After being the center of attraction for media, users, Windows enthusiasts and others, Windows 8 will finally be out this year and with this curiosity to know what tablet manufacturing companies will have their names added with it has also increased among all!

So, any idea which companies will be tagged as Windows 8 tablet makers once the new Windows hit the market this year? Well, there are number of popular manufacturers that will get to included in the long list of tablet manufacturing companies, some of these are HP, Dell, Lenovo, Acer and Asus which will come up with their Windows 8 tablet sometimes in October this year.

The other names that came into limelight for working on their own set of Windows 8 tablet to be introduced in the earliest possible part of 2013 happen to be Sony, Toshiba, Samsung, and Lenovo.

Well, as far as Dell is concerned, it has been keeping quiet about its plans for coming up with its tablet. It did launch the Dell Streak 10 tablet based on Android Honeycomb last year but it kind of kissed goodbye to it soon.

There’s a somewhat similar story about HP. It did land up into tablet market but couldn’t taste much success with its HP TouchPad which did gain popularity but it couldn’t last that long.

Interestingly, both the companies got ready to try out their luck in the tablet market once again with Windows 8 tablets.

It appears that the magic of Netbooks is coming to an end and has lost the kind of power it had earlier.  At least from the move taken by Lenovo, one gets this notion. Lenovo has stopped selling netbooks online, so if you had any online buying plans, you’ll have look for some other place to look for as Lenovo’s website is no more the place for you.  And the company hasn’t decided whether it’d starting the sales in the near future.

Lenovo is not the only company to take such a step; many other companies have taken similar decision on seeing consumers being less interested in netbooks over the time. With the availability of more technically strong tablets and mini-laptops at lower price tags, netbooks have seen dramatic drop in the sales. Dell too had stopped selling netbooks sometimes back, and the companies like HP and Acer have reduced their offerings.

Netbooks were a tremendous success but by the second half of the year 2010, their sales started declining, this actually started little by little after April 2010 when Apple’s iPad kindled the tablet market.

The total shipment of netbooks got reduced to 6.3 million in the fourth quarter of last year which was down by 29 percent or can be said to be just the third of what was sold in the fourth quarter a year back.

All the major netbook producing companies observed around 30% drop in the shipments and Lenovo alone found a shipment drop of 43%. However, netbooks are believed to be doing well in some parts of Latin America and Asia.

Right now the Lenovo’s site lists all its netbooks as “temporarily sold out – more stock is expected”.  But interestingly, Lenovo doesn’t seem to be changing its plan of releasing two of its S series netbooks namely S200 and S206 this June, which it announced last month during the CES 2012 in Las Vegas.

Hewlett-Packard has just announced two of its new desktop PCs when CES 2012 is just round the corner and one feels inundated with Ultrabooks announcements. Omni 27 all-in-one is one of them which is the first all-in-one model from the company which offers an impressively large 1080p LED-backlit display of 27-inch display. On the design front, it has the same Easel design as is offered by the TouchSmart all-in-one PCs from HP, with glass on the screen covering one edge to other; however you won’t find any touch screen in this case.

Omni27 sports 2.5GHz Sandy Bridge Core i5-2400S processor, s6GB RAM, integrated graphics, two USB 3.0 ports and Beats Audio. It originally comes packed with a DVD drive, but there is an option for Blu-ray player as well as TV tuner and HDMI input.

Omni also happens to be the first non-touch PC from HP and offers Magic Canvas software, the UI which was earlier known as TouchSmart and which then got tooled up again to be compatible with the non-touch devices. This will be taking on 27-inch iMac from Apple, pricing for which starts at $1,700, for US from January 8.

Pavilion Phoenix h9 is the second desktop PC which got announced yesterday. It is a “prosumer” system which is being publicized by HP as the most powerful Pavillion PC till now. The base model of the machine features an eight core AMD FX-8100 processor, a 160GB SSD, RAM of 8GB, and a Radeon 7670 GPU along with a VRAM of 1GB for $1,150.

One also gets the option to use Nvidia graphics, Intel’s enthusiast grade X79 processors, secondary hard drives and also liquid cooling.

HP has also unveiled three brand new business focusing monitors that include 23-inch Compaq L2311 with a built-in port replicator with a price tag of $319; along with LED-backlit LV1911 and LV2011 monitors available at more affordable prices of $125 and $135 respectively.

Not even a week’s time is left in the starting up of CES 2012 in Las Vegas and HP has started up teasing their second Ultrabook after their 13.3 inch Folio that was announced in November. An FCC filing was leaked last week which suggests that it will be offering a 14 inch display and ‘Ivy Bridge’ processors from Intel which is due in the early second quarter.

