Baby's got clack: HP pushes PC-in-a-keyboard for businesses with hot desks At most businesses today, the IT department gives laptops out to employees so they can easily take their work with them. But HP has a different idea: build a Windows computer into a full-size keyboard and let you carry that around, plugging into monitors and mice along the way. Announced on Monday at CES 2026, the HP …
> HP hopes to change business behavior from laptop culture to keyboard culture.
I suspect most of the targetted audience will be of the "you can prise my laptop from my cold, dead hands" variety.
The form factor is essentially a longer, faster Raspberry Pi 500 (which I'm pretty sure sells in tiny quantities compared to the main Pi 5 models) - but at least the Pi has HDMI outputs.
I just don't see the upsides outweighting the downsides for more than a handful of people.
Whuuttt????? Geeze Louize! Just add in a portable laser projector from 2019 and you're set for on-the-go compute anywhere, anytime!
It's right convenience at your fingertips ... plus, a projection screen can be as close as your nearest Swedish McDonalds ... It's the 2016 retro-future of compute, today, right smack there imho ... gotta have one (or ten)! ;)
Now I get it.... Someone at HP was forced to use MSFT Windows Office Excel on their Apple or Android phone,
which is so frustrating that MSFT gave away the Excel App for phone, for free, such that
they had this flash insight: "If only I had my full size keyboard with me, I would be much happier!"
But they forgot (on purpose?) that full size keyboards don't last for more than 6 to 12 months The A S E D O P H N M keys are the first to go. I keep track of that!
This happens on MSFT brand keyboards, not just on the super cheap ones from cheapo brands.
On certain laptops, like Lenovo, the characters Q W E R A S D F X C 4 5 keys stop working within 15 months.
Anyone have a comment on this?
I'm genuinely wondering what makes this better than carrying around a tiny PC (Dell Micro, Intel NUC, etc.). You need peripherals to use this either way, why does it matter the keyboard is integrated?
I can also already see how confused the average user is going to be about this product. From experience, a lot of them can barely grasp the concept of a USB-C dock with wireless peripherals...
Why bother carrying even a NUC? This thing isn't capable of working on the train and if you take it to a client site for a presentation they will have all the annoyance of providing you with the bulky peripherals anyway.
Dumb terminal/X workstation and log in to a session on the company server.
Security concerns might make this "old" new again.
No ports, no slots, no network … basically nothing. Just a high(ish) speed connect to the monitor — just the video (+optionally audio); the input: keyboard, mouse, microphone connect to the monitor and share the monitor connect. The components: monitor, keyboard, mouse etc all mutually identify and authenticate. Anything data·like that moves might be end-to-end encrypted.
The sessions might be persistent (like Nomachine sessions) so that moving between physical desks could be transparent and almost instantaneous (following your identity/auth token ?)
In the international business, there is the issue of keyboard layouts. A French-speaking worker accustomed to AZERTY or a German-speaking worker used to QWERTZ but not fully touch-type proficient with all the little things like @&£% etc has the problem that if they're handed a QWERTY keyboard, they've got a choice between typing words slowly and being able to find every symbol or typing words at full speed and struggling to type an email address....
The idea that you're ever going to carry the thing around between desks is for the birds. They're clearly too chicken to say this is your thin client endpoint in a bigger system. Every desk in every site has one of these and they just need to forward the real desktop
Thin clients in 2026 is a niche market but commuting with a keyboard in your bag isn't a bigger one
This thing isn't a thin client or optimized for that. The lowest amount of CPU you can get in it is an AMD Ryzen 5 330 (4 cores, base 2.0 GHz, up to 4.5 GHz). That's overkill for a thin client, which tiny and cheap boxes with Celerons can do just fine. It will also cost more than such things. I'm not entirely sure what this is, though, because unless leaving out the screen drops the price significantly, it seems about the same as a laptop but more inconvenient.
The idea that you're ever going to carry the thing around between desks is for the birds.
I'm not so sure.
Going back to the 90s, we had a client who did more or less that with a Mac LC - bought 2 sets of keyboard, mice, monitor. The LC would fit in a briefcase, so was easy to carry. OK, that was before laptops, or at least before anything practical and affordable.
