HP hopes Voodoo magic will defeat MacBook Air – world's new thinnest laptop
While most of the computing world is dedicating itself to creating the smallest possible laptops from baked bean cans and bits of string, it’s easy to forget that there is still a market for full sized notebooks that look good and weigh next to nothing. Hewlett Packard hasn’t though; it has just launched the Voodoo Envy 133.
At 0.7-inches thick and sporting a 13.3″ display, there obviously one target in mind: the MacBook air. The Envy has a price tag of $2099, which also puts it in the same ballpark as the Air, and it offers the same choice of 1.6 or 1.8GHz Core 2 Duo CPUs and 64GB SSD or 80GB HDDs. The Air, however, is just a shade thicker, at 0.76-inches thick.
The spec sheet doesn’t mention how much RAM is in it, although it is bound to be upgradeable. It does run Vista though so my guess is it’d come with a base 2GB which you can expand. Voodoo however has a very unique system called IOS which allows you to quickly boot into a version of Linux when you just want to do a quick spot of web browsing.
Rahul Sood, chief technology officer of VoodooPC, was keen to point out that the Envy 133 is in fact slightly thinner than the MacBook Air, however despite being made of carbon fibre, the Air still has the edge in weight by 0.44 pounds. The Envy does manage to come in any colour you want, with laser etching though.
On the contentious issue of Voodoo selling out to the man, Sood reassured Voodoo fans that if they had wanted to sell such a system as an independent company, it would have had to charge $5,000 for the machine.
No word yet on whether the Voodoo Envy 133 will make it across to these shores; niche hardware like this seldom does, least of all niche hardware made by Voodoo. Don’t get your hopes up. Otherwise, hop on over to the US, where they’re retailing for $2,999.
VoodooPC (via InformationWeek)
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