HP stuffed a PC into a keyboard. We took it for a spin The early history of personal computers is stacked with systems such as the Apple II and the Commodore 64 that had the components living inside a keyboard. But as technology evolved, the keyboard became a peripheral and the PC itself was either in a separate box or the whole system was a laptop. Now, HP has a new spin on this …
Not as portable but an Elite Mini desktop and separate keyboard is cheaper up front and certainly cheaper when the homeworker dumps their mug of java over it. £10 keyboard vs a whole new desktop. Heck for call centres with limited desk space, you can strap the mini desktop to the back of the monitor. Interesting concept but very niche.
>” Heck for call centres with limited desk space, you can strap the mini desktop to the back of the monitor.”
This has been one of my preferences, for many years, however, there have been few reasonably priced and performant PC’s that support this style of installation.
The call centres we fitted out in the 1990’s and early 2000’s we simply attached the system unit under the desk. Hence I don’t see the value of this (compromised) keyboard computer to a call centre or data entry bureau, particularly as the keyboard is unlikely to be as robust as keyboards intended for data entry.
About the only niche I can envisage a use for this is where you don’t want people to be able to casually access the system whilst travelling and thus have the potential for casual over-the-shoulder viewing of the screen…
What is also notable is the absence of wireless screen connection, so also not intended to be used in a screencast use case.
"About the only niche I can envisage a use for this is where you don’t want people to be able to casually access the system whilst travelling and thus have the potential for casual over-the-shoulder viewing of the screen…"
My Elonex LT386SX from around 1990 fitted that category. Being a plasma screen 'laptop' without a battery, you could carry it around but could only use it at the destination with an electrical socket. It was bloody heavy too at an leg numbing almost 7kg if you actually did use it as a laptop.
I think Dell still does what you describe (although not had cause to buy one for a while). They certainly do the small computers and I think they still do the monitor brackets too.
Sticking the computer in the keyboard is a dumb idea. Every year we will lose a few keyboards to tea / coffee / fruit juice spills (if it's plan water they sometimes recover once dried out!) - but it's no big deal as a new keyboard is about 15 quid!
A few years ago, Dell did something even more radical than bolting a mini-PC to the back of the monitor stand...
Dell's Tiny OptiPlex 7070 Ultra Fits Entirely Into a Monitor Stand
And likewise, I'm not sure who will buy HP's computer-in-a-keyboard. I've seen those headless laptops, where owners have completely removed a faulty display from a laptop computer—but at least they get a trackpad with their computer-in-a-keyboard.
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"Heck for call centres with limited desk space, you can strap the mini desktop to the back of the monitor."
Or get models with the computer built into the monitor. I'm not massively keen on them either (prefer a separate base unit), but a computer built into the monitor is a better idea than one built into the keyboard!
While it may not be as small outright, doesn’t the fact of needing to pack a separate keyboard negate that? It’s a smaller surface area overall, while including what appears to be a usable and tactile keyboard, in a package that is intended for those desiring high portability while retaining “some” level of acceptable performance, which no HDMI-stick computer(which requires a BT keyboard or dongle hell) has managed to deliver, yet.
Caption to the teardown photo: "The HP EliteBoard G1a is easy to repair"
Yah except maybe the keyboard itself, i.e. the most likely to get damaged and also the only component with moving parts and which gets used all day, every day. I wonder if there's a removeable replacement part like for notebooks, costing more than three times the price of an actual standalone keyboard including plastic case and BT electronics.
For sure as stated in the review, a solution in search of a problem. But having said that I'm sure they'll sell a bunch of them on the novelty value alone but I predict the product line will last maybe a few years then fizzle out. The first thing I noticed in the photo was that it appears to come only in the "compact" format - but compare sales of full-sized keyboards (with the inverted-T + additional 6 navigation keys)? Likely another factor that will contribute to a lukewarm reception.
It specifically says in the review that the keyboard part is replaceable without disturbing the PC part. To be honest I'm pleasantly shocked at how repairable this does look, I was expecting it to be awful but it looks far better than most laptops these days.
Can't think of a usage scenario for it though, and it's at entirely the wrong end of the price spectrum to be interesting.
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It would also be interesting to see the video of the effects of spilling an entire cup of latte etc over the keyboard, the user attempt to mop up so they can continue working, the keyboard being left of a day or more (months?) before getting cleaned.
