By Craig Zammit
SYDNEY: Hewlett-Packard (HP) today announced the launch of the HP Pavilion Media Center M8190 PC and the HP Pavilion A6160A Home PC, which it claims is the computer industry’s first consumer desktop PCs with Intel Core 2 Quad processors.
Intel’s Core 2 Quad has four processor cores on the one chip, and delivers a boost in performance in multitasking environments over the popular Core 2 Duo generation, which has just two cores.
“With our new power-packed home PCs, HP is redefining home entertainment,” said HP Australia market development manager – consumer PCs, Manpal Jagpal.
“HP has brought to market an innovative range of home PCs with leading edge technology that are both affordable and easy to use.
“The intuitive and stylish design features combined with the Intel Core2 Quad processors ensures a seamless entertainment experience for our customers,” he said.
The HP Pavilion A6160A Home PC (RRP $2,399) features a 19-inch TFT monitor, Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate, 320GB serial ATA hard drive, 2,048MB memory, HDMI output, 15-in-1 digital media reader and is 7.1 surround sound ready.
While the Pavilion Media Center M8190A PC (RRP $3,699) features the same specifications as the A6160A while also boasting a single PAL TV tuner, wireless 802.11 b/g LAN, HD DVD player and a 500GB serial ATA hard drive.
“The new range of PCs make the most of highly threaded applications – whether for creating multimedia, annihilating gaming enemies, or running compute-intensive applications at one time,” said HP in a statement today.
“Budding directors can now capture and create professional and home videos in high-definition; compress, share and store their videos in less time; as well as share these videos with clients or family and friends on the removable HP Pocket Media Drive or HP Personal Media Drive.
“Built with Windows Vista Ultimate and NVIDIA GeForce 8 series graphics card with HD-DVD and HDMI support, the new HP home PCs fulfill the promise of entertainment extravagance,” the statement said.
Both the A6160A and the M8190A are available immediately.
The release of consumer-oriented quad-core PCs follows a significant price cut announced by Intel last month which saw the price of its Core 2 Quad lineup almost halved.