HP late Monday entered the premium consumer Ultrabook market with the unveiling of its HP ENVY 14 Spectre, a model which packs a high-end screen, a nine-hour battery life, and up to two SSDs all in an enclosure measuring 0.8 inches and weighing under 4 pounds.
The HP ENVY 14 Spectre's most noticeable feature is its heavy use of glass throughout the device. That includes a full, 14-inch-high definition screen, as well as "midnight black" scratch-resistant glass on the outside and contrasting silver glass on the inside, according to HP.
The Ultrabook is powered by Intel Core i5 or Core i7 ultra-low voltage (ULV) processors, and comes with either 4 GBs or 8 GBs of RAM and up to two 128-GB or 256-GB mSATA SSDs. They also include Intel's Rapid Start Technology as well as other software optimized for short boot time and wakeup time.
As a result of these technologies, the HP ENVY 14 Spectre features a battery life of up to nine hours.
The HP ENVY 14 Spectre comes with a choice of Windows 7 Home Premium, Windows 7 Home Professional, and Windows 7 Ultimate operating systems.
The HP ENVY 14 Spectre is one of several Ultrabooks being introduced at the CES conference, held this week in Las Vegas. Other models being unveiled at the show include Samsung's Series 5 Ultrabooks, Lenovo's IdeaPad U310 and U410, and models from Asus.
The Ultrabook mobile PCs are being pushed by their designer, Intel, as an alternative to lightweight notebook PCs from Apple and to tablet PCs. Several name brand PC vendors have signed on to the Ultrabook platform, as have a number of custom system builders.
Intel itself is busy at CES this week showing off prototypes of future technology related to Ultrabooks, including models with the ability to quickly switch between keyboard and touchscreen, "slider" technology that lets the Ultrabook serve as a tablet PC, a transparent trackpad, and voice recognition technology.
The HP ENVY 14 Spectre is scheduled to ship on February 8 with a starting list price of $1,399.
