Maximum PC hp RSS Feed

HP Expands Data Center Products, Doubles Its Blade Server Density

Paul Lilly — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 07:05:50 -0600

HP on Monday launched a whole bunch of new hardware and software products, including a blade system the OEM claims can fit two systems in the physical space of one.

The company's ProLiant BL2x220c G6 combines two server nodes in a single blade chassis and supports up to two 4-core low voltage Intel Xeon 5500 series processors per node. And according to HP, the G6 increases memory capacity by 33 percent over previous generation blade server products.

HP's G6 is one of several products aimed at extending the company's Extreme Scale-Out (ExSO) portfolio introduced in June. The goal, HP says, is to cut back the total cost of ownership while also increasing data center capacity.

"The ExSO portfolio was created to meet the demanding needs of scale-out as well as high-performance computing customers that require highly efficient and powerful computing infrastructures," said Steve Cumings, director of Marketing for the Scalable Computing and Infrastructure organization at HP. "We will continue to add to this portfolio, delivering innovative solutions based on our deep understanding of scale-out data centers and enabling our customers to gain more value from their infrastructure."

More info here and here.

Shareholders Slap 3Com with Class Action Lawsuit

Paul Lilly — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 07:05:34 -0600

3Com's board of directors and the company's shareholders appear to be at odds over a proposed $2.7 billion merger agreement with HP that was announced last week. Displeased with the potential merger, the shareholders have filed a class action lawsuit in hopes of preventing the deal.

The complaint names the entire company's board of directors and accuses the defendants of attempting to deceive 3Com shareholders by agreeing to a deal that undermines the true value of their investment in the company, TechCrunch reports.

Under terms of the agreement, HP would pay stockholders of 3Com $7.90 per share, but the bankruptcy lawyer who filed the case on behalf of the plaintiffs argues that 3Com's directors should have insisted on a higher price.

HP Acquires 3Com in $2.7 Billion Maneuver

Paul Lilly — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 07:06:30 -0600

In a blockbuster deal, Hewlett Packard on Wednesday announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to purchase 3Com at a price of $7.90 per share. That breaks down to about $2.7 billion and puts HP, which is already a strong networking company, in a better position to compete with Cisco.

"“Companies are looking for ways to break free from the business limitations imposed by a networking paradigm that has been dominated by a single vendor," said Dave Donatelli, executive vice president and general manager, Enterprise Servers and Networking, HP. "By acquiring 3Com, we are accelerating the execution of our Converged Infrastructure strategy and bringing disruptive change to the networking industry. By combining HP ProCurve offerings with 3Com’s extensive set of solutions, we will enable customers to build a next-generation network infrastructure that supports customer needs from the edge of the network to the heart of the data center."

The acquisition will help HP build its networking portfolio, particularly in expanding the company's Ethernet switching offerings and routing solutions, HP said the move will also help strengthen its position in the fast growing Chinese market.

Terms of the transaction have already been approved by the HP and 3Com board of directors and is expected to close in the first half of 2010.

HP Beefs Up SMB Security

Paul Lilly — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 07:04:03 -0600

Hewlett-Packard is stepping up to the plate with improved data protection and better backup solutions for small and medium businesses, The Register reports.

First on the list is HP's LeftHand Networks P4000 SMB storage area network (SAN) lineup, which will now come equipped with application-integrated snapshots. This will make it easier on admins, who can use the P4000 GUI to signal that a snapshot needs to be made of a volume, and the P4000 array software will handle the rest.

The second change comes to HP's Disk-to-Disk (D2D) backup product, which has been given a file interface allowing applications to view it as a NAS box. In the long-run, customers will be able to reduce their reliance on tape.

For those who want to keep using tape, HP introduced its new DAT320 tape drive. The 8mm DAT320 packs 320GB, or twice as much as the DAT160.

Image Credit: HP

We're Giving Away a HP ENVY 13 Notebook!