Personally I would be quite happy with one of these instead of the work laptop - the screens on a 13" devices are unusable for any serious work, so all I ever use them for is parking things like the Skype window (on the system that still has it). I'd not miss a screen at all.
My goodness, how much do you shed? Are you Daceyville "Snowy" Slopes of Ankh-Morpork infamy?
I have a Microsoft Internet Pro keyboard from circa 1999 - in fact I'm typing this very comment on it - and it still works perfectly. I just vacuum accumulated crumbs and dog-hair out of it every 12 months or so.
In other words you practice preventative maintenance, and naturally any machine will last a lot longer if you do that.
However, you can't stop the keycaps wearing out: I'm not a heavy-handed typist and I don't spend my days bashing out long emails and reports, but even I have to replace my keyboard/mouse combo every couple of years when the surfaces become shiny.
This device seems like a pretty dumb, ill thought-out product for a list of reasons, some of which are mentioned in the article.
Just like my keyboard !!!
It throws people, who cannot touch type, off when multiple keys have 'no' or 'partial' symbols on them !!!
My keyboard is
1234567890-=...
qw.r.yu..p[]
zx.vb.m,./
Where . == [missing symbol or squiggle] and ... == [Backspace]
P.S. I can't touch type either !!! :=)
:)
Well, I have a Remington Typewriter from about 1940 in the basement. The letters showing the characters on the keys are like "welded into the shellack type keys".
It still works, and every ten years I have to get a new typewriter ribbon, because these things were "standardized" so they'd work on most any machine.
Worst case, you had have to unwind the new tape and put it on the old spools, and off you go, typing away like freakin Hemingway or James Joyce.
> However, you can't stop the keycaps wearing out
Double-shot keycaps FTW: lots of tiny sticks of rock, the letters go right through. Another innovation that was common in the Good Old Days. Just like decent ridges on the home keys that'll last, well, let's see, 2026 take away 1992, is, um, lots!
Unless you are literally worried by the smoothness, not the lack of visible markings.
Sadly (and somewhat ironically) the article doesn't say much about the keyboard, such as whether is has double-shot keycaps, but the layout is a non-standard laptop-type and looks too compact to be comfortable if you're used to the traditional layout, especially for the cursor block and the number pad. I assume it isn't double-shot as that would surely have been a positive feature worth commenting on.
I'm not a full touch typist except for numbers (I used to be an accountant) so yes, I need the letters to type quickly (i.e my usual 30 wpm), and also yes, being worn shiny is a problem. I do have a couple of used double-shot keyboards, backlit gaming mechanicals (wired) which are great, but I'm too poor to justify buying a new, wireless one for WFH, and the heavy 'gaming' wires get in the way on my office desk, so I use relatively cheap wireless combos and treat them as disposable. They last me 2-3 years. :)
That might be rather inpenetrable to anyone outside the UK.
Living in the antipodes I have never seen this sticky confection in life but as a kid I was intrigued on how the lettering was incorporated into the length. See https://www.rocksweets.co.uk/content/6-how-rock-sweets-are-made.
† Another with a coin: https://live.staticflickr.com/4094/4753569311_2986938060_b.jpg
Exactly - keycap wear-out seems to be a recent-ish phenomenon caused by changes in how keyboards are manufactured, because neither of my Amigas are exhibiting any sort of wear on they keyboards, despite having each been subjected to around 5-6 years of heavy daily use back when they were my primary machines, and similarly the keyboards I've held onto from my old PCs (because you never know when you might need an AT or PS/2 keyboard...) also still look as good as new.
It's only the keyboards I've been buying over the past decade or so where keycap wear has been a recurring problem - either the stick-on/transfer/whatever surface-level process is used to apply them legends wearing away, or the caps themselves being physically altered by use. Not merely becoming shiny, but in some cases with clear wear marks suggesting the plastics being used these days are far softer than in the days of yore...
So I also don't agree with the previous comment that you *can't* stop keycaps wearing out - we have ample historical evidence to show it *can* be done, and the only reason it might seem otherwise today is because we're now surrounded by cheap and cheerful keyboards which are now being treated more like consumable items and therefore simply not designed for longevity,
Keep meaning to get a 'proper' solid keyboard with 'proper' keys that don't wear out.
