New HP Tablet Brings Touch To SMBs
HP, headquartered in Palo Alto, Calif., has priced its EliteBook 2740p convertible tablet at $1,599 and will make it available in April. Featuring standard voltage Intel chips for more processing power than consumer-oriented convertible tablets from HP, the EliteBook 2740p weighs 3.8 pounds and has a 12.1-inch diagonal LED display.
The touchscreen on EliteBook 2740p is capacitive, meaning users can tap and swipe the screen with their fingers, utilizing the full array of multi-touch gestures to navigate through applications. A stylus is also provided with the unit as an alternate input tool.
The EliteBook 2740p serves as a fully functional notebook with full-sized keyboard or, after swiveling the display into its tablet position, as a slate. HP offers an option for an outdoor-view display and battery flavors include the standard set-up that provides up to five hours of battery life, with the option of adding on the new HP 2700 Ultra-Slim Battery for a full 11 hours of battery life when combined with the standard battery.
HP said it will be targeting SMBs with the EliteBook 2740p. To that end, HP has also built a docking station for the new tablet, the HP 2740 Ultra-Slim Expansion Base. The dock, priced at $299 and available starting April 12, provides an external monitor connection and connects the 2740p to external storage and optical drives.
HP on Monday also introduced some standard commercial notebooks that essentially extend current product lines with the most powerful and energy-efficient new 32-nanometer mobile processors from Santa Clara, Calif.-based Intel.
These included HP's lightest EliteBook PC to date, as well as four new notebooks in HP's ProBook s-series. At 3.3 pounds and sporting a 12.1-inch display, the HP EliteBook 2540p starts at $1,099 and will be available in April. It has options for either a low-voltage mobile processor or a standard voltage chip in a high-performance configuration.
The EliteBook 2540p has several battery options, all the way up to a nine-cell battery that provides up to 12.5 hours of battery life, according to HP. As with the other new products HP unveiled Monday, the unit has assorted biometric security options, including a fingerprint sensor and face recognition via the optional 2-megapixel Web cam built right into the display frame.
The new HP ProBook s-series will be made available in March and comes in four sizes -- the 13.3-inch HP ProBook 4320s, 14-inch 4420s, the 15.6-inch 4520s and the 17.3-inch 4720s. Prices start at $719 for the ProBook 4320s, but HP did not provide any additional price breakdown for the larger units.
The new ProBooks are targeted at "prosumers," small office users who depend on their notebooks for both business and consumer use, HP told Channelweb.com during a recent demo of its new products in San Francisco. Buyers have the option of adding ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4350 discrete graphics from Advanced Micro Devices to the standard-issue integrated graphics from Intel to these notebooks.
HP has also added some interesting in-house software to its new offerings. The EliteBook 2740p tablet and 2540p notebook are preloaded with a trial version of SkyRoom, HP's videoconferencing software. The two new EliteBooks and all four new ProBooks also come with HP Day Starter, a simplified calendar that pops up about five seconds after turning on the notebook for quick access to the day's events while the Windows operating system boots up.