Yesterday, to much fanfare and resolute sentiment, HP announced a return to what made it a great company to begin with: poorly-named and generic computing devices tarted up to take on Dell. This year it’s the HP Envy SpectreXT, a thin and light that can’t officially be called an Ultrabook because that’s an Intel marketing term and these things sometimes run on AMD chips.
I think it’s important to point out the clear problems in the above statement: because Intel officially controls the “ultrabook” spec – including the pricing, screen size, speed, and physical size – manufacturers must toe the line when it comes to what can and cannot be sold under that rubric. In short, Intel’s own standards have so long stymied the OEM’s ability to innovate that, in the end, we’re all essentially buying Intel PCs no matter the brand or maker. → Read More
HP is currently a company without a strong identity. This comes after a decade of products and CEOs that each fumbled in one way or another. The company needs to make a sharp statement and emerge from the doldrums that has seemingly trapped the iconic Palo Alto company. The purposed logo and rebranding (videos below) shown here would be a great first start.
The story goes that the designs shown here were drawn up by Brand New and released a few months back (prior to the ousting of Apotheker.) The abstract four line logo is a clever play on the classic HP logo using a 13-degree slant, which is already a common feature in many HP products. As The Verge notes, it’s a bold design and perhaps one that’s too radical for the slow-moving corporate machine that is HP. But it’s hard to look at that logo and not dream of HP rising from the ashes with those four lines proudly displayed on its standards waving over the consumer electronics battlefield. → Read More
Hewlett-Packard has acquired a German company called HIFLEX, based in Aachen, which develops software that helps companies in the print and media industries automate their business and technical processes.
HIFLEX products include HIFLEX MIS (Management Information System), HIFLEX Print Support and an open web-to-print system dubbed HIFLEX Webshop. → Read More
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