'Proper Keyboard'
=================
Genuine IBM Model M Keyboard with Mechanical Buckling Spring keys ... nice loud & clicky and built to last till the 'heat death of the universe'.
P.S. Hat tip to Janis !!!
:)
"However, you can't stop the keycaps wearing out"
And you can't stop some people pouring coffee into keyboards either! Integrating the computer with the keyboard removes one of the main advantages of desktop computer - if someone destroys a 15 quid USB keyboard it's no big deal - throw it away and get another one. Why give them the opportunity to destroy the computer as well? This thing is basically a laptop without the screen.
While that is true, and a good annual clean never hurts...I find that very, very rare for anyone to bother with on a work device. Especially one they don't own, don't pay for and therefore don't care about.
My own keyboard is a spring chicken compared to yours, but it's still 20 years old and works just fine thanks to being kept clean.
To be fair there [sic] PC keyboards last for ever as well.
Well, maybe...but the cheap-as-dog-poo keyboards that came with my (two) HP Echo towers were only in place long enough to replace them with a pair of the Logitech "real" keyboards or yore. As such, in the role of backups, they may well last a long time. But I don't want to have to use them in daily (or even weekly) service.
Yes, I usually view the keyboard as both a user-customizable choice and as a consumable.
Often the mechanical interface to the user is a weak spot, so I see this as a huge step backwards, to have the expensive, "compute-y" part of the computer be inseparable from the "interface-y" part.
At my work, we (employees) have the option to choose a wired/wireless keyboard and mouse, in either normal rectangular or ergonomic formats. When either wears out, you pick up a new one with no questions asked-- we're talking less than a $40 expense.
Cracked screens are our biggest cause of laptops needing repair, but I've noticed that the latest Dell business laptops have metal lids rather than the previous plastic ones (pressure on the back of that from an over-full bag has been the cause of a number of screen breakages). Time will tell whether this leads to fewer broken screens, but in theory it should do.
The big win for the laptop formst is that when folded, the two most vulnerable components, screen and keyboard, are protected in transit. Both from mechanical impact and from dirt and dust. Anyone moving a keyboard only will need a more substantial bag to protect it from commuting knocks. Also, in a laptop, the screen connections for power and data are protected. This thing has extra connections and wires that will wear and break and be less reliable than a laptop hinge feed.
HP: How can we make our printers even worse? AI integration! Definite solution in search of a problem there.
Only 2 USB ports, so if you have a wired mouse and your monitor doesn't power the unit you're stuck?
To be fair, many laptops have the same problem these days. Two USB-C ports, no additional monitor port, though of course with a monitor "built-in", as it were, that's one connection you can manage without, if necessary. That said, all the colleagues I know who use laptops plug them in to a desk-bound monitor when in the office, often a proper keyboard and often an external mouse, too, and the answer to lack of ports ranges from a simple USB hub to a full-blown docking hub, which provides power and multiple USB-C, USB-A, wired network and monitor ports.
Someone I know who has just bought a new (second-hand) laptop for college work, where a lot of the course will be delivered on-line, has also bought a diddy little external speaker, about 5" diameter with a driver of maybe 3½" if I'm not mistaken, which is not only louder and clearer than the laptop's inbuilt speakers, but does power delivery, has noise-cancelling microphones built-in, a couple of USB-A ports, some "media" buttons on top, an HDMI port and (believe it or not) an honest-to-goodness VGA port! The main thing it lacks is a network socket.
Apart from the "fold to protect" benefit of a laptop mentioned by another poster, the other thing you can do with a laptop is use it away from the office; on the train, at the coffee shop. I do see quite a lot of colleagues hold in-person meetings in the cafe, where they can still connect to company WiFi in order to refer to schedules or documentation. But they type up their proposals or reports (mainly) at their desks, on their nice keyboards with their large external monitors. Still, I can't see many use-cases for this HP device that wouldn't be better (more flexibly) served by a laptop.
M.
If only there was some way to use multiple devices off a single port.
Just grab one of those USBc -> USB hub + HDMI + GbE cables and you're sorted. Can even use a "normal" usb-a mouse, and a better keyboard if you're that way inclined.
