Networked homes, HP-style

Hewlett-Packard recently launched its latest line of desktop and laptop computers and printers against the breathtaking backdrop of the Forbidden City, the Temple of Heaven and the Great Wall in Beijing, China.

Amid this backdrop of ancient stone and tradition in the world’s biggest emerging consumer market, HP also presented its technology breakthroughs in photo printers and presented its vision of an IT-enabled home with the slogan "HP in Touch."

Richard Walker, senior vice president for HP’s consumer PC global business unit, sets the scene for the HP-computerized home, complete with an Ethernet connecting HP’s new slimline PCs in children’s or teenagers’ rooms to their parents’ full-sized Pavilion PCs or laptops and the PC in the living room. Yes, the living room.

This home computer network, Walker says, will be connected to the home entertainment system (TV, DVD player, audio player) so files like digital videos and photos and MP3s can be shared through the home network, where shared files will be stored.

"I actually have the prototype at home," Walker says with a grin. He also discloses that HP is in the business of manufacturing television sets, "though our market right now is the northern United States."

Because HP "is also a data storage company," Walker says HP has come up with a portable, hot-swappable hard drive called the HP Pocket Media Drive (PMD), which enable users to carry their data with them for easy data security, sharing and access.

The PMD is 2.5 inches wide and weighs less than 300 grams, but it can pack 80 gigabytes of data into its slim frame – that is about 27,000 photos, 18,000 hours of music, 52 hours of video in fair mode and 24 hours of video in best mode.

The PMD also has a big brother that can store 120 gigabytes of data. Both versions of the PMD have an HDD speed of 5400 rpm, an eight-megabyte cache, USB 2.0, and they both support Windows XP Home or XP Pro SP2. The estimated prices for these babies in Asia are $169 for the 80GB PMD and $229 for the 120GB version. They will be available in Asia next month.

Getting together in cyberspace

So why come up with a home IT network? Because "households increasingly own multiple PCs and laptops, creating islands of photos, music, videos and other files," HP says in its white paper.

"The amount of digital content in the home is dramatically increasing due to the continued adoption of home networking, emerging high-definition content standards and the continued digitization of all forms of content – documents, photos, music and video," HP adds.

Given this huge shift to digitization, HP says the amount of content stored on PCs, set-top boxes and other electronic devices in a typical networked home is projected to increase "from 800 gigabytes today to over four terabytes by 2010."

According to HP, the "consolidation of these disparate islands into a centralized location provides a solution" to the issue of needing a network server that is perennially on by "adding a network storage device to the home network (which) can offer an aggregated set of files to everyone utilizing the network."

Files that a user does not want to share on the network, such as tax documents and other sensitive data, can also be secured or kept outside of the network.

So how does Walker like his home network? "I love it. I can share files with my family and backing up data is a breeze because the network automatically backs up the files you upload to it. It makes home computing more of a group activity than a loner’s activity."

The home network solution HP came up with, he adds, "is a very versatile solution. My family has different patterns of computer use and the network allows us to share without changing our patterns."

Hon-Cheng Chin, HP vice president for consumer products and mobile business group business unit, says, "The user experience is very important. We do our best to ensure out-of-the-box ease of use for all our products and to provide the best after-sales service we can."

Delicious hardware

Unveiled at the HP launch at the Commune by the Great Wall in Kempinski, Beijing were four sleek new notebook computers: the Compaq Presario B1900 notebook, which is "Designed in Asia for Asia (DIAFA)"; the HP Pavilion dv6100 series entertainment notebook PC, which comes with its own remote control, Altec-Lansing speakers, touch-controls that respond to the enzymes in human skin, and a 15.4-inch widescreen LCD; the AMD-based Compaq Presario V6100; and the piece de resistance – the HP Pavilion dv9000, which comes with a cradle that enables users to expand the notebook’s maximum 240-gigabyte hard drive capacity to about 500 gigabytes as well as a 17-inch widescreen LCD and a remote control.

