I agree completely. It's a cool product that has plausible use cases beyond hobbyists who might just want a retro-style keyboard computer. It might not be successful at $1000, but I have to applaud HP for thinking inside the box.

It could be how I titled it with "Ryzen AI Chip". It's a somewhat new marketing term from AMD. The chip itself isn't much different from a Ryzen CPU + embedded graphics + TPU/NPU

How would you carry it on a laptop sized backpack? Too many pieces facilitates breaking with long term handling, the form factor seems weird.

i've traveled with a Raspi + bt keyboard for this reason. Lighter, and far more durable. I don't mind stowing it in checked duffel bag. I would never put my laptop in checked luggage, certainly not a duffel

It would work, but is it any better than existing options like a little computer on the desk, a computer on the back of the monitor, or an AIO PC?

I dunno. I like it. I think it's neat. I won't buy one, but I look forward to the Cathode Ray Dude episode about it 25 years from now.

The historical irony is that Hewlett-Packard was (debatably[0]) the inventor of the PC—the personal computer—the product concept which liberated users from mainframes, which replaced dumb terminals with fully-independent local computation.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_personal_computers#...

Here's[1] how HP marketed the "first personal computer", in 1968:

> "Ready to relieve you of waiting to get on the big computer," the ad declares. "Willing to perform log and trig functions, even hyperbolics and coordinate transformations at the touch of a key. Able to take on roots of a fifth-degree polynomial, Bessel functions, elliptic integrals and regression analysis."

[1] https://www.hp.com/hpinfo/abouthp/histnfacts/museum/personal... ("History of the 9100A desktop calculator, 1968")

They've now gone full circle, from "Ready to relieve you of waiting to get on the big computer", to "here's a dedicated key for remote computing, the core concept of this product".

we've had windows keys on keyboards for ~35 years it's never interfered with linux

this is easily disabled with 1 click.

> You will pay a cloud subscription to perform anything remotely computationally taxing.

What’s wrong with that?

> great for kiosks and shared workstations.

Absolutely not.

For a kiosk, I want everything the user is touching to be effectively disposable. Keyboards and mice are cheap and trivial to replace, this design integrates the most important part of the system in to one of the easiest parts to damage/steal. It's possibly the worst way to do a kiosk.

For a shared workstation, likewise if I'm the user I want to be able to bring my own keyboard and mouse, both for sanitary reasons (have you seen the way people treat their own keyboards, much less shared ones?) and for personal preference. This design integrates the most important part of the system with the part most likely to get gunked up.

Even for the idea of a shared docking station where each user has their own keyboard PC, it's a crappy keyboard. Perhaps if it were a nice mechanical board with swappable keyswitches that might not be terrible, but as it is it's all of the downsides of a laptop without the ability to actually use it undocked.

Whatever use cases may exist where this is actually an improvement are very specific niches.

You beat me to it. 32W, but for how long? 8 hours? 11 seconds? 32W would be true in both cases.

W & watts has become a colloquialism for watt-hours in the EV space at least.

e.g. "how much did consume at the super charger" -- about 10 watts (WH).

So it's not literally correct, but it's becoming commonplace to say that.

slang , pigeons and dialects all develop based off of context like this.

If there was any doubt left whether Hewlett-Packard is still a company run by engineers, that was a clean way to dispel it.

I mean at least they didn't use mah. I am surprised it actually have a battery in it I thought you would have to plug it in to use it.

> I don't know who this is for.

I think I could build a pretty clean and stylish looking office out of it.

No laptop banging around, no PC to hide away, etc. Could throw this on a minimalist or partially glass desk with an (unfortunate) single cable up to a monitor on an arm for video and power, use wi-fi, and essentially have a fully functional workstation for most people seemingly out of nothing. No bulky AIO, no PC strapped to the back of the monitor, etc.

So I guess that's my guess.

Though my impression from the linked page is more "HP doesn't know who this is for either". There's not much in the way of clear messaging, lifestyle photos, or anything else.