Personally I'll stick with "lugging" around a Mac mini and keyboard for anything where this might be of use the only thing it lacks is USB-PD as power input (and that's always somewhat surprised me given the capabilities of the thing.
The first thing we had to do when the company forcibly 'upgraded' everyone to a tiny Surface laptop with just 2x USB-C, was to order a USB-C hub to provide all those missing ports... like USB-A ports for all those accessories like mouse, decent size keyboard, thumbdrives serial cable; HDMI/DisplayPort for monitor, etc
Unfortunately a lot of the hubs had to be replaced because of problems with buggy firmware causing all manner of problems with 'legacy' hardware (you couldn't even use the laptop to upgrade the hub because of 'incompatibility' problems)
I don't subscribe to the notion that more travel is better for keyboard keys, but this device is a great idea for people who work in a frequently changing, alternating office/home office scenario, are only allowed to use their employer-provided computer, and prefer to commute light because they walk or cycle. If the alternative is to carry a full-blown laptop to the office and back, I'd opt for this keyboard thingy any time.
There are also scenarios, such as voluntary home office situations not prescribed by the employer, in which the employer, depending on the legislation, is not required to provide all the workplace equipment. And if they can replace full-fledged laptops with something like this, far fewer laptop screens or screen hinges will break...
who has ever seen a 12 inch ruler marked off in tenths
I have a 24" engineering ruler that has one edge primarily marked in 16ths and the other in 10ths, although the first few inches go down to 64ths and 100ths respectively.
I also used to have a programmers ruler that had 6ths, 8ths, 10ths and 12ths of an inch marked in different places - useful for form layouts.
Okay, I walked right into that one, didn't I.
All I can say is that I got carried away and relied solely in the evidence of my clearly limited purchases from WH Smiths. And old timey use of thousandths instead of decimal inches if one wanted to move away from decent binary divisions (at which point rulers gave way to those clampy things with the twiddly knobs).
Especially, as I do have have rulers clearly marked with "a little bit, a scosche, some, a bit, a tad"[1], I should be well aware that anything is possible. Even the use of non-traditional rulers for the measurement of traditional units.
[1] Miss? What exactly is "a tad?" In space terms, that's about half a million miles.
"the units used by 95% of the world?"
I'm old enough to be comfortable with imperial and metric units. I suppose it helped in that my father was a joiner trained when imperial was the only alternative and I took up science. I'm reassured that my 20 yr-old granddaughter is equally comfortable with both.
In between these age scales I was once surprised that a night-school instructor in furniture restoration only seemed happy with metric despite the furniture having been made to imperial measure. I suppose she trained post-metrication when the mere mention on an imperial measurement would be punished by little less than being burnt at the stake as a heretic.
Also surprising: the RS catalogue taking to specifying IC pinouts with the 1/10th inch standard converted to metric implying a precision down to about the size of a hazel pollen grain - another measurement units that's been with me for about the last 6 decades always useful as a sanity check in such circumstances.
At least on a laptop that may have a similar size keyboard it does not have a numeric keyboard so looks better spaced.
Me, I have a portable "office". full size KB, trackman and USB screen for when travelling. No great shakes and the KB and trackman use a single connector (logi uni instead of BT)
I get the flexability of 2 screens and a decent KB
So you'll need a special case for it to carry it around as its going to get battered otherwise (carry a standard keyboard round with you in a month and see how that goes)
You'll need a power supply at all times unless 100% of the screens have USB power. Oh and a bunch of cables.
You'll need a screen otherwise that unused empty desk....yeah that's a no go.
And as for "Where we could see the G1a taking off is in call centers ". That's not how call centres operate. You have hundreds, if not thousands of generic PC's attached to generic monitors and the operator just logs into the pc (and phone if not using a soft phone) and done. No pissing about plugging in cables, waiting for it to boot, update, reboot, update crash, reboot.
The only use I can really see for the computer-in-a-keyboard would be in a hot desk environment where individuals need their "own" computer but don't actually travel with it - they could pick a workstation, grab their computer from the storage and plug it in to a single USB-C cable; if it came with a wireless mouse option even better. The trouble is I can't actually conceive of a situation where that would be necessary!