Deep cleaning IT kit during COVID taught me lots… spill resistant doesn’t mean it can actually be cleaned. However, I did discover that certain ranges of HP keyboards had been designed to come apart and permitted the casing, rubber membranes and keycaps to be put through the dishwasher…
What wrong layout? No, not the language, same complaint as Avram Piltch. It is the squeezed layout which moves Backspace, Del, Cursor, PgUp, PgDown, Home and End around. And where is Print-Screen? Scroll-Lock? Pause? Probably an Fn-Something combo if at all. Programmers and Admins need those, advanced office users know scroll-lock and Alt+PrtScrn and use it...
I personally can live without the number block, but for majority of office users not.
(clarification: Office user = normal user who works in an office and is not IT, not an Office-Product user)
Why two USB-A (USB 2.0 is enough)? The first is for the wireless mouse. The second for the USB stick or something else which comes along. In my case a RS485/RS232-USB Adapter, others will have other needs.
@Avram Piltch: How warm does it get under your fingers? And thanks for mentioning "fan ... quite audible".
IIRC, there’s a key combo like windows+spacebar that isn’t usually natively enabled but can be for such keyboards, but I feel your pain regardless. Time to break out the separate “10-key”, it beats hauling around a whole extra keyboard, right?
How about the legs? A common use case with laptops is to rest them on the legs - blocking the fan vents…I’ve had to educate my family to place something hard between their legs and the laptop, to create an air gap for the vents, although I do think this is a design fault common to many modern laptops as I’m sure in the past I’ve had laptops with side to rear air flows (or used the space just in front of the screen for exhaust vents).
Is this really true? A box supplier is suggesting that lappie screens are shite, often to the point of worthless?
Next thing, they'll be favouring UIs and browsers that don't automatically assume the user wants a touchscreen/smartphone UX.
Whatever happened to enshittification? I feel quite disoriented.
A visit to the website: https://www.hp.com/gb-en/desktops/business/eliteboard.html
Would seem to suggest HP would like you to pair it with a portable 14” monitor…
Aside: interesting the “specs” section is remarkably lightweight: no dimensions or weight, no listing of ports: that “USB4” port, I assume it’s also used for charging and what is its throughput (ie. Can I attach multiple monitors or a hub and external storage).
I think Avram Piltch needs to up their game and improve the quality of their investigations and reporting.
And one more thing... it's headless. Imagine your productivity when you stop useless guard of typos, dominating your workdays. If you're in social media, how mad will your audience be when you say you bought HPC but never looked at what was being written? Let's bring out some users!
[People in linen long-sleeved stuff with lots of tears and notes on them shuffle out, smiling when it's on them for photos, nursing major organ damage.] Raymondine is an AIX vim user, let's see what they have to say...
Yeah.
Assuming the fixed position of screen and keyboard is comfortable for you.
Personal preference: I only use an undocked laptop when I really, really have to (and am currently trying to retrain myself to use a laptop without wanting to scream and rip the thing in two in preparation for some probable use in the field in a couple of months time!).
Not that I'd buy this. Aside from anything else, if you don't need to cram the keyboard into the same width as the monitor (or have lots of extra trim around the monitor to make the lid big enough to cover the keyboard) why cheap out and have crappy little keys when you're asking so much dosh?*
* One day, I really will get around to building a computer into one of my "spare" Northgate Omnikey Ultras; now *that* is what a keyboard should look like! Although it'll be a shame to lose all that solid weight.
>” Personal preference: I only use an undocked laptop when I really, really have to…”
Fully understand your woes. My problem was being mostly mobile meant I used the laptop more in the field than docked, so my primary complaint was more to do with screen real estate ie. For many years the typical laptop had a screen resolution that did not match that of the desktop display, so switching between docked and undocked modes cause everything on the screen to move. It is this experience that drove my principle of getting laptops with at least HD displays and pairing them with desktop monitors of the same resolution. (My secondary complaint was switching between laptop keybook and desktop keyboard.)
Not to mention that their keyboard isn't even a full keyboard.
What ? You want me to pay $1500 for a portable computer keyboard and you can't be arsed to offer a full numpad and a proper set of arrow and orientation keys ?
You want me to believe you didn't have enough space ?
And, on top of that, I'd have to also lug around a screen.
A niche product ? Oh yes. It's specially destined for idiots with more money than sense.
Apart from taking up less desk space I can't really see what this is offering over a laptop, especially at the price HP want for it.
