual contacts that are kept up-to-date automatically. 
 
Making Your BlackBerry Smartphone and Tablet a Powerful Pair:
• Remote control for the BlackBerry PlayBook – new BlackBerry® Bridge™ features allow a user’s BlackBerry® smartphone to act as a keyboard and mouse for their BlackBerry PlayBook – effectively providing a wireless remote control for their tablet. Perfect for pausing a movie when a BlackBerry PlayBook is plugged in to a TV with an HDMI connection, or for using the tactile QWERTY keyboard on a BlackBerry smartphone to compose a message or document on the BlackBerry PlayBook.
• Opening content on the BlackBerry PlayBook – BlackBerry Bridge allows you to take documents, emails, multimedia files and web pages found on your smartphone and open them quickly and directly on the BlackBerry PlayBook so you can use the larger high resolution display for an optimised viewing and editing experience.
 
Improved Mobile Productivity: 
• Updated document editing capabilities - updated Documents To Go® functionality makes it easier for users to create and edit documents while on the go. Improvements include: enhanced support for the virtual keyboard, the ability to view and update embedded charts and chart sheets within spreadsheets, a new formula wizard with over 100 functions as well as the ability to edit presentations including text, bullets and formatting.
• Print To Go application - this app allows users to wirelessly “print” from their laptop or PC directly to their BlackBerry PlayBook over Wi-Fi®. A digital printout is created on the BlackBerry PlayBook so that users can view, sort and manage their digital printouts as though they were physical sheets of paper. The Print To Go app is the perfect way to consolidate info from various related sources like a hotel web confirmation, an airline boarding pass email, the show event schedule or even a map of the destination city and make them available for quick access on the go.
• Increased control and manageability of corporate data – the combination of BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0 with BlackBerry Mobile Fusion and BlackBerry Balance will help to overcome many barriers to widespread tablet deployment, including device manageability and the ability to secure, manage and control confidential corporate information on the device. Plus BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0 supports dedicated shelf space inside the BlackBerry® App World™ storefront to allow IT departments to control distribution of enterprise applications and to make those approved enterprise applications easily available to the organisation’s end users.
 
New Apps and Content: 
• Your favorite apps plus thousands more - many exciting new applications built for the BlackBerry PlayBook will be made available on BlackBerry App World with the availability of BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0. From gaming and lifestyle to business and productivity, RIM is showcasing some of the latest apps available for the BlackBerry PlayBook at CES 2012 including Angry Birds, Cut the Rope, Groupon, Thomson Reuters, Zinio and many more.  
• Video store – a catalog of thousands of movies and TV shows will be available through the integrated BlackBerry Video Storefront* with new releases to be made available for purchase or rent the same day they come out on DVD. Users will be able to begin watching media as soon as they start to download the file, so users won’t have to wait for the entire file to transfer before they can enjoy great entertainment on the tablet’s high resolution display, or on an HDTV via the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet’s HDMI output.
• Enhanced web browsing - the BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0 browser also includes a new reading view, which is designed to make web sites even easier to enjoy by eliminating page clutter at the touch of a button. What’s left is a cleaner format that is great for reading online news articles, blog posts, or websites that contain heavy amounts of text.
 
Availability
The BlackBerry® PlayBook OS 2.0 software update will be available as a free download for all BlackBerry PlayBook users and is expected to be available in February 2012.

Thunderbolt Goody from Elgato

Thunderbolt has revealed something that will make many a Mac user very happy indeed. We ALL want Thunderbolt devices and the first offering from Lacie was met with some complaints about noise. However, Elgato have released a new Thunderbolt SSD which will be available from next month in 120GB and 240GB capacities - wooooohooooo! [Source: Engadget]

OLPC Tablet for $100 - yes please!

One Laptop Per Child will be showing their $100 tablet at CES 2012 and I must admit it looks like they have done a superb job. The XO 3.0 integrates a 1GHZ Marvell Armada PXA618 system-on-a-chip, which should deliver good performance at a very low cost. It should also eek out 8-10 hours of battery life. Check the full rundown here. [Source: CNET] [Photo: OLPC]

BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0 to be shown at CES 2012

When I unboxed the BB Playbook I knew the hardware was rather special. The review that followed (see below) left me wanting more from the OS. A long wait followed, but nothing, nada, zilch. However, I was so happy to read this article from Engadget citing that the long overdue OS 2.0 will be shown at CES 2012. Now I am excited and need to get me another Playbook in and wait for them to push the OS out hopefully first quarter of 2012. [Source: Engadget]

New Parrot AR Drone at CES 2012

The guys at Engadget spotted some superb signage at CES 2012, touting AR Drone 2.0 for everyone to see. If the sign on their stand is any indication it seems that Parrot may be announcing version two of their flying machine at CES 2012.

You can see me flying (and reviewing) the original AR Drone below, or check out the signage on Engadget.

Blue announcing new mics at CES

I love microphones, having tested many over the years. In fact I use a Blue Yeti Pro in my studio, so this news really excited me. Blue Microphones are releasing new products at CES, including the $59 Tiki (pictured) which plugs direct into USB. Other new products include a Mikey Digital for iOS devices and another USB mic in the form of the Spark Digital at $199. The Spark Digital looks like it might well replace my Yeti Pro ;)

Vizio to take on Laptop & PC Desktop Market

CES 2012 is just about to kick off and along with the slew of preview announcements comes details of Vizio and their range of laptop and desktop PCs. They certainly do look superb. They includes 24-inch & 27-inch all-in-one desktop PC's and some ultra thin laptops that will certainly take on the likes of the MacBook Air when it domes to design. Check out the superb article & gallery pics over on Engadget here. [source: Engadget]