HP goes for bling with new super-thin, copper-accented Spectre notebook

While taking up minimal space, it promises to deliver on battery life and power.

Read the whole story

 

[Deleted member 192806]

quietnine[/url]":dd05xp10]

JustQuestions[/url]":dd05xp10]

Abhi Beckert[/url]":dd05xp10]

solomonrex[/url]":dd05xp10]Even Apple has fake gold phones and is moving away from brohaus west coast design, haven't you noticed?

Apple has aluminium anodized in a variety of colours. It's not "fake", rather is required to stop it from corroding like this:

Save it.

Judging by the comments and responses to comments, Ars viewers don't appreciate or know much about materials...

Still giggling over "CNC aluminum" myself.

I could be wrong, but i don't think you were down voted for pointing out that CNC isnt a type of aluminum, rather, that you came off both a little condescending and as implying that the author was "an ignorant person." the latter was indirect, but it could've been worded a bit better. constructive criticism is welcome, but the comment mob tends to downvote rudeness (unless its a political topic, in which case the voting system seems to be used more for silencing disagreement no matter how politely worded the opposition).

"CNCed aluminum" would have worked.

 

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

neodorian[/url]":3i23algx]I'm not personally one to pay extra for "bling" or extraneous polish on a computer but I am sort of curious how the copper will look after a while and if it will oxidize. The accents might actually look kind of cool once they aren't completely shiny like the images (assuming it's not coated or treated to stop oxidizing).

(example)

Again, not interested in buying this laptop to get it, but in terms of pure aesthetics, some copper accents might look fairly nice once they've developed a bit of patina.

I'm very fond of the look of copper in the right contexts; but the one tricky thing, in a users-will-get-their-filthy-hands-on-it context, is that 'patina' doesn't always stop when you want it to.

First you get nice surface patterns; but eventually you start getting assorted copper salts and compounds forming and crystallizing and migrating into the interior of the system whenever it gets humid. Humans don't have acid blood like xenomorphs or anything; but the combination of salt water sweat and assorted lipid filth is pretty tough on many materials.

 

[soulsabr]

flerchin[/url]":2ktvffyw]Is pretty. 8GB max RAM is a bit of a disappointment.

A bit?

 

[Valkyrie Millia]

“Bling” isn’t really my aesthetic preference, but I do welcome more designed notebooks and tablets.

I wouldn’t buy an hp anything no matter how well designed because their typical logo is not cool and often way too large and prominent.

The redesigned abstracted hp logo on the Spectre is excellent. They need to lose that circle logo yesterday.

 

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

MacCruiskeen[/url]":2k78ucnx]The other day a got an offer for a 'luxury card' in the mail. A credit card where the gold card was literally a gold-plated, stainless-steel card. The fee was $1000 a year. Now I know what you use that for. I mean, it's really like some cartoony thing from a 1930s movie. Does anyone actually go for this crap?

The Gilded Age is back!

 

[rogifan]

quietnine[/url]":2f0yxknc]

JustQuestions[/url]":2f0yxknc]

Abhi Beckert[/url]":2f0yxknc]

solomonrex[/url]":2f0yxknc]Even Apple has fake gold phones and is moving away from brohaus west coast design, haven't you noticed?

Apple has aluminium anodized in a variety of colours. It's not "fake", rather is required to stop it from corroding like this:

Save it.

Judging by the comments and responses to comments, Ars viewers don't appreciate or know much about materials...

Still giggling over "CNC aluminum" myself.

I could be wrong, but i don't think you were down voted for pointing out that CNC isnt a type of aluminum, rather, that you came off both a little condescending and as implying that the author was "an ignorant person." the latter was indirect, but it could've been worded a bit better. constructive criticism is welcome, but the comment mob tends to downvote rudeness (unless its a political topic, in which case the voting system seems to be used more for silencing disagreement no matter how politely worded the opposition).

Tech Crunch also used CNC aluminum in their puff piece so it must be coming directly from HP. That's embarrassing. Sounds like HP marketing is just throwing together words that Apple uses in a desperate attempt to say "see we can do what Apple does too!"

 

[illhavethesteak]

JustQuestions[/url]":2pli01s7]

Judging by the comments and responses to comments, Ars viewers don't appreciate or know much about materials...

Still giggling over "CNC aluminum" myself.

Referring to CNC machining as just "CNC" is pretty common. It may be somewhat colloquial and new to you, but it's not unheard of.

