"Protect, detect, and recover from malicious BIOS attacks using HP Sure Start with Dynamic Protection - the industry’s first self-healing BIOS that monitors and corrects BIOS corruption in real-time"
In the footnote, it says that it corrects BIOS corruption every 15 minutes. I'd be interested to see how this works and what technology they are using. What happens if my BIOS is corrupted within the 15 minute window and I reboot?
This implies that the bios can be corrupted - the bios shouldn't accept unsigned updates (without an in bios flag being switched first), even from a root-level user on the OS.
I understand they want to make it look clean, but they show no cords at all in most of the pictures. There's also no mention of battery life, so it must be powered.
If they're going to lie about the cords, what else are they lying about? Also $699?? WTF?
Defining "lying" as "doesn't have cords in promo images" is really really weird. You don't see too many Dell ads with cords flying down to their towers either.
Towers tend to hide cords behind them. This is shown on a desk next to a monitor, as if it is being used with the monitor. It is photographed at an angle that would show cords if they were present. It looks ridiculous at least.
The monitor shown may be an All-in-One, but then what is the computer doing there?
There's a picture of a guy using it (with zero cords) to take a conference call, which goes a bit beyond a flattering studio photo. It allegedly depicts real world use.
At first I disagreed with you, but when I took another look at the images I realized that it does seem a bit dishonest to not show any cables, especially when the images are designed to showcase how "sleek" it is. There's no way a real-life setup would look like what this page is trying to sell.
It's worth noting that the last image on the page has a cable and make the computer look much less sleek - and that's just one cable, you'll probably need power, display, mouse/keyboard, etc.
While true, seeing as everyone else also seems to do it (Dell, Apple, Lenovo have very similar photos although admittedly not always with a human user in the photos) it seems slightly odd to complain about what are fairly obviously promotional images?
It's odd to complain about false advertising? I've seen computer manufactures avoid showing cables by hiding them, but the images on this website seem to imply that it operates cordlessly.
This is interesting because it shows no wires is desirable.
You could build an almost wireless box - just a little power lead - if you built in whdi or wigig into your little desktop unit but for now tat would push the price up too much. I hope it happens one day.
Yeah it's also macosx maybe you want to write for ios, if you're stuck with windows it's not going to help. Apple might be underpowered but you also don't need to use an entire cpu core just to run constant virus protection.
Just anecdotally, my 2013 dual-core i5 (1.3GHz) Macbook Air seems to run smoother and faster than a majority of the "new" PC laptops I deal with. I'm not sure if it's OS X or the hardware, but for a four year old machine I wouldn't trade it for any new PC laptop.
This really confused me. Even if you power it from your monitor you've got to plug it in. No shame in having one or two cords, so why fake the product shots?
My thought was that one of the modules had a plug on the bottom so you could run the cables through a hole in a wall/desk... but it looks like none of the modules, not even the VESA mount, have anything like that.
I am really interested in a consumer-clean modular desktop concept. Sometimes I feel like there needs to be something that will save the layman from the tablet virus.
The tablet virus is the idea that tablet computers can replace desktops.
I, personally, don't disagree [tablets] can cover a good portion of the layman's usecases; yet it is important to teach (to) and have people realise the strengths of the freedom desktops give them.
This sort of thing always gets on my nerves. Plenty of sellers do it on Amazon (almost always before the product has even arrived), many apps do it, etc. I always leave a negative review in such cases.
"<company name> sent a nag asking for a review/rating. As the product hasn't arrived yet / just got installed 10 seconds ago, I can only rate what I've seen of it: no product whatsoever. 1 star! If they'd waited a week or two I might actually have a positive opinion about <product name> to write here."
If they ask later on instead (after at least a week of use) I'll instead leave an actual review of the product.
If Apple updated the Mac Mini (I, too, hope they get their act together), it would not be in response to the HP announcement. The two machines are meant for different customer groups, I think.
Apple tends to be pretty high end as of late. So they could chuck a decent GPU and a quad core CPU in there, raising the price, of course. I'd buy one. My mini is something like 5 years old at this point.
"Powerful PC" - probably uses Core M, a giveaway being that they don't mention exactly what processor they're using. It's also the reason Intel will soon rebrand Core M to "Core i5", because everyone knew Core M sucked. So their solution is to make people believe it's a more powerful chip. Because feels > reals (marketing 101, I suppose).
If it had a network switch add-on, a really good projector add-on, and really good microphones/speakers, this could be a great meeting room pc. But it just looks like a dumb terminal replacement for corporations. (Though I don't know why you would pick one instead of a cheap business laptop?)
one thousand plus days of Apple not updating the Mac Mini while holding firm to their price and HP reinvents it? The value isn't in the components, it is in the integration and software.
This is the space Apple should have been in long ago but they dropped the ball with the desktop market three years ago and only seem to have moved after being goaded, nigh embarrassed about the state of their offerings.
While this HP is not useful to me I do appreciate what they have done.
I love the concept, but it's missing what's in my opinion the component that would benefit most from modularity: dedicated graphics.
