Since acquiring Voodoo in 2006, HP has now spruced up the ENVY line-up with two new, sleek notebooks.

SHOWCASE: HP Asia Pacific showcased new netbooks, notebooks and desktops to regional journalists (from as far as Japan) on Sentosa Island, Singapore last night.

Among the products shown included the latest ENVY 13 and 15, a series which HP adopted after acquiring Voodoo in 2006. The new laptops have the full body aluminum and magnesium chassis, including a multi-touch pad called a Clickpad.

The system comes with the Beats Audio subsystem developed by Beats by Dr. Dre (a Monster Cable product). The Envy 13 itself has a thickness of only 0.8 inch and 1.69kg weight. It doesn’t come with a built-in optical drive.

The more impressive function is the 13.1-inch widescreen display, which boasts 410 nits brightness and 82% color gamut. This is possible with the ability to switch between the integrated graphics chipset and ATI Mobility Radeon 4330 chipset.

The Envy 15 is heavier at 2.35kg and 1-inch thick. It’s 15.6-inch screen can manage only 300 nits brightness and a 60% color gamut. It’s using a Core 97 processor (Core i7 Q720), supports up to 16GB of memory and allows 2 solid state drive disks on a RAID 0 configuration. It uses the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4830 with 1GB of memory.

Expect both the Envy 13 and 15 to launch by Oct 22 in stores at US$1699 and US$1899 respectively.

Another major showcase was the HP Netbook Mini 311, which comes with NVIDIA’s Ion platform. With an 11.6-inch screen, the Mini 311 is using an Intel Atom N270 processor, while the Ion hardware-accelerated HD decode function powers up high def content (sans Flash-based HD content).

Other products included two consumer-based Pavilion notebooks (dm1 and dm3), a business-class ProBook (5310m) and a Pavilion desktop PC. For more info on these products, check out the full coverage here. (Editor opinions: 3)

Meanwhile here are some images of some of the products shown last night.

David Chieng, Editor, HWM Singapore

David (HWM Singapore): We saw an earlier Voodoo ENVY laptop in Berlin last year during HP’s 2008 Big Bang launch of the year.

From the looks of it, HP’s still going on with the ENVY theme, but there doesn’t seem to be any additional sparks of life from the Voodoo unit that HP acquired sometime back.

Even more telling is a recent blog post by Voodoo founder Rahul Sood that all but confirms that HP probably isn’t going to continue with the Voodoo brand as it was originally conceived to be, as a high-end, custom PC offering for the well-heeled.

At least Dell’s made some inroads into the region with Alienware, but I think hopeful Voodoo fans in Asia might get disappointed. That said however, the ENVY 13 and 15 seem to both be fabulous machines, and I for one can’t wait for productions samples to arrive for review.

HWM Indonesia

HWM Indonesia: I think it’s good that there’s a quiet transformation in the making for the Voodoo line.

The original transformation was quite revolutionary as it was very gamer-audience focused.

Now, it’s very lifestyle focused — aimed more for the masses.

I think it’s a smart move on HP’s part and I hope this strategy will attract more sales volume.

Paolo Manzano, Managing Editor, HWM Philippines

Paolo (HWM Philippines): The ENVY line-up consists of interesting products that have me wondering if these will be brought over to the Philippines’ shores.

HP Philippines has been quite conservative in bringing in the more “advanced” and high-end product offerings such as the Blackbird and TouchSmart PCs in the past.

Hopefully, they see the merit of bringing these in, even as “hero” or “halo” products.

Seeing another Ion-powered netbook is good news for the market as well, as it sends out a strong signal that Intel is either losing its equity with manufacturers or its grip over and desire to control what chipset ships with the Atom processor.

Either way, this is good for consumers and brings forth another challenge for Intel in deriving better performance from their Atom chipset combos.

HP's new Mini 5101 has an integrated 2-megapixel webcam and 3 USB 2.0 ports.

SHOWCASE: HP has unveiled its top-of-the-line Mini PC called the Mini 5101. Featuring a sturdy, lightweight anodized aluminum display enclosure with a black, brushed finish, the combination of materials is an industry first for the netbook category.

The product has a spill-resistant keyboard (95% of a full-size QWERTY keyboard), comes with HP DuraKeys (a clear coat to keep the keys 50x more resistant to visible wear) and weighs from 1.18kg. (more…)

HP's new 10.1-inch Mini 110 mini-notebook comes in three colors with options for storage (solid state or 2.5" HDD), OS (Win XP or HP's Mobile Internet), resolution and battery.

SHOWCASE: The HWM Malaysia and Singapore team were flown to Beijing last week to cover HP’s Touching the Future product unveiling by the Personal Systems Group (PSG) from HP Asia Pacific and Japan.

According to HP, consumer habits and usage of the Web have changed so much, that products today need to integrate these activities into their functionality to satisfy the need of the current Web generation.

Anticipating this shift, HP unveiled mini-notebooks, laptops, all-in-one PCs to regular desktops at the event. The star of the show was naturally the new HP Mini 110, which comes in three color options, two storage options and two resolution options on a standard 10.1-inch screen.

What’s impressive this time though is the option of two battery packs - the standard 3-cell Lithium-ion battery keeps the weight at 1.06kg but the 6-cell battery option lets the user use it two times longer than usual.

The HP Mini 110 is expected to cost US$299 and up and will be available from 28 May 2009 (Black Swirl version). The Pink Chic and White Swirl versions will be due 30 June 2009. (more…)

PC makers like HP, ASUS and Dell might consider running Android on future mini-notebooks but will this move disrupt the mojos of dominant players like Microsoft and Intel?

T&A: Wall Street Journal online published a report today (could be an April Fool’s joke but you never know…so check the link for updates), where PC makers like Hewlett-Packard (HP) and others have considered using free software developed by Google to run smaller computers.

For instance, they have been testing Google’s Android operating system (OS), now accessible on mobile phones, in new versions of their mini-notebooks. The problem however is that the OS isn’t exactly compatible with most popular PC applications, which is one of the reasons why Microsoft’s Windows continues to dominate in this space, which according to research firm NPD Group, sits in more than 90% of new mini-notebooks.

Besides HP, Taiwan-based Asustek might be considering using Android in its mini-notebooks while Dell has been customizing Android software in a range of its devices which it plans to launch next year, including mobile phone, mobile Internet devices and so on. (Editor opinions: 1) (more…)