At CES in Las Vegas, HP today announced new desktops, thin clients and monitors to enable the business community to get great performance at a great price while reducing the effect on the environment.

In particular, HP has unveiled the HP Compaq 8200 Elite, the 6200 Pro and 4000 Pro, plus the HP 100B All-in-One business desktops.  The 8200 is intended to be HP’s premium PC with 40% better performance and 15% improvement in disk access over the previous model and there’s now an discrete graphics option which bumps the graphics performance by 70%. Under the hood, Intel’s second-generation Core vPro CPUs.  Expected early March from $679.

The 6200 Pro represents the mid-range with industry-standard features and Intel CPUs that can be configured to the requirements and price of the purchaser.  Available in small form factor and microtower chassis.  Expected late March from $619.

The 4000 Pro model is for businesses wanting to maintain legacy hardware with the inclusion of PCI expansion slots, standard serial ports and PS/2 device support in addition to the more modern I/O ports expected on PCs. Expected in February from $499.

The 100B All-in-One PC is features a dual-core AMD processor in a cool space-saving design. With a 20″ widescreen display powered by integrated HD graphics, this will be a flexible design that can be upgraded as needs change.  Expected in February from $499.

All of the new 2011 HP business desktops include highly efficient PC designs and power supplies that help lower energy use and HP also plans for the entire desktop series to be brominated flame retardants (BFRs) and polyvinyl chloride (PVC)-free further lessening the PC‘s impact on the environment.

For organisations interested in thin clients, three new models were announced – the HP t5500, t5565 and t5570 thin clients.  All come with VIA Nano u3500 processors and VX900 integrated graphics, which provides hardware assistance for multimedia and allows the thin clients to drive dual digital monitors. Available for a range of virtualisation and cloud computing environments such as Citrix and VMware. On sale from mid-January starting at $249.

And finally, a slew of business monitors are now available with new designs and adjustable displays. The LA2006x, LA2206x and LA2306x WLED backlit LCD widescreen monitors come in 20″, 21.5″ and 23″ diagonal screen sizes with digital DVI and DisplayPort connectors along with a 2 port USB hub.  Available now from $209.

HP Compaq also announced the LE1901wl WLED backlit LCD monitor, with a 19″ diagonal screen but in a 16:10 aspect ratio and only VGA connectivity.  Available now from $157.

HP also mentioned that it sells one desktop PC every 1.2 seconds, which is pretty impressive even if they are the number one desktop PC supplier in the world.

Toward the end week, HP made some major moves. First, they bought Palm for 1.2 Billion. HP then mentioned that the Slate tablet will be put on hiatus (first thought cancelled). Now there are reports that a “Web OS” will most likely be put on the Slate. Wait a minute – wouldn’t that be “Palm”?

Of course, earlier in the week, we heard that Palm OS was purchased by HP for 1.2 billion. While some say it cost too much, there may be some good reasons why it happened this way. One big reason: HP might have been in a bidding war. Still, Palm OS could become the mobile OS HP has been looking for and that 1.2 billion might net them 20 times that amount.

HP Owns 20th Century PDA

I know that doesn’t like much, but think of it this way – HP Jornada, Compaq iPaq, Handspring Visor, Palm OS. That is what HP owns now. The only early PDA assets HP doesn’t own is those from  Apple (Newton), Casio (Cassiopeia), Sony (Clie) or RIM (Blackberry) – Casio ended their PDA run and Sony changed focus to mobile gaming. So HP now has the majority of technology for early PDA and the patents within. While this won’t be a shield to any patent infringement lawsuit, one would definitely need a good iron clad case for legal action.

Slate

We are entering into the “Keyboardless” era – where you don’t need any peripheral attached to use a machine. iPad shows we can have a decent computing experience without keyboard or mouse. iPad also feels that you don’t need to connect USB devices, so they left all those items off their tablet.

In the meantime, what was first thought as full cancellation, turned out to be more of a “restart” for the Slate tablet. Windows is out, that is for sure. The obvious reality was that Palm OS is in. A good move for HP, but why not have 2 versions?

An engineer at HP was overheard saying Windows 7 was a powerhog. That may be true, nonetheless, are people going to see Palm OS as a good alternative OS? I suppose only time will tell.

Palm’s future: Where else will we see the OS?

With the idea that iPad runs a mobile OS, some are starting to realize the versatility. One OS for your phone, tablet, TV,  car, etc.

Last month I went out to HP to talk about Converged infrastructure. In layman’s terms: a fancy way to say “Server administration”. The idea that you can set up a server room and have anyone administer from anywhere on the planet. However, as I was interviewing presenters, one mentioned something I hadn’t thought about:

… there is no good way to administer a printer….

Most printer problems require physical attention: replace a cartridge, fix a paper jam, etc. But beyond the web page administration of a printer, there has not been much innovation to printer OS technology. What if something like Palm OS was ported to a printer?

Let’s take another approach. HP has another OS called HP-UX; It’s their Unix solution. In a “Converged Infrastructure” world, connecting to servers like the HP-UX is important. So why not have a moble OS solution that can really integrate with this idea?

Consumer Level OS

HP has really pushed their lines of consumer products in the last couple years. From netbooks to touchscreen machines, they have brought a lot of innovation to the machine. But they still rely on other Operating systems to really power the experience.

With a mobile OS solution, they can bring an experience to all these devices, some with option to have both on the computer. If you need Windows or just a device that can access the internet to make a Skype call or send an email.

So there are a lot of places Palm could become integrated. Items that HP could have implemented already with other Operating Systems, but they would still be other companies OS’s. This Palm acquisition can give the mobility HP is looking for in more than one way. That, might be worth the 1.2 billion.

Special Edition of the Geek News Central Podcast recorded during the 24hr Podcast. All the regular great coverage plus the live components which were a lot of fun.

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Show Notes:
Mark Cuban Facebook Strategy
Doug Kaye on real Time Web
Congress finally to equal playing field in Radio
23 iTunes add on’s
OLPC Unboxing
Real Blue Man
Deep Impact new mission approved
Compaq and HP Bricking Bug
Stupid guy gets what he deserves
Unix Admin Pleads Guilty on Power Grid Sabotage
Nokia N96 in the wild
Micorchip can detect Tumors
A really good WiFi picture frame
IE8 and Browser Wars
Kent Nichols Ask a Ninja Blog
Digg is DOA
Steal my Content and Pictures Please
Think Secret and the Apple Gestapo
S3 as a end user product
Bet Winner NYT versus Weblogs
FCC Votes to Relax Ownership Rules

Cool Things I found
Six reasons to slow down eating
Fuel Economy and big Cars
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