Hands-on with new HP products

By Digital Trends Staff Published October 25, 2009

Hands-on with new HP products

At the CES show in Las Vegas, most companies target one or two consumer categories. HP – a company that’s just as much a corporate monolith as Microsoft or Intel – is ready for them all.

New products include a new widescreen HP Touchsmart DX9000 22-inch with several new tweaks to the touch interface – including picture rotation and new interface options for flicking through photos. Call it the kitchen-user segment. The touch-enabled TX2 notebook is equally impressive with finger-touch controls on a convertible tablet form factor. The DV2, a much lighter and sleek notebook with a metallic sheen, has a Blu-Ray drive and is one of the thinnest notebooks the company has ever released, yet it’s not a netbook for the tween crowd and would appeal to power users. HP has tweens covered as well: in hands-on tests with the Mini 2140, it’s obvious that HP has targeted casual users who do not need to write novels or create engineering plans.

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The big news, though, is the new HP MediaSmart EX485 and EX487, which include many new enhancements to Windows Home Server such as a control panel that runs in Windows or Mac. In fact, the product won a best of show at Macworld this week, even though it runs a Windows product.

HP has stylish notebooks designed specifically for women, new gaming desktops and notebook, and an interesting art design program (with help from MTV as a partner) where kids design a notebook print which will be used on an actual model at some point in the future.

Check out our video on the HP IQ800 Series TouchSmart PC

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