A significant portion of the target market would probably have no need for any more graphics power than what comes with the processor, so not including it in the base module makes a lot of sense. However, for many use cases, discrete graphics is an absolute necessity, so not even offering it as an option in a modular system targeted at the high-end market strikes me as an odd omission (as far as I could tell, the system doesn't even have Thunderbolt 3, so it can't support eGPUs through normal means either).
USB Type C is only the connector specification, and it offers very little guarantees about what protocols are actually supported through the connector. External graphics would require a USB Type C port with support for Thunderbolt 3, which is an entirely separate specification from the USB 3.1 spec that's usually the baseline for such ports, and offers 40 Gbit/s in bandwidth vs USB 3.1 Gen2's 10 Gbit/s (and Gen1, which is more commonly used, is only 5 Gbit/s).
I couldn't find any mentions of Thunderbolt in its specs, so I don't believe external graphics is a possibility here.
OK, so a 2x more expensive NUC with emphasis on design and HP-specific modularity. I think Intel planned custom lids as well and MSI Cubi has a storage expander, so HP probably took cues from them. I personally like these super mini PCs, for office work you don't need anything else these days.
Edit: PS, is there a way to get this thing in Australia? Their aussie website is atrocious, can't for the live of me find the customise option for the Slice...
It's free, so you can wipe it and install whatever OS you want without paying for a Windows license. And for the manufacturer the benefit is that it's clear that it's barebones, so no support requests for the preinstalled OS.
I don't know why the alternative isn't "ship with empty disk" though. Maybe some weird regulation, or to make it clearer to dealers and customers that it isn't broken, just without an OS?
> I don't know why the alternative isn't "ship with empty disk" though
You can't ship a "computer" which doesn't do anything when you turn it on. FreeDOS has just enough basic capability that HP can say "yeah this is a functional computer out of the box" while having so little capability that its installation implies a wink-wink understanding that the customer will install his own OS that he'll take responsibility for.
The main advantage seems to be price: HP charges negative $202 to install FreeDOS instead of Windows. I'm not sure why they picked FreeDOS instead of having a "None" option, though.
81 comments
[ 4.4 ms ] story [ 157 ms ] threadIn the footnote, it says that it corrects BIOS corruption every 15 minutes. I'd be interested to see how this works and what technology they are using. What happens if my BIOS is corrupted within the 15 minute window and I reboot?
If they're going to lie about the cords, what else are they lying about? Also $699?? WTF?
The monitor shown may be an All-in-One, but then what is the computer doing there?
It's worth noting that the last image on the page has a cable and make the computer look much less sleek - and that's just one cable, you'll probably need power, display, mouse/keyboard, etc.
You could build an almost wireless box - just a little power lead - if you built in whdi or wigig into your little desktop unit but for now tat would push the price up too much. I hope it happens one day.
Well, except for the Mac Mini, which it pretty much looks like.
(at least Apple admits up front that they're dual cores, unlike almost every other use of lie5/lie7's...)
I, personally, don't disagree [tablets] can cover a good portion of the layman's usecases; yet it is important to teach (to) and have people realise the strengths of the freedom desktops give them.
(see: Intel NUC, Gigabyte BRIX, AsRock BeeBox, etc...)
"<company name> sent a nag asking for a review/rating. As the product hasn't arrived yet / just got installed 10 seconds ago, I can only rate what I've seen of it: no product whatsoever. 1 star! If they'd waited a week or two I might actually have a positive opinion about <product name> to write here."
If they ask later on instead (after at least a week of use) I'll instead leave an actual review of the product.
They make you go through many clicks to get there, but the "Tech Specs" on the HP site say that it's an i3-6100T (for the Core i3, anyway).
This is the space Apple should have been in long ago but they dropped the ball with the desktop market three years ago and only seem to have moved after being goaded, nigh embarrassed about the state of their offerings.
While this HP is not useful to me I do appreciate what they have done.
A significant portion of the target market would probably have no need for any more graphics power than what comes with the processor, so not including it in the base module makes a lot of sense. However, for many use cases, discrete graphics is an absolute necessity, so not even offering it as an option in a modular system targeted at the high-end market strikes me as an odd omission (as far as I could tell, the system doesn't even have Thunderbolt 3, so it can't support eGPUs through normal means either).
I couldn't find any mentions of Thunderbolt in its specs, so I don't believe external graphics is a possibility here.
http://www.zdnet.com/product/hp-z2-mini-g3-workstation/
HP just does not seem to be able to get industrial design right.
http://store.hp.com/us/en/ConfigureView?catalogId=10051&lang...
Edit: PS, is there a way to get this thing in Australia? Their aussie website is atrocious, can't for the live of me find the customise option for the Slice...
I don't know why the alternative isn't "ship with empty disk" though. Maybe some weird regulation, or to make it clearer to dealers and customers that it isn't broken, just without an OS?
You can't ship a "computer" which doesn't do anything when you turn it on. FreeDOS has just enough basic capability that HP can say "yeah this is a functional computer out of the box" while having so little capability that its installation implies a wink-wink understanding that the customer will install his own OS that he'll take responsibility for.
PS: I'm half-Jewish, atheist.
https://www.asus.com/us/Mini-PCs/VivoMini-Products/