All the laptops, except the Presario V6100, ship out with Intel’s Core 2 Duo processor and provide 64-bit computing power. Prices for these notebooks vary from market to market, so HP has not unveiled the pricing specifications for these notebooks yet.

Power-packed and ready to use out of the box, these notebooks are also beautiful, some of them even have gold-flecked casings and the layout of their USB and other connection ports not only contributes to their overall look, they are also designed not to get in their users’ way.

As for desktops, HP has come out with its Pavilion slimline PC, which takes up only half the footprint of a regular desktop but has the same computing power, speed and storage capacity as its bigger siblings.

There are also the Pavilion Home PC with its nine-in-one Digital Media Reader (DMR) and DVD drive, and the Pavilion Media Center PC, which offers up to 300GB of storage, a TV tuner, DVD drive, jukebox, photo studio and gaming machine "in one handy box" that comes with its own remote control.

All three PCs allow users to personalize the silkscreen-quality CDs and DVDs they burn with HP’s Lightscribe technology and they are all powered by dual core technology from chipmakers Intel and AMD.

To top off the eye candy, HP also launched its new 19-inch and 20-inch widescreen LCD monitors and stick-on skins for its new PCs’ CPUs. Each purchase of a computer entitles the customer to free, re-stickable skins and users may make their own skins by connecting to www.hp.com and sending in their designs for conversion into skins. Each skin set sells for about $39 online. For photo sharing, check out HP’s www.snapfish.com site.

Printing without a computer

HP’s new line of photo printers, which make use of the company’s scalable printing technology, was also launched. These printers vary in size from the transistor radio-sized Photosmart Compact Photo printers (the A616 and the A516), which provide a USB port where you can jack in a regular or a Bluetooth USB, to the Photosmart D7360 Photo Printer that can produce print lab-quality photos up to 8.5 x 24 inches in size – with or without borders.

These printers come with 2.4-inch LCD screens and Photosmart technology that allow users to edit and print photographs directly from their digital cameras, memory sticks, SD cards and USB flash drives without having to turn on a PC. The printers’ LCD screens can accommodate up to nine photo images and are touch-screens as well, providing better ease of use.

They are touted as the fastest photo printers in the world and can churn out pictures in 12 seconds, an improvement over HP’s record of 14 seconds per photo last year.

They also come with a PhotoFix button that allows for one-touch cropping, zoom and red-eye removal, along with an automatic photo correction feature that users may shut off if they wish.

These printers also make use of individual cartridges for their Vivera photo inks and regular inks, giving users the flexibility of replacing only the cartridges that run out, or converting the larger photo printers into document printers as the need arises.

They also make use of HP’s Auto Sense technology by reading the barcodes on HP’s photo paper, which indicate if the paper is properly loaded in the printer or not.

Also launched were HP’s all-in-one C3180 printer, scanner and copier and the C4180 all-in-one, the Photosmart D5160 photo printer and copier. The prices of the printers range between $99 and $149.

World-renowned photographer and best-selling author Douglas Kirkland was also at the launch, pitching for HP’s professional-level printers. Known for his iconic photographs of Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn and John Lennon, among many, many other celebrities, Kirkland believes that "HP has given me the best photo quality in a printer. I can’t ask for more."

Christopher Morgan, senior vice president for HP’s imaging and printing group in the Asia-Pacific and Japan, says HP is "investing more in interface software and the image pipeline between cameras and printers," a development that now includes work with camera and cellphone manufacturers in light of the booming market in camera phones.

"We continue to innovate in image processing technology as well as continue to communicate and invest in our markets," Morgan says. "(HP) is getting a lot of growth with our lower-priced items and we are working with our retailers and (printer ink) cartridge stores." HP is coming out with pricing schemes of $6 per cartridge for its high-end printers, he adds.

According to Morgan, HP’s all-in-ones "are now up to date in scanning ability and we have very strong solutions in the commercial scanning space."

Steve Solomon, HP’s vice president for supplies in the Asia-Pacific and Japan, boasts of "growing a higher market share," with HP experiencing "triple-digit growth" now that the prices of its printers and printer supplies have come down.