Is the HP Envy the Mac killer?

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Apple has enjoyed a tremendous amount of mindshare and market share the past few years.  Many people think they are the innovation leaders and their stock price reflects that.  But there are a number of companies that have had Apple in their sights for quite some time and the market is getting ready to shift.

Windows 7 is getting ready to ship.  It’s a good OS. Maybe great.  But it is made better by the quality hardware products that run it, or the applications that run on it.  We all know this.  The Microsoft partner channel is critical to the success of Windows.  The laptop market is getting ready to go white hot again.  I’ve been talking with hundreds of customers and nearly everyone I talk to is waiting for a key date, 10/22/2009.  Why?

Because everyone is waiting to buy a new computer.  Upgrading from Windows XP?  Nope. Buying a new machine with Windows 7 already on it.  Want to see a machine on my short list?  Look no further.

HP Envy

HP is pretty cocky to name a machine Envy.  But then again HP is doing pretty well and the specs for the Envy look great.  I would trade my ThinkPad today for this machine.  That should not be surprising.  It’s been a loyal servant but it’s 2.5 years old and that is getting ready to make it positively ancient compared to the crop of new machines coming out.

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So what’s so hot about the HP Envy?  How about a Quad core processor and up to 16GB of RAM for starters.  And that’s in a slim package. In the picture above you can seeing the Envy all snuggled up to the MacBook Pro.  As you can see, it compares nicely.  Click the link just above or the pic and head on over to the gallery on gizmodo.com.

Plug in a nice eSATA drive and we are ready to rock Hyper-V virtualization or Hi Def encoding.  The rest of the technical specs are very respectable.  According to a few articles on the internet, the HP Envy 15.6” model starts at $1800.  The 15.4” Apple MacBook Pro starts at $1700 so it would appear we have an interesting horse race here.

Summary

So what should you do?  Get a bag of popcorn because the show is getting ready to start.  First up this week are the new Windows Mobile Devices.  After that, there should be a steady parade of laptops and netbooks showing themselves before Black Friday.  Game time.