The Maximum PC Staff — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 15:30:00 -0600

You read that right. HP has generously donated one of their slick new ENVY 13 notebooks for us to give away. Announced two months ago, the ENVY 13 is a powerful workhorse packed into a stunning chassis, with the specs to prove it. The model we're giving away is equipped with a 2.13 Core 2 Duo, 5GB of DDR3 SDRAM, a 250GB HD, and sports a beautiful 13.1" LED screen (1600x900 resolution). From our hands-on time with the notebook, we were definitely impressed by its radiant display, which put a comparably-sized Macbook Air to shame. And yes, it comes with Windows 7. The contest starts today (Nov 10th) and runs for two weeks, and the official rules are below.

To get your name into the random drawing, you'll need to become a fan of our Facebook group and write a comment under the ENVY 13 Contest post about why you want to win this laptop. We'll pick a winner with a random drawing on November 24th! (Unfortunately, this contest is only available to US residents. HP's rules, not ours.)

The full system specs:

HP ENVY 13 – Value $2,424.99

Windows 7 Professional (64-bit)
Intel Core 2 Duo Processor SL9600 (2.13 GHz)
13.1" diagonal HD+ High Definition LED HP Radiance Infinity Widescreen Display (1600x900)
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4330 Graphics
250GB (5400RPM)HDD
5GB DDR3 SDRAM
Intel WiFi Link 5100 Network & Bluetooth
External Slot Blu-Ray ROM with SuperMulti DVD+/-R/RW Double Layer
4 Cell Li-Ion Battery
Webcam
3.74 pounds

MAXIMUM PC HP ENVY 13 CONTEST
OFFICIAL RULES

NO PURCHASE OR PAYMENT OF ANY KIND IS NECESSARY TO ENTER OR WIN. A PURCHASE WILL NOT IMPROVE YOUR CHANCES OF WINNING.

1. SPONSOR: This promotion (the “Contest”) is sponsored by Maximum PC magazine and Future US, Inc. (“Sponsors”), subject to the following terms and conditions.

2. ELIGIBILITY: Contest open to legal residents of the United States (excluding residents of Rhode Island and Puerto Rico). Entrants must be at least 18 years of age. Employees of Sponsors, their respective parents, subsidiaries, affiliated companies, and agents, and foregoing employees’ household or immediate family members (defined as parent, spouse, child, sibling, or grandparent) are NOT eligible to enter Contest. By their submission of entry, participants warrant they are legally entitled and authorized to make such submission, either on their own behalf, or as to information submitted upon the express authorization of another on whose behalf the information is submitted.

3. TIMING: Contest begins at 12:01 a.m. PDT on Tuesday, November 10th, 2009 and continues until 11:59 p.m. PDT on Tuesday, November 24th, 2009. Incomplete or late entries will not be accepted.

HOW TO ENTER: Email us at contests@maximumpc.com, putting “HP ENVY 13 Contest” in the subject line and including your complete name, address, daytime telephone number, city, state, and zip code in the body or join our Facebook page at http://facebook.com/maximumpc and submit a comment under the ENVY 13 Contest post. There is a limit of one entry per eligible participant. Entries become the property of the Sponsors and will not be acknowledged or returned.

5. PRIZES AND ODDS: One Grand Prize will be awarded. The Grand Prize will be a HP Envy 13 with Intel® Core 2 Duo 2.13GHz, 250GB HDD, 5GB SDRAM and a total retail value of $2,424.99.

Odds of winning shall be determined by the number of eligible entries received.
Prizes are nontransferable and must be accepted as awarded. Winner will be responsible for all taxes (federal, state, and local) and all expenses not listed herein related to acceptance and use of any prize. Prize will be awarded if properly claimed. Limit one prize per household.

6. DRAWING: Winners will be selected by random drawing from all valid eligible entries received. Drawing will be held on or about Tuesday, November 24th, 2009. Drawing will be conducted by Sponsors, whose decisions on all matters related to the Contest shall be final and binding and within their sole discretion. Canadian entrants selected in any drawing will be required to correctly answer, without assistance of any kind, whether mechanical or otherwise, a time-limited mathematical skill-testing question to be administered by mail or by telephone. Winning is contingent upon compliance with all terms and conditions set forth in these official rules; any entry drawn or any potential winner identified thereby found at any time to fail to comply with these official rules will be held invalid and ineligible for award.