Call centres don't strike me a a place that needs much more than a "dumb terminal" with little local processing ability, whereas the HP sounds to have an awful lot of performance on offer for something that's just designed for office use.
I had a rather rare "desk jockey" week of documentation, emails, teams messages and little else a while ago. All done on a Raspberry Pi 500 which I found more than adequate for the task despite it being a computer with a fair bit less power than the Ryzen chips in the HP. Okay, the Pi can't do the wanky AI stuff locally but if I took leave of my senses and wanted to use ClippyPilot etc I still can via a web browser, likely with far quicker results than a local NPU can manage.
Not sure it's much use if you work from home, either. Most people don't have desktop PC's at home, therefore outside of working from home most people have little need for a desk (assuming they have space for one in the first place).
At least a work assigned laptop can just be plonked on the kitchen table for use as an "office" for the day when WFH. You can't do that with the EliteBoard.
Yeah, I don't see it. Laptop is cheaper, desktop is cheaper. I'd expect people to do what I used to do way back when with thumbdrives now instead of floppies. If you really want to move some stuff back and forth between office/home, setup what it is you need, and have an easy method to copy/restore what you are working on via the thumbdrive. Or gee, maybe your internet connection is fast enough in all likelihood. Again, back in the day, I used a SLIP connection to nfs mount the remote machine and s-l-o-w-l-y move stuff back and forth. Overnight for big stuff and for most stuff the drive to/from home was enough to get the source files I was working on back and forth.
... especially at the price HP want for it.
Indeed ...
Fret not, it will be probably discontinued in three or four of years, maybe less.
That said, a decade or so ago I had already decided that 'anything HP' was not worth my hard earnt money.
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That said, a decade or so ago I had already decided that 'anything HP' was not worth my hard earnt money.
Depends on personal experience, I suppose. I'm currently typing this on a 7+ year old HP Probook 470 G5 (cost £900 in September 2018). It automatically updated to Win11 shortly after it was released. The only thing that has failed was the keyboard - or at least one key became sticky. For £30 I bought a replacement and fitted it within five minutes.
It's been my 'daily driver' all the time and still does all that I ask it to.
When I wanted another laptop for a home office setup I didn't hesitate in buying another HP.
Then last year when it was obvious I was going to become secretary of my golf club I needed something more portable and simpler. So I bought an HP Chromebook.
But I will agree that this overpriced-computer-in-a-keyboard-without-a-monitor is a daft idea.
They're not making stock they need to raise the price on $200 in a couple of weeks like Apple? If they made it a front-lit keyboard with a good arc to it (chording!) and a bellows for cooling and raised conference camera it would be much better.
They could ship it with a subscription license for Leons.
How has the Chromebook been? HP are like Dell and Lenovo, they all have specific ranges of laptops that are really good - I too have experience with a selection of ProBooks end (G4 and G5) and have found them to be reliable and robust - my daughters G4 has survived university and is okay until Oct ‘26 when W10 finally goes off free support - it’s not W11 compatible.
It's been fine. The keyboard layout keeps catching me out (backspace is not where I expect it to be) and the mousepad is more offset than I'm used to but those are minor irritants.
I didn't want to carry a personal laptop to and from meetings for fear of dropping it and because I often leave it in the car while I'm playing golf ahead of a meeting in the evening. The advantage of the Chromebook is that I can set it up with a new account that has access to nothing of my own then share a Google Drive folder containing nothing but club documents.
I have been very pleasantly surprised by Google Docs. Even on the golf club's poor wifi it's responsive and does a great job. In fact it does better than Libre office since on my other laptop that has a habit of rendering the caret at the wrong place when navigating lists in Writer.
It certainly gives me what I need and in all honesty I think a larger device would suit almost all my needs. The only limitation is that I do need to run the club's softare and that is Windows only.
> That said, a decade or so ago I had already decided that 'anything HP' was not worth my hard earnt money.
High end HP stuff is very nice. I have a secondhand Z800 Xeon workstation from HP, and the build quality on that is like a tank - the only missing feature is the caterpillar tracks. In the event of a nuclear war, I expect it to survive.
I also own a cheap HP laptop, which sheds components like a dog shedding fleas.
Maybe we're all being too British and sensible, work/life balancewise, to be the target market?
> a work assigned laptop can just be plonked on the kitchen table
Kitchen table? Kitchen? You have a kitchen?
This is for the work-obsessed[1] single person in their bedsit[2]; the keyboard will fit nicely onto the TV dinner laptable and the HDMI goes into their TV set: no need for any fancy-schmancy work-supplied monitor.
