By Craig Zammit
SYDNEY: HP has announced its movement into the realm of on-the-go consumer electronics devices with a spate of new products spanning printing, imaging, computing and digital entertainment solutions.
“Our move into mobile entertainment is really about understanding that home entertainment is highly important and that there will be an aspect of people moving outside the home and still wanting to have their content,” HP head of consumer business, Guyon Collins told Current.com.au.
“People want to share their movies, photos and music not only at home, but on-the-go. More and more we are going to see people sharing content and I think we would be naïve to think they’re not going to be moving that out of the home,” he said.
HP will focus its business into four core areas, including digital photography, digital home, home office and entertainment on-the-go, with new products such as the HP Media Vault (MV2010 300GB RRP $599, MV2020 500GB RRP $799) leading the mobility charge.
The Vault will be able to simultaneously stream data to multiple sources across a configured home network, it can expand to one terabyte capacity, it allows automatic data back-up, and it is compatible with all Windows-, Mac- and Linux-based PCs.
“It’s all about a really safe library that’s an access point both in the home and outside the home to your content, so it’s got to be secure.”
Being able to access content ‘outside the home’ could also point to potential remote access capabilities further down the line, which Collins hinted isn’t out of the question.
“We’re looking into making sure we can dial into the home,” he said.
Also unveiled was a new range of iPAQ handheld travel companions, which combine GPS navigation capabilities with those of a pocket PC.
The iPAQ RX5765 (RRP $799) and the iPAQ RX5965 (RRP $899), available 15 November, come with built-in omni-directional GPS antenna, TomTom Navigator 6.0 maps pre-installed, secure SD/SDIO expansion slot, 3.5-inch QVGA touch screen, WLAN and Bluetooth connectivity and will include WorldMate, Windows Media Player 10 and Microsoft Outlook software.
A new line-up of HP notebooks, available in October, was also launched, including the Pavilion DV9007TX (RRP $2,999), DV6113TX (RRP $2,499) and DV2040TX (RRP $1,999) as well as the Compaq Presario V3020 (RRP $1,699), V6002 (RRP $1,999) and the 12-inch B1916 (RRP $1,999).
Also unveiled was a range of printers including the HP Photosmart photo printer A716 (RRP $499) and A516 (RRP $199), the all-in-one HP Photosmart C5180 (RRP $349), C6180 (RRP $499) and C7180 (RRP $599), the D6160 (RRP $199), D7160 (RRP $249) and D7360 (RRP $349) as well as the HP Deskjet F380 all-in-one printer (RRP $89), all available from October.