It is believed that Ultrabooks will be taking the central place in the upcoming Consumer Electronic Show and prove beneficial in boosting up the PC sales in 2012 which have been lagging from some time. Around 50 new Ultrabooks will be getting launched in the CES to be held in Las Vegas, as per the CES representatives. The manufacturers participating in the show will be introducing their devices competing against Apple’s MacBook Air. Intel will be delivering a keynote address in order to announce their next generation chips.

The popularity of Ultrabooks is because of its portability and instant-on capabilities that it took from the tablets as well as the better performance and convenience that it inspired from the notebooks. If reports are to believe, HIS iSuppli projects ultrabooks will have made about 43% of PC shipments globally in 2015 from just 2% in 2011 and 13% 2012.

Whether an Ultrabook will be successful or it’ll be a failure, it depends on its pricing decision; however, there can be some improvements if the devices like Toshiba Portege Z835 of HP’s Folio 13, which are selling in the price-range of $800 and $900, are considered. Not just the decision of placing the Ultrabooks at lower prices but also the upcoming release of Windows8 in the later part of the year will prove beneficial in the success of the Ultrabooks.

HP has rolled out its X7000 Wi-Fi Touch Mouse pretty secretly. This slick and smart pointer combines the wireless connectivity along with touch sensitive technology. The uniqueness of the shape which gives it a unique curved shape and makes it arc to the right creates a slight trouble for the left handed users. They may not feel comfortable in using this pointing device.

When the Wi-Fi Mobile Mouse from HP was checked out a few months back, it was found to be working elegantly well even though its click zone on the left and right click buttons was found to be not so good.  Now HP has involved the same Wi-Fi technology in the X7000 which indicates that it isn’t paired with a Bluetooth adapter or a USB dongle instead the mouse is directly connected to the wireless connection of your notebook.

The touch sensitive strip present on X7000 is something which isn’t found on the mobile mice in general.  This makes it look pretty similar to the strip that you’ll find on the Microsoft’s Explorer Touch Mouse that helps you to speed up across the web pages smoothly and quickly with simple click of your finger.

You even get an adjustable laser sensor at 1600 CPI, six special programmable buttons including one which helps in uploading to Facebook, Teflon feet and rubber side grip. The battery life is claimed to be of nine months.

It is 4.86 inches in length, 3.52 inches in width and is tall by 1.83 inches which clarifies that it is a full size desktop-type mouse which makes you think that it isn’t one of those models that you can easily pack up in your travel bag.  It shouldn’t be a trouble to use it with traditional desktop but you’ll have to install a wireless card or have a native support for this feature on your motherboard.

One thing needs to be noted here is that you’d need Windows7 for using it. HP X7000 can be bought at $59.99 from the company’s online store.

A latest report suggests that many popular PC manufacturing companies like HP and Dell have decided to use Windows 8 as the operating system for their tablets. With the coming up of Amazon’s Kindle Fire at a considerably lesser price, the competition among the Android based tablets have got quite tighten making it pretty tough for the devices to continue in the same segment. This has made most manufacturers to leave out Android and start on with a fresher take with Windows 8.

Recently at the Dell World 2011, Michael Dell, the CEO of Dell told that the Android tablet segment didn’t do that well as was their expectation, this made him consider their decision and go for associations with Windows for the development of their new devices. Though, Mr. Dell didn’t say any thing in a clear cut way, it appears somewhat apparent that they will get into this association with their latest tablet by developing it on Windows 8 operating system.

Again, HP is looking forward to go for an entirely new tablet segment after the discouraging performance of its TouchPad.

Dell and HP are expected to release their new tablets around the third quarter of 2012. And as Windows 8 has just touched the market, this time selection seems quite appropriate.

Microsoft is expecting its Windows 8 to perform well with its presence in most of the Microsoft devices that include computer systems, mobile phones, and the tablets. It is believed to be giving a perfectly seamless and quite comfortable performance which will surely be well liked by all the Windows users. Windows 8 will make it possible for the users to work using their keyboard and mouse as well as touch screen.

Dell, HP, Lenovo, etc. are few of the names which are looking forward to make their presence felt by getting a place competing with Kindle and iPad with the Microsoft’s newest presentation. Meticulously speaking, it won’t be wrong to say that Windows 8 is Microsoft’s essentiality for the moment in order to make its presence prominent in the table segment where Apple is yet the king.

It is speculated that if this operating system proves itself successful in giving all that it has promised, it will surely make a special place for itself in the segment.

