HP announces its new consumer laptop lineup

One of the biggest news from last week as HP's announcement of its new consumer laptops, right before the Holiday season kicks in (a popular strategy by most players in the industry to boost their year-end sales).  Starting from the bottom, the Mini 311 is a netbook with a difference.  The oh-so-traditional Intel chipset is replaced by NVIDIA ION chipset so that your netbook doesn't run out of steam while handling graphics intensive tasks such as video editing, casual gaming, streaming HD video.  Then there's also the Pavilion dm3, HP's maiden entry into the increasingly-popular CULV (Consumer Ultra Low Voltage) processors.  Intel introduced CULVs early this year to bridge the gap between the mainstream voltage Core 2 Duo processors (high performance, moderate battery life) and Atom processors (low performance, high battery life), thus providing near-to-mainstream laptop performance with enhanced battery life (around 8hrs) to provide all-day computing.  But perhaps the most noteworthy amongst all were the ENVY13 and ENVY15.  ENVY is HP's new brand that culminates the best of Voodoo lineage (remember HP bought the premium boutique gaming outfit back in 2006) with HP's impressive product offerings.  Both ENVYs feature impressively thin frames unibody aluminum chassis (carved out of a single block of aluminum through a complex industrial process).  The ENVY lineup competes head2head with the likes of Apple MacBook Pro and Sony.


The new products will ship with Windows 7.  Mini 311 will retail at $399 while the dm3 goes from $549.  And the drool-worthy ENVY series will set you back by $1,699 (ENVY13) and $1,799 (ENVY15) respectively.  Looks like the folks at Palo Alto have been really busy gearing up for the Holiday season.


More links
Mini 311: http://blog.laptopmag.com/hands-on-with-the-hp-mini-311-ion-netbbok
dm3: http://blog.laptopmag.com/the-hp-pavilion-dm3-promises-brushed-metal-long-battery-life
ENVY 13 and 15: http://blog.laptopmag.com/hands-on-with-hps-drool-worthy-envy-13-and-envy-15

Image courtesy: Laptop Mag