Or to be honest you could just call it aluminum and skip the absurd, meaningless prefix.

Do you think that machining is the only way to process aluminum? I have suppliers that stamp it, die cast it, and forge it that would disagree with you. You may assume that all laptops are machined aluminum, but if the author just called it "aluminum" other readers may wonder about the process, so adding 3 letters to the story is a useful bit of info that you can just ignore since you are apparently already an authority on the subject.

 

[kehcorpz]

SharpieFiend[/url]":2s6ljvw7]

Belisarius[/url]":2s6ljvw7]Wow, talk about a total lack of taste. Looks like the Donald Trump Edition™

If it were the Trump Edition™ then the accents would be brass. So much brass...

Or immigrant detection and a comb over keyboard cover.

 

[Deleted member 448645]

Bicentennial Douche[/url]":2q2zj4xv]

HP also teamed up with designers Tord Boontje and Jess Hannah to make two super-fancy, limited edition versions of the Spectre. Boontje's design is coated in midnight blue with floral swirls and Swarovski crystals on top that are accented in 18k gold.

"Swarovski crystals: When you need to make anything just a bit more tacky and gaudy." (tm)

I live that every day. My girlfriend found an old (large) dinosaur toy I had. It was like an Anklosaurus but spikes on it's back. She spray painted it black and put a genuine Swarovski crystal (got a bunch free) on the tip of each spike. Then the sun hits it, it's a dino disco in my apartment. I wish I had a picture on hand. It's tacky, gaudy, and awesome.

 

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

nehinks[/url]":3uly9tku]

fivemack[/url]":3uly9tku]

Bicentennial Douche[/url]":3uly9tku]

HP also teamed up with designers Tord Boontje and Jess Hannah to make two super-fancy, limited edition versions of the Spectre. Boontje's design is coated in midnight blue with floral swirls and Swarovski crystals on top that are accented in 18k gold.

"Swarovski crystals: When you need to make anything just a bit more tacky and gaudy." (tm)

Don't diss Swarovski; the money they make from bling enthusiasts pays for the development of the best high-end binoculars I've ever used.

Holy crap those are expensive binoculars! And here I always associated Swarovski as just a bejeweling company.

Swarovski is actually an outfit with nontrivial expertise in engineering assorted specialty glass materials with a variety of tricky and exotic properties. Humans being what they are, though, the product they've become known for is 'the glass that looks kinda-diamond-ish at a price low enough to garishly overuse!'.

It's sort of like being an outfit that supplies aerospace and scientific ceramics; but is best known for providing the material for Precious Moments(tm) figurines.

 

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Abhi Beckert[/url]":ahr5fbk2]

solomonrex[/url]":ahr5fbk2]Even Apple has fake gold phones and is moving away from brohaus west coast design, haven't you noticed?

Apple has aluminium anodized in a variety of colours. It's not "fake", rather is required to stop it from corroding like this:

Sine you have to anodize anyway, why not add some colour? The dark grey MacBook is especially nice in my opinion.

It's nothing at all like this, which has actual copper serving no purpose except "bling" and weight an an ultra portable that's already heavier than it should be.

I wonder what the real world battery life on the i7 is as well. 9.5 hours doesn't sound right for a 10mm thick device with huge fan vents.

Battery life is, certainly, the perennial lie in laptop marketing; but it is worth remembering that 'i7' has become a rather...flexible...designation in Intel's lineup(it does get the best GPUs, fewest features arbitrarily disabled, and often the highest 'turbo boost' speeds; but Intel's focus on power and thermals means that i7s can easily spend most of their lives twiddling around at i3 or lower frequencies); and while sometimes huge fan vents mean epic amounts of hot air; they can also mean that someone has (mercifully) decided to allocate enough cooling capacity that it won't be necessary for some teeny fan to whine horribly, and everything can stay nice and slow(in the same way that desktops will use a 120 or 140 where a 60mm would do; because bigger fans can stay nice and slow and quiet and move the same amount of air).

 

[Hopefully Smarter]

is this the machine that the HP marketing guys said would be the most innovative laptop on the market?

 

[nutela]

I applaud the hardware, but with it there should also be beautiful insides, like the OS. I would love for BeOS or something pro and snappy to be still around...

 

[ars diavoli]

Needs moar steampunk.