[1] not necessarily by choice, but given the way some speak about hobbies (or even cooking for themselves, ref "kirchen?") as being lost opportunities for earning potential...
[2] aka "space efficient city homestead for the up-and-coming young star in San Francisco[3]"
[3] other cities with rapacious landlords colluding to evade taking part in a Capitalist Free Market are available
"...so who's this for, exactly?"
It's called the EliteBoard. It's clearly aimed at boardroom elite. C-suits like gadgets, and who cares if they cost too much and don't make you any more productive? They don't do a lot of grunt work themselves anyway; that's what staff is for. Apart from a few emails, viewing the odd spreadsheet or Power Point stack and checking the stock market on the Web they don't need a practical machine. So they go for "Oooh, shiny!" instead.
Unfortunately for HP that's not a major chunk of the market, so I can see this being discontinued within the year.
Any one who has tried carrying a full sized keyboard will know its size means it doesn’t fit any normal sized carry bag. Hence to enhance portability it needs to be condensed in size, making it less suitable for applications that require significant amounts of typing.
In principle a laptop without screen has some attractions, but then such use cases are probably just as easily satisfied with something akin to a Raspberry Pi or nano PC., ie. If expecting a user to have a monitor (and mouse, desktop hub for additional ports etc.) why not also expect them to have a keyboard… (although a keyboard on its own might be useful to someone who stays in hotels and so only needs to connect it to the WiFi and in-room TV.
I must say, as a laptop-lugger bewixt home and office, but only occasionally other locations, I quite like the concept here. I have a multi-monitor setup at my office, and a decent Asus monitor at home. But other than the price, the killer for me is the shitty low travel keyboard. Companies often spend thousands on fancy office chairs, adjustable desks and monitor arms all to tick DSE requirements, yet give precisely ZERO thought to the three main interfaces between human and machine (screen, keyboard, mouse). Luckily HP and Dell sell some pretty good quality monitors, so perhaps more by luck than judgement they can be OK, but every employer I've ever worked for thinks that a shitty £15 Kensington mouse keyboard combo is absolutely dandy, or the awful cheapo equivalents at the bottom end of the Dell or HP range. I don't want or need a noisy premium mechanical keyboard, but something like the Cherry SX switches would be a good half way house.
Get the frustration, it’s not like getting good quality keyboards and mice is difficult (or expensive)
For many years I’ve used The Keyboard Company in preference to buying the cheap and cheerful keyboards the major OEMs like to bundle. Only problem is a good keyboard tends to last (my IBM data entry grade keyboards are circa 25 years old)..
> Only problem is a good keyboard tends to last
How is that a problem?
My lovely Northgate Omnikey Ultras are still going strong (although there is some overdue maintenance and a key swap needed soonish): their age means that I am blessedly unencumbered by a "Windows" key and most definitely not a "Copilot" key! With the space allowing for two control keys and a proper cursor keypad, the mature (although I prefer the term "adult") keyboard is an absolute dream.
I have an old Compaq workstation keyboard that is based on a DEC design. Other than having to get a PS/2 to USB adapter at one point and the occasional cleaning inside and out, it has been chugging along without issue for 27 years. It is the oldest bit of computer kit that I use daily.
So, yes, good keyboards do last for some time if properly cared for.
Hotel room use seems very dependent on where the in-room TV is.
The last few hotels I stayed at, for example, had a TV rigidly fixed to the wall at a perfect height to be watched from the bed, with the desk being off in the corner facing away from the TV. The Eliteboard wouldn't really be usable in those scenarios....
Agree, in writing about it, I realised it lacked any form of wireless connectivity (*). So like a laptop you will need to carry both a power brick and a selection of cables.
Whilst USB has nice performance potential, I doubt it has the mechanical performance to match - as a result of experience, all my USB powered laptops sport magnetic adaptors (circa £20 per machine).
(*) “WiFi” is conspicuously absent from the specs on the HP website. I also note the mouse is factory paired with the keyboard, so would not be surprised if alternative mice cannot be used - unless they use their own USB dongle…
I'd assume it has WiFi in some form (and perhaps bluetooth for the mouse, too) as there's no physical ethernet connector. Unless the expectation is the monitor "dock" also has ethernet fitted...
Additionally in some specs the cable is permanently fixed to the keyboard, which sounds ridiculously clumsy and a surefire way of getting it damaged when its moved.