I don't understand the advantages of this over a laptop (this is essentially laptop-grade hardware and thermal profile but without the screen & battery).

copilot is an easy toggle. It's a PC with UEFI so you could boot linux as usual.

If they strike the right price I will buy one. I currently carry a raspi + keyboard + power supply and I would prefer something clean with a backup battery (one less tether)

Office PC thats easier to steal?

If this is better than a laptop for mobile work why include the keyboard? Why not just make it a tiny box with a single USB C connector to plug into the dock on your home and work desks? Since you already must have monitors and mice at those locations (or bring them with you) I'm failing to see the point of including the keyboard in this package (except of course to be able to advertise the "copilot key")

One of the YouTubers had open it up, it uses laptop fans, it itself, is basically a squished laptop.

I’m excited though. I always liked that form factor. Add some good HUD glasses and a mouse and were sailing free!

specs are unclear, but given the size, TDP and optional battery, it almost certainly has a laptop-scale fan and heat sink. Modern fans are pretty quiet, nearly silent at idle, so it's not an issue.

That's... standard Windows? It's 100% the same for Apple machines, if stated in more mellifluous tones (or not stated at all, because "screw you, we're Apple"), and even more so for Chromebooks.

If you scroll further down, there's an image of a woman holding an opened keyboard with a SODIMM in her other hand so I'd guess that means it's user-swappable.

Given the weird take on x86 being inherently "more powerful" and the copy-pasted error from the marketing site (32W vs 32WH) this "article" looks like gently massaged advertising copy:

> Alternatively, HP’s EliteBoard will bring Windows and a more powerful x86 architecture to the keyboard-PC form factor. HP says the EliteBoard will support Windows 11 Pro for Business and an AMD Ryzen AI 300-series processor with an up to 50 TOPs NPU. The device will be sold with a 32 W internal battery and is part of Microsoft’s Copilot+ PC program.

I have seen a new wedge computer in the news every now and then since the '90s, and not just new retro computers with new innards.

The TRS-80 model I came out in 1977. It took HP just 49 years to launch a competitor.

Compared with Commodore 64, this HP is a parody. They spared the space to a minimum (is cheap plastic so expensive ?), the keyboard is terrible.

The main advantage seems to be that, if you try to actually use it, it will force you to take a break, because your fingers will be burning from touching the keys heated by the processor.

My first PC was a Schneider Euro PC. Now, this is even slimmer!

Yep. Found my cyberdeck, a couple years out!

Of course you can. It's an amd64 processor with a different name and a coprocessor. Linux doesn't have any problem installing on UEFI, so unless they did something weird, it shouldn't be a problem. Apparently linux runs pretty well on the AMD AI cpus (benchmarks of lunar lake primarily vs Ryzen AI 300 in OP):

https://www.phoronix.com/review/core-ultra-7-lunar-lake-linu...

But concept-wise I think it's a dud. A laptop without a monitor. So you either carry the laptop as two pieces (some good portable monitors around) or you are limited to only plugging it in where there's a monitor available.

Also, it seems they couldn't be bothered to spring for mechanical switches when the entire product is focused around a keyboard. Sheesh.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAIzlGwEAO0&t=300s This seems provide instruction on that. There are a lot of other yt videos on this topic.

> From the pictures, I get the impression the keyboard sucks.

That was my initial thought. They made the keyboard a big part of the product, and that is the keyboard they came up with?

It's like advertising a fancy new type of AIO and then putting a crummy 50% sRGB gamut 480p TN panel in it.

It's got USB so I'm sure you could.

like any PC you can run what you like. even on Windows it's easy to turn off AI stuff (I've done that for years , back when it was spammy Cortana and MSN content).

You want more designs like this, which will encourage more Raspberry PI and other competitors to jump in.

It's a win win for everyone

First thing I had in mind was "Oh, like an Atari ST"!

integrated keyboard & power mean only a single connection when you arrive. Even BT can be a pain, especially if it doesn't pair, you are left with a headless and keyboardless NUC box.

Not any laptop, an AI copilot laptop!