 

[Zan Lynx]

nutela[/url]":2tckuvfe]I applaud the hardware, but with it there should also be beautiful insides, like the OS. I would love for BeOS or something pro and snappy to be still around...

You say that, but I doubt you would actually like it. Try Haiku in a VM. I did. I was all "Yay BeOS!" but after about 10 minutes you realize Linux Gnome is better.

 

[Xenocrates]

illhavethesteak[/url]":5pdkdpey]

JustQuestions[/url]":5pdkdpey]

Judging by the comments and responses to comments, Ars viewers don't appreciate or know much about materials...

Still giggling over "CNC aluminum" myself.

Referring to CNC machining as just "CNC" is pretty common. It may be somewhat colloquial and new to you, but it's not unheard of.

Or to be honest you could just call it aluminum and skip the absurd, meaningless prefix.

Do you think that machining is the only way to process aluminum? I have suppliers that stamp it, die cast it, and forge it that would disagree with you. You may assume that all laptops are machined aluminum, but if the author just called it "aluminum" other readers may wonder about the process, so adding 3 letters to the story is a useful bit of info that you can just ignore since you are apparently already an authority on the subject.

Being a fellow who works with CNC's, you mostly hear "machined" over CNC, as no one in their right mind is going to use manual machining for production (If they do, they will bleat about it being artisinal and hand crafted), and straight NC is unlikely to be used in any serious capacity these days (Think https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacquard_loom , rather than a machine tool) of "Let's put an Arduino in everything." CNC doesn't tell you a whole lot about the process honestly, as it could be waterjet, lasercut, plasma cut, or in the case of the trash can, turned.

Now, here's the rub of it. CNC machined parts are superior to other machining processes, as CNC's are backlash compensated, and thus can use climb milling, while most conventional machine tools cannot. They are also more consistent. I personally would prefer to see the parts and processes referred to by the most relevant descriptors (In the case of apple that would be the machining process (Climb milled almost certainly), the alloy, (7000 series in the new iPhones, meaning a Zinc alloying agent, giving it very nice strength), and the finishing (Anodized, likely class 2 Type II, rather than the Type III Class 2 that I would prefer), however, most of that sounds like useless technobabble to people.

 

[nutela]

Zan Lynx[/url]":34d9plcf]

nutela[/url]":34d9plcf]I applaud the hardware, but with it there should also be beautiful insides, like the OS. I would love for BeOS or something pro and snappy to be still around...

You say that, but I doubt you would actually like it. Try Haiku in a VM. I did. I was all "Yay BeOS!" but after about 10 minutes you realize Linux Gnome is better.

I'm on Mac now, I'd have to take a look, youtube? Don't work for ATC sw company anymore, we had lots of linuxes there, KDE, gnome everybody had their favourite (mine was KDE with FFM).

I have compiled Haiku on real HW several times in the past While we can argue about looks what I really meant was the code, this can also be beautiful. Today I learned more about Health Kit and while being away from Obj-C for a while and flirting with Swift, I still love the language. But truth to be told, BeOS worked way better in some ways than Mac OS X does now, which is not crazy because I liked Leopard's expose better but that's a different topic.

 

[nehinks]

fuzzyfuzzyfungus[/url]":2pjj63nu]

nehinks[/url]":2pjj63nu]

fivemack[/url]":2pjj63nu]

Bicentennial Douche[/url]":2pjj63nu]

HP also teamed up with designers Tord Boontje and Jess Hannah to make two super-fancy, limited edition versions of the Spectre. Boontje's design is coated in midnight blue with floral swirls and Swarovski crystals on top that are accented in 18k gold.

"Swarovski crystals: When you need to make anything just a bit more tacky and gaudy." (tm)

Don't diss Swarovski; the money they make from bling enthusiasts pays for the development of the best high-end binoculars I've ever used.

Holy crap those are expensive binoculars! And here I always associated Swarovski as just a bejeweling company.

Swarovski is actually an outfit with nontrivial expertise in engineering assorted specialty glass materials with a variety of tricky and exotic properties. Humans being what they are, though, the product they've become known for is 'the glass that looks kinda-diamond-ish at a price low enough to garishly overuse!'.

It's sort of like being an outfit that supplies aerospace and scientific ceramics; but is best known for providing the material for Precious Moments(tm) figurines.

Thanks, I learned something today!