Sorry I didn't mention this. I did indeed transport the EliteBoard G1a in my backpack and it fit. Granted my backpack can handle a 17-inch laptop if necessary. This is the exact backpack I use:
https://www.swissgear.com/products/1900-scansmart-laptop-backpack?variant=48050575442142
Depends on the OS... I write the Windows example since that way is less common (though common for me): Win+R, shutdown -s -f -t 0. Similar should be possible on Mac. For Linux: If you don't know don't use it.
(Technical detail nobody want to read: You can configure Windows power settings in powercfg.cpl to shut down if the battery goes below any percentage you want at least since Windows 2000)
i.e. you have a pricey item to be carted about with all the risks that entails, such as loss of the device itself and the loss of the data on it. On the other hand you have none of the advantages, i.e. the ability to set up and work basically anywhere.
It's not that difficult to give a user a reasonably consistent experience across completely different machines and sites these days.
>"At 14.1 x 4.7 x 0.7 inches, the EliteBoard G1a is the size of a typical, full-size keyboard complete with numpad. "
A full sized keyboard generally measures 440–460 mm (17.3–18.1 inches) in width, 130–150 mm (5.1–5.9 inches) in depth, and 30–45 mm (1.2–1.8 inches) in height, with a palm rest adding to the depth (the keyboard I'm currently using - an IBM KB-7953 - is at the top end of these dimensions). [ additional information can be found at: https://hhkeyboard.us/blog/full-size-keyboard ]
I am so over crawling under the desk to install / support / remove "desktop" computers. And God save me from overweight "all-in-one" monitors that are discarded when the disk fails.
And no, the problem is not solved by a book-sized computer on your book-sized desk space.
I get that these computers don't *make sense* for users or businesses. I don't want them to "make sense". I want my users to have them anyway.
However, the problem is also solved by having a nano computer attached to the back of the monitor. I get that manufacturers like to use the VESA mounts - sandwiching the system unit between the monitor and the stand which makes replacing the PC non-trivial. However, there really is nothing preventing manufacturers from attaching nano PC’s in other ways to the back of monitors, just like TV’s have slots for add-on cards/modules.
I think Dell at some point post Covid did offer a VESA attached mounting bracket that offset the computer mount, making system unit swap out much easier.
J.G.Harston: “My perpetual cry: if they're going to do this, can they PLEASE at least put it inside a decent keyboard, one with proper chunky keycaps and proper travel.”
The IBM Model M is such a keyboard.
I thought, probably the only real benefit of the MS Surface Pro is the wireless attached keyboard enabling it to be used in: full tablet, “desktop” and laptop mode.
The only real bane of not having the keyboard and screen firmly attached to each other is when having to work either with the laptop on your lap or in constrained environments where you are using the seat back tray on trains and airplanes.
I for one give my stamp of unconditional approval, regardless of any flaws that may be present in this first commercial iteration modern design of a form factor that has long been known for its superior portability w/o compromising too much user experience or actual utility. If you look at this and think “what does this do that SFF can’t”, you’re missing the entire point, which is portability of a usable workstation, no matter where you go(except Amish communities of course) yet still want to work. It’s not meant for camping, it’s not meant to be used as a POS terminal, it’s meant for the traveling worker who has moved beyond working while commuting on the train, plane, or automobile, camping, etc. It’s everything the luggables of the 80’s(Osborne, Kaypro, Compaq) wanted to be, and everything the true portables(Apple IIc, Commodore, Sinclair) claimed to be, the golden ratio has finally been reached, let this usher in a new age of computing!
Shouts to HP for trying something new. My guess is they started this program when supply chain issues started rearing their head. HP laptop screens are notoriously annoying to replace, so maybe that had something to do with it as well. Great article. It made me feel nostalgic for magazine musings of old. I appreciate any writer whom "fights the good fight" by not transforming their reviews into an extensive list of forced criticisms for fear of being labeled a "shill". Just because there may not be a market segment for a product to fit into as nicely as one would hope doesn't mean it's automatically something to disregard. This was pleasant to read. Hopefully enough of these sell that they're available on the secondhand market at an acceptable cost down the road. I love strange releases such as these.
I wish my employer would give me this instead of the big, heavy laptop I have to lug back and forth between home and work, since I frequently alternate between working from home and the office—often commuting by bike or on foot. (A mini PC might also be an option, but they’re usually still thicker and heavier.)
