Continuing our trend of discussing the Asus Eee PC’s competition, Several articles have started popping up about the HP Compaq 2133, including a very interesting one about what might be under the hood of the 2133. We should almost treat these as rumors at this piont, but it seems like the news/information is coming from several different places with good reputations, so there is probably a lot of truth to it.
With that said:
DigiTimes: DigiTimes mentions that the Chinese-language Commercial Times is reporting that Inventec is building a business-oriented UMPC for Hewlett-Packard, with a launch around April and a price above $630 USD. They mention the use of an Intel Penryn 45nm CPU, and Windows XP.
UMPC Portal on the other hand mentions something else. Chippy over at UMPC Portal has a theory (as well as some interesting sources) – that in order for the 2133 to compete across several markets (from Asus Eee PC to MacBook Air), the 2133 would need a VIA’s C7 or Isaiah CPU platform, as well as their Chrome400 graphics system, and that such a system could scale up to 2GHz. As they mention, if this indeed came to pass, it would be a huge deal for VIA, both in terms of actual orders/income, as well as publicity.
Finally, James Kendrick has posted his thoughts on the HP 2133. He mentions that while it has the same display size as the Fujitsu P1620, the 2133 has a larger bezel around the screen, allowing for a larger keyboard. He also thinks they need to go with AMD rather than VIA or Intel, and that if the device is going to run Vista, it should have 2GB of memory to do it well (and I agree, 2GB of memory these days is cheap).