 

[JustQuestions]

Xenocrates[/url]":1yhjt7i2]

illhavethesteak[/url]":1yhjt7i2]

JustQuestions[/url]":1yhjt7i2]

Judging by the comments and responses to comments, Ars viewers don't appreciate or know much about materials...

Still giggling over "CNC aluminum" myself.

Referring to CNC machining as just "CNC" is pretty common. It may be somewhat colloquial and new to you, but it's not unheard of.

Or to be honest you could just call it aluminum and skip the absurd, meaningless prefix.

Do you think that machining is the only way to process aluminum? I have suppliers that stamp it, die cast it, and forge it that would disagree with you. You may assume that all laptops are machined aluminum, but if the author just called it "aluminum" other readers may wonder about the process, so adding 3 letters to the story is a useful bit of info that you can just ignore since you are apparently already an authority on the subject.

Being a fellow who works with CNC's, you mostly hear "machined" over CNC, as no one in their right mind is going to use manual machining for production (If they do, they will bleat about it being artisinal and hand crafted), and straight NC is unlikely to be used in any serious capacity these days (Think https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacquard_loom , rather than a machine tool) of "Let's put an Arduino in everything." CNC doesn't tell you a whole lot about the process honestly, as it could be waterjet, lasercut, plasma cut, or in the case of the trash can, turned.

Now, here's the rub of it. CNC machined parts are superior to other machining processes, as CNC's are backlash compensated, and thus can use climb milling, while most conventional machine tools cannot. They are also more consistent. I personally would prefer to see the parts and processes referred to by the most relevant descriptors (In the case of apple that would be the machining process (Climb milled almost certainly), the alloy, (7000 series in the new iPhones, meaning a Zinc alloying agent, giving it very nice strength), and the finishing (Anodized, likely class 2 Type II, rather than the Type III Class 2 that I would prefer), however, most of that sounds like useless technobabble to people.

Right. CNC machining is ubiquitous. Nobody who knows what the fuck they are talking about says anything is "CNC aluminum" if they're trying to give somebody a relevant description of a material.

They might instead refer to the alloy, the temper, or a million other relevant details such as performance specifics.

I'm guessing the author received a pamphlet or some such with the laptop that included as many buzzwords as possible, and she just mindlessly repeated them in the article.

That being said I think your proposition that CNC machining yields "the highest quality" is a bit misleading. The final finish step for high precision parts is grinding, and it's obscenely expensive to setup a production grind operation. In any shop/factory where custom parts are produced, the grinding step is usually done by a manually operated swiss grinding machine. The only exception being of course if you need to make the exact same high precision part over and over and over again, in which case yes, it can be automated and computer controlled.

But even then, a CNC grind operation doesn't yield higher quality than a manual one, it just does it faster and cheaper.

 

[Deleted member 330960]

soulsabr[/url]":7amzrxmx]

flerchin[/url]":7amzrxmx]Is pretty. 8GB max RAM is a bit of a disappointment.

A bit?

8 GigaBytes of disappointment?

 

[eggie]

to ogle at

Ogle or ogle not; there is no "at."

 

[Xenocrates]

JustQuestions[/url]":qrutayod]

Xenocrates[/url]":qrutayod]

illhavethesteak[/url]":qrutayod]

JustQuestions[/url]":qrutayod]

Judging by the comments and responses to comments, Ars viewers don't appreciate or know much about materials...

Still giggling over "CNC aluminum" myself.

Referring to CNC machining as just "CNC" is pretty common. It may be somewhat colloquial and new to you, but it's not unheard of.

Or to be honest you could just call it aluminum and skip the absurd, meaningless prefix.

Do you think that machining is the only way to process aluminum? I have suppliers that stamp it, die cast it, and forge it that would disagree with you. You may assume that all laptops are machined aluminum, but if the author just called it "aluminum" other readers may wonder about the process, so adding 3 letters to the story is a useful bit of info that you can just ignore since you are apparently already an authority on the subject.

Being a fellow who works with CNC's, you mostly hear "machined" over CNC, as no one in their right mind is going to use manual machining for production (If they do, they will bleat about it being artisinal and hand crafted), and straight NC is unlikely to be used in any serious capacity these days (Think https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacquard_loom , rather than a machine tool) of "Let's put an Arduino in everything." CNC doesn't tell you a whole lot about the process honestly, as it could be waterjet, lasercut, plasma cut, or in the case of the trash can, turned.