NOTIFICATION: Winner will be notified by phone or email within one week following the random drawing. Winner so notified must within ten (10) days of notice of award, complete, execute and return the provided Affidavit, Waiver, Release and Indemnity Agreement including, where lawful, a Publicity Release (plus any additional documents required at the discretion of Sponsors). Failure to comply with the requirements of this paragraph (or the return of any prize or prize notification as non-deliverable) may result in disqualification and in the forfeiture of any right to a prize, in which case prize will be awarded to an alternate by random drawing. A list of winners will be available for six months after the award of prizes by sending a self addressed envelope with sufficient prepaid postage to:

MAXIMUM PC
HP ENVY 13 CONTEST
4000 Shoreline Court, Suite 400
South San Francisco, CA 94080

Residents of the state of Vermont may omit return postage.

8. PRIVACY POLICY: Submissions are subject to standard privacy policy, the terms of which can be found at http://www.futureus.com/privacy.php, which terms and conditions entrants accept and agree to by submission of entries pursuant to these official rules.

9. RELEASE: by participating in the Contest and/or accepting a prize, a participant/winner agrees to defend, release and hold harmless the Sponsors and their respective parents, subsidiaries, affiliates, divisions, advertising and promotion agencies, and the foregoing companies’ officers, directors, shareholders, employees, representatives and agents (collectively “Releasees”) from and against any actions, claims and/or liability for injury, loss or damage of any kind, (including the violation or infringement of any proprietary or personal right of any individual or entity) resulting in whole or in part, directly or indirectly, from participation in the Contest, and/or the use, acceptance, or possession of a Contest prize, and/or participation in a Contest prize-related activity, including any action, claim or liability arising from the unauthorized submission of any information.

By participating in the Contest and/or accepting a prize, a participant/winner consents to and gives the Sponsors the right to use, publish, and display a winner’s (and where applicable a participant’s) name, city and state, and prize awarded, for the purpose of advertising, trade, publicity and promotional purposes in any media now known or hereafter discovered, worldwide, and on the Web, without review, notification or approval, all without additional consideration, unless prohibited by law.

10. CONDITIONS: Participants agree that by participating they release the Releasees from any liability in connection with: a) Entries that are ineligible as a result of being lost, late, illegible, damaged, incomplete, stolen, postage due, or misdirected: b) Any typographical or other human or technical errors in the offer or administration of the Contest, including but not limited to errors in advertising, these official rules, the selection and announcement of a winner(s), or the distribution/awarding of a prize(s); c) Any omission, interruption, deletion, defect, delay, misdirection, damage, injury, technical malfunctions or traffic congestion on the Internet/telephone network, or at any website, or any combination thereof.

Sponsors reserve the right to modify these rules for clarification purposes without materially affecting the term and conditions of the Contest. In the event that the Contest is infected by a computer virus/worm, or is not capable of running or being executed as planned (as a result of but not limited to an error, omission, defect, delay, misdirection, tampering, unauthorized intervention, fraud, action of entrants, or technical failure) or any other cause which in the sole opinion of Sponsors corrupts or affects the administration, security, fairness, integrity, or proper conduct of the Contest, Sponsors reserve the right in their sole discretion to disqualify any suspect entry or entrant and to cancel, terminate, modify or suspend the Contest. In the event of such cancellation, termination, modification or suspension, notice thereof will be posted at the entry website(s) mentioned above, and winner(s) will be determined solely by Sponsors in a random drawing from among all eligible non-suspect and/or non-disqualified entries. In such event, Releasees shall have no liability to any participant who is disqualified due to such an action. Failure to enforce any term of these official rules shall not constitute a waiver of that provision.

11. LAW: This Contest is governed by the laws of the United States and is subject to all federal, state, and local laws and regulations. Void where prohibited or restricted. All issues and questions concerning the construction, validity, interpretation, and enforceability of these Official Rules, or the rights and obligations of entrants or Sponsor in connection with any drawing or award, shall be governed by, and construed in accordance with the laws of, the State of California, without regard to conflict of law principles. Any cause of action by you with respect to the offer (and/or any information, products or services related thereto) must be instituted within one (1) year after the cause of action arose or be forever waived and barred. All actions shall be subject to the limitations set forth in above. The language in these official rules shall be interpreted as in accordance with its fair meaning and not strictly for or against either party. All legal proceedings arising out of or in connection with the offer of these official rules shall be brought solely in San Mateo County, California. You expressly submit to the exclusive jurisdiction of said courts and consent to extraterritorial service of process.