Early this week, HP publicly displayed more than a dozen of new printers especially targeted to the consumers and the small businesses at its annual Imaging and Printing Conference held at Shanghai. Among all the other printers, there was one which is believed to be scanning in seemingly 3D form. Apart from the other conventional multifunction features, this printer, namely TopShot Laser Jet Pro M275 also offers an arm like camera placed on the top of the scanning bed that has the ability to rise over any object and click six pictures of it from various angles, out of which the three images are taken with flash whereas the other three are with ambient light.

As soon as the scanning process gets completed, there is an automatic assembling of all those shots into one seamless picture free from glare and shadow, which appear quite similar to 3D, even if it is not exactly a one. However, you need to note that the scanner doesn’t have the ability to produce 3D models, though it gives really high quality 2D image of the 3D objects.

It is notable that this particular functionality is not yet been found to be offered with any other multifunction devices. This has the potential of proving it a useful device for the leisure time photographers and the businesses involved in photograph. For example, eBayers is one such company.

Laser Jet Pro M275, along with its TopShot technology, also offers access to applications relevant for printers. This is believed to have sprung out of the work that the company did on webOS, but since the project has been brought to a standstill, HP is found to be avoiding talking about the mobile operating system in the video introduction part of the TopShot printer.

It is not properly known how much more the company will be supporting the printers’ software aspect with the running of webOS. However, it is undeniable that Laser Jet Pro M275 offering some of the most interesting applications.

All these wonderful applications add lots of colors to your handling of the Laser Jet. So, you can automatically upload TopShot images with the one and scanned content with the other, there’s yet another that lets you scrape contact details from the scanned business cards, and again there’s an app that enables you to schedule pickups from your printer.

You’ll be able to buy the TopShot all-in-one at $400, pretty soon.

The HP TouchPad tablet got its place partly because Palm was acquired by HP and partly because HP was fervent enough to bring out a hardware competing against iPad, primarily because Microsoft wasn’t in a hurry in bringing out its own tablet.

HP TouchPad is built on WebOS which raises a question that if Microsoft plans to use HP in the making of its tablet, will this persuade HP to drop out using WebOS? Or will HP look forward to bring out TouchPad along with Windows 8 Tablet?

Let’s have a look at the various systems:

WebOS

It is a graphical user interface especially made for being used on the devices that have touchscreen.  It uses multi-touch gestures for the purpose of navigating on the touchscreen.  Virtual keyboard application is natively included by WebOS as these devices even have slide out keyboards. But one can surely think of getting hold of virtual keyboards with the help of patching. Multitasking is managed by the interface with the help of “cards”. One can surely consider WebOS to be a good operating system for using at the tablet level. WebOS has its own worries as it may be chucked out when Window 8 will come out as it even offers touchscreen capabilities.

Microsoft & HP

First of all, one needs to look at the kind of relationship that HP and Microsoft has. In the field of PC making, HP stands as the biggest PC maker, and even if it is denied to be at the top, it is certainly among the top three and will surely be in the considerations of Microsoft for being used in its Windows 8 deployment. HP made its place with Microsoft when XP tablet stalled and Microsoft still considers it to be the most reliable hardware manufacturer. This makes us question, what will HP’s action toward its TouchPad? Will it support two competing tablet products, one of which is its own WebOS and the other is Microsoft’s which has plans to use Windows 8?  The mystery persists!

How’s the Present System?

When HP brought out its TouchPad, it purposely didn’t use Android in its OS, as it had purchased Palm, from where WebOS came into existence. Right now HP is happy to have the OS structure on its computer system. First it has WebOS on a tablet, then Windows 7 on its present PCs and next it has Windows 7 on Slate which happens to be its present Microsoft tablet. It has Windows 8 coming up next year; will HP be having a similar scheme again, i.e. WebOS on a tablet, Windows 8 on the PCs and finally Windows 8 on some other tablet? Well, this only the future will say till then one can only have the speculations done.

Just a week back HP had brought out its latest consumer and business notebooks and netbooks and now it has got its three PC desktop line spruced up.

All three of the latest offerings which include the casual slimline s5, mainstream Pavilion p7, and workstation competitor Pavilion HPE h8, that have been revamped in order to make them more contemporary and suitable for today’s consumer. These are also boosted with Intel Sandy Bridge Processors or with the AMD Phenom processors.

One may find it as some overdone marketing hype, but if you check out the three desktops you’d not feel so and will really be impressed with the neat and beautiful design they are offering. (There are still some really evasive promises by the company though.)