Now, here's the rub of it. CNC machined parts are superior to other machining processes, as CNC's are backlash compensated, and thus can use climb milling, while most conventional machine tools cannot. They are also more consistent. I personally would prefer to see the parts and processes referred to by the most relevant descriptors (In the case of apple that would be the machining process (Climb milled almost certainly), the alloy, (7000 series in the new iPhones, meaning a Zinc alloying agent, giving it very nice strength), and the finishing (Anodized, likely class 2 Type II, rather than the Type III Class 2 that I would prefer), however, most of that sounds like useless technobabble to people.

Right. CNC machining is ubiquitous. Nobody who knows what the fuck they are talking about says anything is "CNC aluminum" if they're trying to give somebody a relevant description of a material.

They might instead refer to the alloy, the temper, or a million other relevant details such as performance specifics.

I'm guessing the author received a pamphlet or some such with the laptop that included as many buzzwords as possible, and she just mindlessly repeated them in the article.

That being said I think your proposition that CNC machining yields "the highest quality" is a bit misleading. The final finish step for high precision parts is grinding, and it's obscenely expensive to setup a production grind operation. In any shop/factory where custom parts are produced, the grinding step is usually done by a manually operated swiss grinding machine. The only exception being of course if you need to make the exact same high precision part over and over and over again, in which case yes, it can be automated and computer controlled.

But even then, a CNC grind operation doesn't yield higher quality than a manual one, it just does it faster and cheaper.

I stated machining, meaning to compare CNC machining to machining done on a manual mill or lathe, rather than attempting to say that it doesn't want for any finishing steps, such as grinding. As you noted, it's a finishing step to grind, which (To me at least) is logically separate from the machining, due to the different mechanism for accomplishing the work (Abrasion rather than cutting). I also don't really think about grinding much as I work primarily in aluminum, and the shop I spend my time in does not have grinding wheels meant for non-ferrous metals. (there are such things, but they are expensive and for work requiring tolerances of only ±.005 IN, it seems like it would be a waste of time)

 

[tomdotcom]

It's nice to see Fisher Price's answer to the new Macbook.

 

[IceStorm]

We're getting closer to an ultrabook with the CPU horsepower to drive an eGFX solution. The Razer Blade Stealth only has a dual core, though it has a QHD or UHD screen. HP has a quad core, but only a 1080p screen. We can't be too far from a quad core with a QHD or UHD screen with Thunderbolt 3 in this form factor.

 

[ewelch]

solomonrex[/url]":2yahi3xd]

Abhi Beckert[/url]":2yahi3xd]

solomonrex[/url]":2yahi3xd]Even Apple has fake gold phones and is moving away from brohaus west coast design, haven't you noticed?

Apple has aluminium anodized in a variety of colours. It's not "fake", rather is required to stop it from corroding like this:

Sine you have to anodize anyway, why not add some colour? The dark grey MacBook is especially nice in my opinion.

It's nothing at all like this, which has actual copper serving no purpose except "bling" and weight an an ultra portable that's already heavier than it should be.

I wonder what the real world battery life on the i7 is as well. 9.5 hours doesn't sound right for a 10mm thick device with huge fan vents.

Is it a metal object described as gold by it's maker? Yes. Is it, in fact, gold? No. So with a broad brush, it's fake gold. Notice their 'gold watches' are actual gold alloy.

Now, maybe it's better to say that Apple in the last few years expanded their old Bauhaus design sensibilities to include West Coast/Chinese market bling? They added gold and rose gold, added luxury bands on watches and they make Beats headphones. So let's say Jony Ive invented Brohaus - minimalist, iterative (boring) design with bling flourishes in the metal finishes and accessories.

As long as we're stating subjective opinions, I'll point out that you just praised a grey laptop for being grey. SAD!

You clearly don't know how this works. Gold is not only a metal, it's a color. If they were implying gold metal, they would have to state its caratage, 14k or whatever. That they don't mention that makes it clear it's a color and not metal. Therefore it is not fake gold. I develop curriculum on this particular topic. So I kinda know how it works.

 

[Voldenuit]

bstarr67[/url]":2zav8ykp]"The HP Spectre's keyboard is designed with 1.3mm of travel between keys"

Between keys? Don't you just mean vertical travel?

Nah, there's just a lot of flex .

On a serious note, 1.3 mm is better than the 1.2 or 1.1mm that's common in ultrathins these days, but it's still not a lot. My Y3P also has a 1.3 mm stroke, and it's not particularly responsive to type on, although that could be partly due to the mushy key action.

