HP jumped into the Ultrabook game with its business-focused Folio 13, but the company's first foray into the consumer field is the product that caught all the buzz at CES. Like every Ultrabook, the super-sleek Envy 14 Spectre sports a Sandy Bridge processor and an SSD, but it also packs a higher display resolution than most of its competitors and Gorilla Glass on, well, pretty much everything. Why are we talking about it a month after CES? Because the Spectre just became available for preorder.
Some interesting revelations are coming out of the court battle between Hewlett-Packard and Oracle. At issue is Oracle's decision to stop supporting Intel's Itanium platform based on claims the processors are nearing end-of-life (EOL) status, the timing of which is suspect. Oracle made the decision to ditch Itanium after hiring former HP CEO Mark Hurd, which itself prompted a legal battle and subsequent settlement. Not long after, Oracle said it was ditching Itanium, HP cried foul, and a big legal mess ensued. Some of it was resolved last night.
Break out the Apple cider if you live in/near Cupertino, California, and toast your hometown PC representatives for dethroning Hewlett-Packard as the worldwide client PC vendor in the fourth quarter of 2011, but only if you're willing to include tablet shipments in the overall tally. If you are, then congrats, Apple's iPad put your home team over the top and was three times more responsible for the achievement than Macs.
Former Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein has officially left HP, effective today. Rubinstein became CEO of Palm in 2009 and led the company’s push with webOS, eventually selling the company to HP in 2010. When asked if he had any immediate plans, Rubinstein said he was going to take a well-deserved rest after working on webOS for the last few years. And what a last few years they have been.
True to its word, HP has officially started 
Hewlett-Packard has agreed to pay a civil penalty of $425,000 to settle allegations that it knowingly failed to report to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) that certain lithium-ion battery packs contained a defect or otherwise created an unreasonable risk or serious injury or death, the CPSC announced this week. The battery packs in question are prone to overheating and pose a fire and burn hazard.
Hewlett-Packard isn't quite ready to turn its back on the netbook sector the way some OEMs have done, but apparently it's content to relegate these once uber popular PCs to education and business markets. HP's new Mini 1104 is a 10.1-inch netbook that looks like any other, only it's rocking a an Intel Atom N2600 dual-core processor (1.6GHz) inside.
Even though the form factor is new, throw everything you know about Intel's Ultrabook concept out the window. Well, almost everything. Hewlett-Packard just unveiled its Envy 14 Spectre, a premium consumer Ultrabook coated with Gorilla Glass on the lid, display, palmrest, and HP ImagePad, and infused with a white glove treatment that includes a concierge service. Seriously.
Most vendors are using the upcoming Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas as a launchpad for new products, but a select few are tipping their hand ahead of the convention. Hewlett-Packard is one of them, presumably because it's saving CES for its big 
From what we've been seeing and hearing so far, this year's Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas is going to serve a heavy dose of Ultrabooks to attendees and could emerge as the prevailing theme, much in the same way 3D dominated last year's show. Hewlett-Packard is getting a head start and has released a short teaser video of its upcoming Spectre Ultrabook, presenting it as if it's going to be the Holy Grail of laptops.Connect with MaximumPC
Featured Content
We introduce Intel's latest class of tablet killers and review 4 of the first Ultra...
Where have all the memorable videogame enemies gone?
This month's issue
Feature
11 Hardware Hacks
Feature
Overclock Your CPU
How-To
Supercharge Your Smartphone
Build It
A Powerful $830 Rig
Most Commented Articles
Latest Max PC Tweets
- maximumpc: Here's what the @horse_ebooks bookmarklet (http://t.co/brE6898A) does to Maximum PC: http://t.co/Y6OhO6zk10 hours 49 min ago
- maximumpc: Microsoft on Patents: Can't We All Just Get Along? http://t.co/g0vginvG13 hours 10 min ago
- maximumpc: Google Drive Cloud Storage: Is Google Preparing To Muscle In On Dropbox? http://t.co/lCWzeYmS13 hours 34 min ago
