HP Pavilion dv6 and Pavilion dv7 review: first look

Monday, May 16th, 2011

It’s not often we get too excited about mid-range laptops, but HP’s makeover of its Pavilion dv6 and dv7 series laptops has just made our hearts skip a beat. With its all-new brushed aluminium chassis and a selection of Sandy Bridge processors, the Pavilion takes more than a little inspiration from HP’s Envy series.

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HP Veer review: first look

Monday, February 14th, 2011

Following the heady excitement of LG’s 3D extravaganza, moving on to HP’s tiny Veer might seem a bit of a comedown, but far from it. Of the three devices HP showed-off this morning, it’s the one that had the biggest “oooh” factor.

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HP TouchPad review: first look

Monday, February 14th, 2011

After its announcement last week, this is the first opportunity we’ve had for a hands-on with HP’s WebOS-equipped TouchPad. If you haven’t had the chance to check out the news story covering the announcement, the core details are pretty straightforward.

The TouchPad is a 10in tablet, with a resolution of 1,024 x 768, running a tablet-optimised version of webOS, the mobile operating system HP inherited when it acquired Palm. Under the hood is a meaty dual-core 1.2GHz Qualcomm 8060 processor, there’s a 1.3-megapixel webcam on the front for making video calls with (but no camera on the rear), and HP will be selling the device in 16GB and 32GB versions. Initially only the Wi-Fi version will be available, but 3G-enabled versions will follow soon after.

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The worst tech decisions of 2010

Friday, December 31st, 2010

There have been some stunningly good tech decisions in 2010: Amazon’s shrewd Kindle price cut and Microsoft’s (long overdue) decision to bash the nails into Windows Mobile’s coffin, to name but two.

But we’re not here to champion the champions, or lavish praise on the sensible: if you can’t wage bitter recriminations during the festive period, when can you? So, here we present the worst tech decisions of 2010.

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First look: HP Envy 14 Beats edition

Wednesday, September 29th, 2010

We’ve been waiting to get our hands on HP’s Envy laptops for what seems like an eternity, and now HP, ever the tease, has allowed us a brief fling with its latest addition, the Envy 14 Beats Edition.

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What next for HP?

Wednesday, August 11th, 2010

The IT industry and Wall Street were both rocked this week by the resignation of HP CEO Mark Hurd after he was caught fiddling his expenses and concealing a relationship with a female contractor.

The criticisms levelled at Hurd over his tenure as CEO include that of stifling innovation in favour of making money. However, since he took the reins in 2005, HP’s market value has more than doubled to roughly $100bn, so those are some big shoes to fill. To quote Motley Fool analyst Rick Munarriz: “Outside of Steve Jobs at Apple, it’s hard to imagine a CEO that is more important to his company than Mark Hurd to Hewlett Packard. He did a massive turnaround job.”

Like me, you’ve probably read the coverage with interest. However, the real talking point now is where does HP go from here?

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Do you care about environmentally friendly companies?

Monday, May 24th, 2010

Last week myself and several other journalists attended a briefing held by Kyocera, and, once we’d eaten the complimentary sandwiches and made cooing noises over a couple of new printers, we were pointed towards the numerous posters and PowerPoint slides containing the company’s inevitable green message.

Amid all of the targets, awards and earnest promises, though, I detected plenty of of cynicism. Not from the journalists, but from the employees giving the presentation. Apparently, Kyocera launched its “environmental messaging” back in 1992 but, apparently, back then “no-one gave a crap” – so the scheme was left to fade away.

We were then told that it was revived in 2001 as environmental issues became more important – or, as a Kyocera representative told us, “before green crap was fashionable”. It’s an odd attitude to take, especially since the firm’s executives would surely say that green policies are central to its success. (more…)

A5 paper puts my printer on a go-slow

Tuesday, April 13th, 2010

In the realms of technology in the average office, printers are undoubtedly the most bizarre, quirky, and deeply strange devices known to mankind. I accept that tape drives are in a world of pain all of their own, but we do our best to ignore them on the grounds of maintaining some sort of sanity. So printers it is.

For the past few years, I’ve had an HP Color LaserJet 5500HDTN printer in my office (HP’s spelling of ‘color’, not mine). It’s a monster, doing A3 double-sided and having five paper trays and a hard disk. It has lasted well, and produced consistently high-quality copies, spitting them out at high speed too. That is until this week. I needed to do some printing on A5 paper, so loaded up a tray with 500 sheets. The print job was already on the printer’s own hard disk, so it was a few button presses to get 500 copies underway.

The printer ran like a racehorse until about the twelfth copy, at which point it slowed right down. Instead of the usual twenty-something sheets per minute, I was down to about five. Clearly, something was wrong. There was nothing in the printer log, no errors on the display, nothing visible in the web-server pages.

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The laptop you can only repair if it’s not broken

Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009

I very rarely object to a sexy French voice on my phone. I also feel well-disposed towards people undertaking repairs for me – even if in this case, it wasn’t strictly speaking for me. A friend had left me with their HP nc6400 laptop, and looking over the machine I could see why – various wells and orifices in the underside were filled with something approximating dried-up hot-dog mixed with coffee, and the COA sticker looked as if someone had been playing a lighter flame over it.

Even with these issues, the machine would start up, display the BIOS and then report the hard disk was unwell: or rather, it would start provided I put a battery in it that had been charged in another nc-series laptop. The mains power input didn’t seem very well, either.

So I used the neat service on HP’s website to confirm that this machine was still in warranty and even though the product serial number sticker was gone off the bottom of the machine I recovered the unit serial number from the BIOS screens, and lo and behold: the warranty was still in place.

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PC Pro printer giveaway

Thursday, August 13th, 2009

We get a lot of kit in the PC Pro Labs and, despite what many people assume, it all goes straight back to PR companies and manufacturers when we’re done with our testing. But on very rare occasions there’s a hitch in the supply line.

If you buy this month’s issue of PC Pro (in all good newsagents from today) you’ll find an extensive all-in-one printers Labs on p60, with eight home and seven business devices put through their paces.

Unfortunately, HP could only supply us with two of the three printers we wanted, and after much deliberation we decided the Home section wouldn’t be complete without this major name present – so we went online and bought the Photosmart C7280 ourselves.

Now we’re done with it, rather than leave it under a desk until it’s outdated and worthless we thought we’d find it a home out there in the real world. Obviously, it wouldn’t be right to give it away as an official Competition item in the magazine – after all, the packaging is open and we’ve been through a few sets of cartridges so it doesn’t have a full tank of ink. But aside from that it’s in perfect working order.

*** COMPETITION NOW CLOSED ***

So all you have to do is email your name and address to me at davidb@pcpro.co.uk before 5pm on Monday 17th August and I’ll pick a winner at random. Good luck!