HP is taking things in a bold new direction, with design decisions that can only have been made by a peyote-addled design team locked in a room with nothing but soap and knives. Wait, no. Looks like things are actually pretty similar to last year, but with Sandy Bridge Intel Core processors and better audio. There’s been a bit of trickle-down from the higher-end Envy series.
The new 15.6″ dv6 and 17.3″ dv7 have CoolSense (intelligent heat routing), Beats audio (the dv7 has a sub), and metal finish. More metal is always nice; I’m always ready to trade a little weight for durability and stiffness. They have the aforementioned Sandy Bridge processors, which are no joke, and may warrant an upgrade just in themselves, plus the new chipsets all support USB 3.0, which is something you appreciate more as file sizes grow.
You can get up to a terabyte in the dv6, and 2TB in the dv7. Both have HD webcams and optional Blu-ray drives.
HP also released the g4, g6, and g7 budget laptops starting at ~$500 give or take a hundred.
I’ve only included pictures of the dv6, since the dv6 and dv7 look pretty much identical, and the g series isn’t too remarkable. Lots more pictures here. Want to buy one of these suckers? The g series is available now, and the new dv series should be coming in “Spring.” Woo!