 

[ewelch]

fuzzyfuzzyfungus[/url]":1po2mfuf]

nehinks[/url]":1po2mfuf]

fivemack[/url]":1po2mfuf]

Bicentennial Douche[/url]":1po2mfuf]

HP also teamed up with designers Tord Boontje and Jess Hannah to make two super-fancy, limited edition versions of the Spectre. Boontje's design is coated in midnight blue with floral swirls and Swarovski crystals on top that are accented in 18k gold.

"Swarovski crystals: When you need to make anything just a bit more tacky and gaudy." (tm)

Don't diss Swarovski; the money they make from bling enthusiasts pays for the development of the best high-end binoculars I've ever used.

Holy crap those are expensive binoculars! And here I always associated Swarovski as just a bejeweling company.

Swarovski is actually an outfit with nontrivial expertise in engineering assorted specialty glass materials with a variety of tricky and exotic properties. Humans being what they are, though, the product they've become known for is 'the glass that looks kinda-diamond-ish at a price low enough to garishly overuse!'.

It's sort of like being an outfit that supplies aerospace and scientific ceramics; but is best known for providing the material for Precious Moments(tm) figurines.

Fun fact, the building I work in has a Swarovski crystal (actually thousands of little crystals arranged to look like a big diamond) on top of it that was donated by the company. It's worth $1million. And it's the size of a Volkswagen Beetle. Almost didn't get to put it up because the nearby airport objected to this bright, shiny thing attracting so much attention at night.

 

[Pixy Misa Mk II]

flerchin[/url]":1w3mnp2v]Is pretty. 8GB max RAM is a bit of a disappointment.

8GB with a fast SSD gets the job done in most cases - the major exceptions being virtual machines and using Photoshop on very high resolution images. (I ran Photoshop up to 18GB the other day, and I don't consider myself a heavy user.)

You used to need a huge amount of spare RAM to act as a filesystem cache for even tolerable performance, these days you can run fine even when you have a good chunk of stuff swapped out.

 

[Deleted member 192806]

ewelch[/url]":1d3ffm78]

fuzzyfuzzyfungus[/url]":1d3ffm78]

nehinks[/url]":1d3ffm78]

fivemack[/url]":1d3ffm78]

Bicentennial Douche[/url]":1d3ffm78]

HP also teamed up with designers Tord Boontje and Jess Hannah to make two super-fancy, limited edition versions of the Spectre. Boontje's design is coated in midnight blue with floral swirls and Swarovski crystals on top that are accented in 18k gold.

"Swarovski crystals: When you need to make anything just a bit more tacky and gaudy." (tm)

Don't diss Swarovski; the money they make from bling enthusiasts pays for the development of the best high-end binoculars I've ever used.

Holy crap those are expensive binoculars! And here I always associated Swarovski as just a bejeweling company.

Swarovski is actually an outfit with nontrivial expertise in engineering assorted specialty glass materials with a variety of tricky and exotic properties. Humans being what they are, though, the product they've become known for is 'the glass that looks kinda-diamond-ish at a price low enough to garishly overuse!'.

It's sort of like being an outfit that supplies aerospace and scientific ceramics; but is best known for providing the material for Precious Moments(tm) figurines.

Fun fact, the building I work in has a Swarovski crystal (actually thousands of little crystals arranged to look like a big diamond) on top of it that was donated by the company. It's worth $1million. And it's the size of a Volkswagen Beetle. Almost didn't get to put it up because the nearby airport objected to this bright, shiny thing attracting so much attention at night.

Pilot: OOOOOH! Shiny!

 

[Penforhire]

When will we see a hands-on review?

Key travel is just not a great single qualifier for keyboards. Is it mushy, do they wiggle, how noisy? Same for the track pad. MacBook track pads are awesome. I know it is partly the OS but we need to keep the pressure on manufacturers until Windows laptops hit parity.

Battery life under real use conditions?

How reflective is the screen? How bright does it get? What color fidelity and viewing angle?

So many unknowns, aside from some questionable aesthetics.

 

[Deleted member 192806]

tayhimself[/url]":3um3mmpq]

soulsabr[/url]":3um3mmpq]

flerchin[/url]":3um3mmpq]Is pretty. 8GB max RAM is a bit of a disappointment.

A bit?

8 GigaBytes of disappointment?

It's not the size that matter, but how you use it.

