HP rolls out new products
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Hewlett-Packard, its boardroom leaks apparently not affecting its product development, spilled out several new computers at a New York press briefing yesterday.
Hewlett-Packard, its boardroom leaks apparently not affecting its product development, spilled out several new computers at a New York press briefing yesterday.
The day after Intel Corp. announced it would lay off 10,500 employees, HP'one of the microprocessor supplier's biggest customers'showed off notebook PCs incorporating the latest high-performance Intel Core 2 Duo processors. Heading the lineup is the HP Compaq 9400, a 17-inch model for which HP is claiming up to four hours of battery life.
HP's notebook business has been growing in a generally flat PC market, according to analysts.
HP officials also stressed security and lifecycle management in integrated communications.
Its nc6400 will be able to incorporate built-in radios for CDMA 2000 1xEVDO or UMTS/HSPDA broadband networks. Matt Wagner, HP's senior product marketing manager for mobile computing, said a built-in broadband option is superior to a removable PC card supplied by a third party.
The integration means a better-performing radio, he said. While a PC card approach might appear to be a better hedge against obsolescence, Wagner said network capabilities are still years from being able to outstrip the bandwidth the radio chips can handle.
On the security and manageability front, HP officials said new desktop PCs will incorporate Trusted Platform Module 1.2 embedded security chips. And they will ship with HP ProtectTools, a software security suite, preinstalled. Some models of the HP Compaq dc7700, dc5700 and dc5750 will also ship preloaded with a suite of HP remote management tools. The dc5750 is equipped with any of several AMD64 processors from Advanced Micro Devices.
An HP partner, Altiris Corp. of Lindon, Utah, supplies software components in HP's remote management suite. At the HP event, the company said its software would be able to take advantage of new Intel chip technology known as vPro. VPro is part of Core 2 Duo chips, and it includes an area of tamper-proof, nonvolatile memory to which metadata about a PC's posture can be written, such as a bit count.
Mark Magee, Altiris' director of alliance partner marketing, said the company's asset management software can write to that RAM. If something about the computer changes on boot, the Altiris management console can sense it and invoke rules, such as restricting the changed machine's network rights.
HP is also enhancing a federal bestseller, it's xw9400 workstation. The dual AMD Opteron machine will have 56 lanes of PCI I/O, up from 40, and liquid cooling that allow for quieter fan operation, according to Patrick Duba, U.S. workstation business manager.
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