Starting with HP slimline s5 series, these are so designed that you can easily place them on your desk and not under it and keep it away from all those nasty mites and dustballs. The leading Slimline can be decked up with a core i7 and there is availability of various hard-drive choices; however one won’t find a room for SSD. 16 GB of RAM can be owned because of the four SIMM slots and interestingly it can be made to 32 GB if you are ready to spend enough to go for expensive 8 GB sticks for your desktop.

You can choose the graphics from a variety of choices that include integrated graphics of Sandy Bridge processor, Nvidia cards, and ATI as they all fit well into the single PCle of the Slimline and do not go beyond the total system power budget of the unit which happens to be 250W.

But one particular Slimline design that doesn’t really captivate the consumers is that the optical drive is a vertically mounted tray loading unit instead of being a slot-loading and it gets hidden behind a swing open door. Well, the Slimline will be available in the US at an entry-level price of 329 US Dollars by June 15.

Next comes, the Pavilion p7 series, which stands pivotal in the new line. It will start at $299 once it hits the US market this Wednesday. Even though the price will be at an opening stage, it will be between $599 and $650, as confirmed by an HP representative who said that it is because of the better equipments used such as a decent graphics card.

The processor options will include a Core i5, Core i7, or an AMD Phenom; however, nothing much was disclosed to the press. On being asked, whether or not the Fusion products of AMD would be included, the HP rep said a clear cut no for this cycle. Interestingly, Ann Finnie, the PR manager for the personal systems group of the company worldwide, replied to the same question using different words to the media, “HP is always evaluating these types of technologies.”

Finally comes, the herculean Pavilion HPE h8, which can be placed both under your desk and on the top of it. However, placing it on the top of the desk will keep you busy with a distractingly glowing accent stripe in red which can’t even be turned off!! HP representative calls HPE h8 as their “WRX mode” and it has drive bays of 3.5 inch which can be configured the way you want like- using SSD to fill one of the bays, separate volumes, or RAID 0 or 1.

It offers a hefty power supply of 600W which allows you to use a graphics card that takes away as much power as 250W. The power supply that it offers also has much zing to support an Intel Core i7 Extreme Edition processor of 130W simultaneously.

It brings along six DIMM slots that support RAM of about 24GB, but again if you are ready to be an extravagant you can make it 48GB! And this will surely make it for you like a Workstation, but don’t tell this to the Workstation guys, they won’t like to hear this!

Then you get RCA audio and video ports which along with a USB 3.0 port get hidden behind the brow of HPE h8 making it easier for you to place a media player, or a camera or anything you want to place on the top of the slightly curved top of the unit for easy placement. Coming on to its audio, the HP/Dr, it offers a sound enhancing hardware on its motherboard.

It will be hitting the market on Wednesday for $599 but for a fully loaded configuration one will have to spend as much as $2000 which on negotiation on the streets may go down to about $699 or $799, as the sources say.

Well, when the media tried getting the secret out of someone from the HP to make out by when its consumer models will get webOS, it was only told that there isn’t any possibility in this timeframe; however a slight hint was given that a beta version can be out in the coming months.

HP has made it possible to print anything from anywhere as it has just announced that its Web-connected and Cloud-aware printers meant for home and business use are the first of the printers to support Google Cloud Print (a service from Google that allows printing via the interwebs) right out of the box. It will be possible for the HP ePrint enabled printer users to directly print from Google Cloud Print as well as from the applications supporting it installed on any computer or smartphones using the printer.

To start using it, users will just have to add their unique email IDs of the HP ePrint enabled Officejet, LaserJet Pro, or Photosmart to their Google account. Google Cloud Print combined with HP ePrint printers helps you print from any the web, mobile, and even the desktop applications supporting the Google Cloud Print easier, more accessible, spontaneous, and useful as it doesn’t require you to connect the PC to the printer nor it needs any print drivers.

Google Cloud Print supporting apps presently comprises of Gmail for Mobile, Google Docs for Mobile, Chrome Notebooks, and even a third party Android app as well as , Chrome extension j, and a Firefox add-on. And the list is very likely to expand by including lot many third party apps soon.

Cloud printing can be done with any printer connected to a PC, but the printing experience becomes sleeker, and more up to date if one gets to print directly using a cloud ready printer. Thus, HP’s first generation cloud-ready printers are going to work well and will also prove beneficial for Google, as the competitors of HP will soon follow its trail.

Senior Vice President of Printing and Imaging Group of HP, Stephen Nigro told in statement that HP’s topmost priority is to make it easy for the customers to print anything from anywhere and customers will get the best printing experience using HP’s ePrint and Cloud-Aware printer when printing through Google Cloud Print.