 

[ars diavoli]

Pixy Misa Mk II[/url]":27bdvlfo]

flerchin[/url]":27bdvlfo]Is pretty. 8GB max RAM is a bit of a disappointment.

8GB with a fast SSD gets the job done in most cases - the major exceptions being virtual machines and using Photoshop on very high resolution images. (I ran Photoshop up to 18GB the other day, and I don't consider myself a heavy user.)

You used to need a huge amount of spare RAM to act as a filesystem cache for even tolerable performance, these days you can run fine even when you have a good chunk of stuff swapped out.

I like running Firefox with a fat RAM cache. No point in subjecting my SSD to a myriad trivial microwrites.

 

[Rookie_MIB]

Adam Starkey[/url]":30pndrh5]I saw copper and got excited, then I saw the pictures.

If the copper were functional for heat transfer (as in partially exposed heatsinks with fins) that might be a different story. But, it's a bit on the gaudy side.

 

[archtop]

Abhi Beckert[/url]":3ka3g9ql]

solomonrex[/url]":3ka3g9ql]Even Apple has fake gold phones and is moving away from brohaus west coast design, haven't you noticed?

Apple has aluminium anodized in a variety of colours. It's not "fake", rather is required to stop it from corroding like this:

Sine you have to anodize anyway, why not add some colour? The dark grey MacBook is especially nice in my opinion.

It's nothing at all like this, which has actual copper serving no purpose except "bling" and weight an an ultra portable that's already heavier than it should be.

I wonder what the real world battery life on the i7 is as well. 9.5 hours doesn't sound right for a 10mm thick device with huge fan vents.

This looks nicer than HP's limited edition version.

 

[Nemon]

Matte Screen for me!

Is it just me, but I dont like gloss screen on my laptops, so I end up buying dell xps 13 (and I would pay extra if matte screen was not default!)

Also, now when I am used to dell xps 13 with smaller screen bezel it's hard to go back to anything else!

 

[Deleted member 440187]

Any chance the copper on the back is functional? Obviously some of the accents are not, but the copper on the back is where the heat pipe radiator for the CPU exhausts. Copper is what is typically used in these heat pipes so it might make sense to extend it a bit to get more heat out of such a thin device. Then the designers did the extra stuff to make it match.

 

[Deleted member 440187]

My experience in urban biking makes me want a laptop that looks just the opposite to deter theft. They should consider making a version that has the same performance but looks like a high schooler's laptop after a few months, including obscure stickers all over the back, mushroomed corners resulting from a fall, bent hinges that make the lid not close quite right, and a few keys with graphics making them look like they've popped off. Add a security screen that looks great to the user but looks like a cracked screen to anyone looking off-axis and I'd be in line to get mine.

 

[georgeh2k]

Do we really need a laptop that is shiny and gold? I just want a laptop to perform well and visually stay out of the way. The screen is what should be bright and colorful. The rest of the computer should be minimalistic so as not to interfere with the screen.

Will HP ever come up with a design that is not a replica of a MacBook? Even Dell has innovated with its near bezel-less laptops. HP, come up with something that is both 1. unique and 2. useful. This "shiny gold copy of a MacBook" doesn't do it for me.

 

[Eldorito]

archtop[/url]":2ohz1vlu]

Abhi Beckert[/url]":2ohz1vlu]

solomonrex[/url]":2ohz1vlu]Even Apple has fake gold phones and is moving away from brohaus west coast design, haven't you noticed?

Apple has aluminium anodized in a variety of colours. It's not "fake", rather is required to stop it from corroding like this:

Sine you have to anodize anyway, why not add some colour? The dark grey MacBook is especially nice in my opinion.

It's nothing at all like this, which has actual copper serving no purpose except "bling" and weight an an ultra portable that's already heavier than it should be.

I wonder what the real world battery life on the i7 is as well. 9.5 hours doesn't sound right for a 10mm thick device with huge fan vents.

This looks nicer than HP's limited edition version.

Want to buy my special edition 2006 macbook pro? The aluminium pitted to all hell, looks something like that

I'm just glad HP made the crystal and gold edition one offs and for charity, rather than some additional pointless bling. A shame the copper isn't for heat distribution though.

 

[wrylachlan]

Do the editors not read the comments? There's still a factual error in the very first sentence as was pointed out hours ago. MacBooks do NOT have Thunderbolt ports.