The use cases where this applies must be few and far between. Most of our staff use laptops, because they can be used wherever they are working - with a docking station in the office, at home, in a meeting, on a train, etc. Those few who use desktops mostly do so because they are entirely based at one desk, and/or because they have specialist hardware requirements which needs something pretty powerful. Something like this wouldn't be a good choice for any of these users.
Wait - a full size keyboard with a computer inside, that you can just plug in a video cable and go? Remarkable! If only it came in beige, and had a row of 4 function keys down the right hand side. And graphics characters on each key. But I guess a few more cycles of innovation will get us there.
You jest, but I used to occasionally give technical support while driving between clients; I would describe the screen to them and/or get them to describe it to me (as in read the icons/boxes/buttons) so they could find what I was telling them to look for... these weren't the most tech-savvy of clients you understand, so the visualisation didn't overly impact my driving skills!
Think of it as a 65W laptop (not atypical at all), just without a screen and pointing device. The fan is there to keep it cool, no different to laptops.
The top spec CPU for it (AMD 350) has TDP rating up to 54W and will take its lion share of the power budget.
I don't envision this as a thin client, it is way too powerful and at my job (with clean rooms) the fan is show stopper, as is access to the actual computer (housed in steel enclosure with window for display).
The keyboard layout is a crammed like in laptops. I'd rather see the processing power in an AIO display and use a proper keyboard if office aesthetics is a factor, still just one cable. Or zero if Bluetooth allowed.
Maybe there is a niche where a docked laptop eats too much desk space but you still need to move around in the office or take it home. And if you need to move it then the battery pack would be almost mandatory anyway since most are used to sleep mode by now.
:)
The vast majority of people will still want their laptops, which you can use anywhere. Don't need a monitor, keyboard, or mouse. Would be next to impossible to use this keyboard computer in a library, coffee shop, park, beach, etc. Useless anywhere but a desk with the peripherals it needs. Very small niche crowd for this one.
Carry a small power supply and connect it to an external such as an Asus Zen Screen which is powered by USB-C.
I have a small Anker power supply with 2x USB C and 1x USB A power sockets.
And then you'd have .... something like a laptop.
It's just a PC version of a BBC Master ...
[/sarcasm off]
Eliteboard G1a: "If your monitor, like the majority on the market, doesn't have a USB-C input, you can use an included USB-to-HDMI adapter to connect. You can use a 65 W USB-C power adapter to juice the G1a if it's not getting electricity directly from the monitor."
So you buy this, then you buy 2 monitors, and 2 mice, and a couple of power supplies, all to avoid carrying the same thing but with a screen. What on earth is the point?
Somebody must have done some research to establish that this is actually needed, right? To get anybody remotely technical interested it needs to be a decent, full size keyboard. It seems like a solution looking for a problem.
As for copilot on a printer. Who asked? Seems like HP are throwing stuff to see what sticks
This post has been deleted by its author
Can it have something to do with an event nearly 6 years ago that caused everyone to work from home?
Does your remote working have a mouse? Do they have a monitor? Shipping them a laptop means they have both.
And them we get to CoPilot for printers - do you have any sensitive data in your document? Better not scan or print it where Copilot and the US government can read it.
Without reading any other comments, I proceed:
Intriguing HP concept: They must have figured out that "keyboards" on their desktops and laptops is, in my experience, the first thing to stop functioning properly.
Since either the key buttons come off, or pushing a key button on a laptop no longer puts the "character" onto the screen, the ultra smart HP greed monsters
have decided that you MUST BUY A NEW HP COMPUTER when the keyboard stops working.
This will have a predictable result: Since HP printers stop working, when you use a generic printer ink-jet or laser cartridge, gazillions of people
stopped buying HP printers.
Clearly, we are observing an end-state period of HP: "Basic corporate suicide by insane greed without insight, foresight, hindsight,
or any type of reasoning obvious to customers, but invisible to the corporate decision makers!"
Astonishing how utterly shortsighted corporate idiots can turn out to be. On the other hand, they probably contributed to Trump, so there is zero chance to reach their brains.
Thank you for your donations to reward my insights! I barely know how to spend it all.
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