That URL is a fascinating trip back in time. Thanks for sharing it.
A dollar/pound exchange rate of 2:1... them were the days!
And it surprises me that DB9/Centronics/PS2 ports were present as recently as '08; in my fuzzy memory, they'd all but died out by the first half of that decade.
>” Hopefully enough of these sell that they're available on the secondhand market at an acceptable cost down the road.”
Suspect this will be even more of a niche product than the 18-inch tablet PCs of circa 2013 offered by Dell, HP and IBM/Lenovo. I had a Dell XPS-18 with an i7 ( https://www.mobiletechreview.com/notebooks/Dell-XPS-18.htm ) This worked well for those who’s mobility was basically taking the computer between home and office in their car; it definitely wasn’t for the backpack mobile workers…
These 18-inch tablets sold well enough to be profitable, but not sufficiently to justify the scale of production the major OEMs aim for.
I also expect from both that experience and fro the netbook era, the performant variants will be hard to get hold of and still be compromised (eg. Advertised as having a mobile data option, but never actually making that variant available to US/UK customers). Additionally, the need to handle all the regionally different keyboards is going to cause manufacturing and configuration issues, unless it becomes more of a laptop, so the keyboard is just a simple insert…
As someone else has already commented, a keyboard capable of taking a Raspberry Pi is really all that is needed, given these sorts of environments these devices may make sense in, will be 365 subscribers, so local processing only needs to run a terminal session…
> Additionally, the need to handle all the regionally different keyboards is going to cause manufacturing and configuration issues, unless it becomes more of a laptop, so the keyboard is just a simple insert…
From TFA:
>> You can even replace the keyboard itself and leave the computer part intact.
And by the looks of it, the keyboard is a big rectangle sat on top of everything else, which will be a *lot* easier than trying to change the layout of than laptops I have (where converting US<->UK means swapping the keyboard *and* the entire fascia, which has cutouts for the individual keys to poke through).
I expect to see these keyboard computers remaindered, sold off cheaply
Cheap enough some of components ssd, cpu, ram … might well be worthwhile filleting out but I can imagine most of the useful parts are soldered in.
The whole exercise has a Netbooky feel to it except Netbooks were actually quite cheap (inexpensive) and admittedly many quite cheap (nasty.)
From sysadmin point of view I am not too keen on having to ascertain whether every (hitherto dumb) keyboard being decommissioned or otherwise leaving the site isn't exfiltrating information. I suppose it's always been fairly simple to physically insert a SOC into a keyboard interpolated between the keyboard and usb interface.
This is a solution in search of a problem. With the price being so similar to a laptop there honesty doesn't seem to be a point.
Maybe a product like this would have worked better in the early 90s when laptops screens were really bad.
Of course back then these computers inside keyboards would have ended being quite bulky and heavy. And not to mention the adds ons for reading floppy drives and another for CD-Rom and maybe one for Iomega Zip drive in this had released in like the late 90s?
Back in 1984, there was this from Amstrad...
I'm not sure that anyone that docks the laptop close the lid instead of having more workspace...
alas - it could be convenient for those that already have external display and don't need that much workspace and don't feel like dragging heavier hardware.
btw I maybe be an odd one but actually prefer less key travel, not more :D
Reminds me of a time when tablets first became an option for business use.
Our senior people demanded them, it was imperative they were seen walking around with the lastest device tucked under their arm (I think they were Dell Venue 11s).
Then they said , "they're hard to type on we need a keyboard", So they got a magnetically attached (expensive) keyboard to go with the (expensive) tablet.
They they said, "it's hard to select things, we need a mouse". So they got a bluetooth mouse to go with the keyboard and tablet.
When it was pointed out that they had effectively built an expensive but underpowered laptop piece by piece and they might be better off with a laptop; this was dismissed out of hand, they needed a tablet because the little people used laptops.
I'll add, all along while this was happending they also kept their full desktop systems so they were running double licences for everything.
This seems like that, everything in a keyboardmkaijng it easily damaged expensive and contrained. For a desktop you'd be better/cheaper with a SFF PC and cheap disposable keyboard to cope with inevitable coke/coffee spill or just having some heavy books dumped on it. If you need portable a laptop would still work better. If you want a portable computer to plug in and run a console it'll be cheaper to use a RaspPi device.
So I'm struggling to see the niche for this?