HP 2709m

Michael Brown — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 16:53:54 -0600

Meaty, beaty, big, and bouncy

HP’s new 27-inch 2709m is considerably larger than the rest of these displays; it’s also more expensive ($400).

The 2709m offers the same native resolution as the rest of the field, so it spreads the same number of pixels over a much larger area. As a result, DisplayMate’s high-resolution sample photos looked just a bit softer than they did on the smaller monitors. The HP also did a poor job of rendering very small text.

In addition to being the largest display we tested, HP's 27-inch 2709m was also the only monitor to feature two HDMI inputs. And its stand swivels as well as tilts.

Those criticisms don’t matter when you’re watching a Blu-ray movie or gaming—this big screen shines here, and you needn’t worry about your videocard supporting an insanely high resolution as you would with a 30-inch display. Unfortunately, the 2709m suffers from the same specular reflection problems as Gateway’s mirror-like FHX2300.

HP tells us the 2709m is outfitted with a wider color-range backlight and color filter, which enables it to produce 92 percent of the NTSC color gamut (compared to the rest of the field’s 72 percent) but we didn’t perceive any significant difference. We didn’t encounter any backlight leakage, but DisplayMate’s Screen Uniformity and Color Purity tests revealed a dark band across the top of the display with light grays and colors at mid-range intensity.

We also found a discolored pixel on the 2709m (HP calls this a “bright sub-pixel defect” and doesn’t cover it under warranty unless there are two or more).

<< Back to the Monitor Index

HP Envy 14 Comes Well Equipped, Could Be a Core i5 Candidate

Ryan Whitwam — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 21:05:40 -0600

HP may have jumped the gun a bit when they listed an “Envy 14-1000” on a support page recently. The Envy line of laptops currently come in 13 and 15-inch varieties. The PCs bear a striking resemblance to Apple’s MacBook Pro line with chiclet keys and large trackpads. The Envy 13 packs a Core 2 chip, while the Envy 15 is equipped with a Core i7. Might we see a Core i5 in the new Envy 14? It certainly would fit nicely in the lineup.

No specs were actually listed on the support page. Mobile Core i5 CPUs are expected to make the scene in the first quarter of next year. So, watch for an Envy 14 announcement around then.

Acer: We're Prepared for a Price War with HP

Paul Lilly — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 09:46:29 -0500

We've been talking a lot about Acer lately, and that's because Acer has been doing a lot of talking of its own. The OEM's been pounding its chest like Kevin Garnett after an 'and-one' and talking smack to Dell, HP, and anyone else who stands in its way. And now the OEM is saying it's fully prepared to take on HP in a bit of a pricing war, which comes just a day after Acer said it feels confident it will ship 40 million notebooks in 2010.

According to news and rumor site DigiTimes, HP has already kicked off some pretty fierce price competition in a few designated markets, which includes sub-$300 models in the U.S. Acer's ever talkative chairman JT Wang said his company will not only follow suit, but plans to one-up HP by aggressively marketing its netbook and ultra-thin segments, both of which are areas HP is a little weaker in.

Beyond 2010, Wang said the global netbook market is on track to reach 350 million units, and we're a bit surprised Acer didn't say it plans to capture 349 million of them.

Let the price wars begin.

Maximum PC hp RSS Feed

HP Expands Data Center Products, Doubles Its Blade Server Density

Shareholders Slap 3Com with Class Action Lawsuit

HP Acquires 3Com in $2.7 Billion Maneuver

HP Beefs Up SMB Security

We're Giving Away a HP ENVY 13 Notebook!

HP 2709m

Meaty, beaty, big, and bouncy

<< Back to the Monitor Index

Acer H235H

Asus VH242HL-P

Gateway FHX2300

LG W2353V-PF

NEC MultiSync EA241WM

Samsung P2370HD

ViewSonic VX2433wm

HP Envy 14 Comes Well Equipped, Could Be a Core i5 Candidate

Acer: We're Prepared for a Price War with HP