Windows tablet edition always seemed to be a joke. Last time I looked, Windows pen / handwriting input was still rubbish. On my 5th generation iPad it’s okay but input is still laggy and there are few applications that support pen input.
I see Apple in trying to make the iPad more of a laptop, they have been making the touch UI more clunky, albeit nowhere near as clunky as trying to use Windows in touch/pen mode…
> Windows tablet edition always seemed to be a joke
IMO Windows pen-everything was just rushed out in order to put the kibosh on PenPoint OS (first gen tablet PCs were available with GO's OS and "Windows for Pen Computing" as a not-very-usable alternative; very sadly, not dual booted).
Once they'd extinguished the competition, there wasn't any reason for MS to improve pen support. So they didn't.
I never used it but it seems odd considering the swipe keyboards on my WinPh8 more than 10yr ago is still the best smartphone keyboard I've ever used.
Winpho 8 was little some talented UX people at MS got left alone for a little while to do something decent, then were discovered and it was 'innovated' to its grave.
But then MS making a cockend of anything with potential is practically BAU
Most companies could use a dumb terminal nowadays, if they are daft enough to rely on the cloud and SaaS, or sensible enough to use their own servers for an intranet. Ditto for web boxes.
If the Pi folk actually had a marketing dept, they could have cleaned up, flogging them to corporates.
No sane person wants Copilot or Covid. Equally unpleasant.
The format is a good one. Better keyboard required though.
It's absolutely not a full sized keyboard. That stupid squished up arrow block and home+end block is just horrible and probably the worst thing about trying to do serious work on a laptop type keyboard.
It's also not a proper full travel mechanical - which admittedly your co-workers might appreciate compared to the mighty noise that a lot of those make - but that's part of what I like about them. There's really strong tactile and audible feedback when typing.
You can't use it while traveling - on the train for example - or in meetings where you need to bring your data and talking points with you, but when it is tied to your desk it doesn't have enough clout to be a proper workstation.
I am strangely attracted to the idea - probably because I have all kinds of pent up 80s nostalgia for the form factor - but looked at rationally I just can't see a use for this that isn't better served by something else.
For staff who need to occasionally work from home but don't need to carry around a laptop, for less than the price of this HP machine we bought users a micro PC, 2 monitors for the office, 2 for home and USB docking station, keyboard & mouse in both places. The micro PCs are small enough to fit in any bag and the user only needs to take the PC and power supply home with them.
How about maybe adding a screen to it as an option. That would give the user the ability to use it away from the desk. Perhaps even make it folding so you don't have to use the built-in screen. And by adding a mode where the computer doesn't go to sleep when the lid is closed and a screen is plugged in (a default that doesn't happen in Windows - but it can be set to work like that), it would offer more or less the same functionality by just adding a £10 keyboard.
The whole unit would be usable on the go, at a desk and at home that way. And they could actually charge less for the computer in that configuration, for reasons.
That sort of setup could be used by balancing it on your knees. So it could be called a “kneesputer" or a "la-pee-cee" or something.
If you want an ultra portable there was the Palm and its folding keyboard. Translating into PC terms, that would be a smartphone sized system unit with optional display (could be useful to display windows notifications ie. The stuff that pops up in the bottom right corner of a Windows display) and a hinged or tri-fold keyboard; which gets over the much of bulk issues of carrying around a full sized keyboard in your hand luggage.The system unit could connect to the keyboard through a USB-C connector, and could be enhanced to include phone capabilities…
This reminded me of the BBC Master Compact and I couldn't resist a good scratch of the nostalgia itch reading about it.
There's a vital missing word here, or maybe several:
"HP stuffed a PC into an ATROCIOUSLY AWFUL keyboard."
It's been done before, better, with real keys. (Less processing power, I'll grant.) This is a snoreburger at best. Even assuming I for some reason wanted to work with a PC stuffed inside a keyboard, if I have room on my desk for a REAL KEYBOARD then why should that keyboard be an atrocity that reproduces almost all of the worst features of laptop keyboards? 2mm key travel and flat as a plank, OH MY GOD I'M SO EXCITED. (Not.)
This is a funny-shaped laptop without a screen, and that's a bad joke.
Long ago after being burnt by HP I've never bought any of their tat. Sudden dropping of support, the great ink rip off, shoddy build and the list goes on.........
I don't care if it spoon feeds llamas peeled grades while reclining, nothing ever from HP is entering my house. Also the business I work for doesn't touch them too. (approx 24k seats)
HP is dead to me for many years
