What if you’re making a thin-and-light laptop that’s just shy of Intel’s ultrabook standard? You come up with another easy-to-remember marketing name, of course! And that’s just what HP has done with its new “Sleekbook”, laptops that look, er, sleek.

Available in 14-inch and 15.6-inch varieties, these Sleekbooks are Envy-branded, and each has its own ultrabook counterpart, adding up to a total of four new Envy notebooks: the Envy Sleekbook and Envy ultrabook with 14-inch screens, and the Envy Sleekbook and Envy ultrabook with 15.6-inch screens. …

The story is all too common.

Tired of clearing his inbox all the time because he only has 100MB of storage, an employee signs up for a Gmail account and forwards all his office e-mail to his private mailbox, which gives him more than 7GB of space and never bugs him to delete anything.

Separately, another employee, who hates it that his company does not let him read e-mail on the go, also forwards his office e-mail to a Google account, which can be retrieved easily on his iPhone.

The result of such exploits, common in so many organisations, is a breach of security and, in some industries where information has to be kept under lock and key, a breach of their compliance with local laws.

“Shadow IT”, however, is not only caused by rogue users in an organisation, but can be part of a poorly-planned cloud rollout that could compromise a company’s security and compliance, according to a survey conducted by HP Enterprise Services.

While cloud computing offers agility and fast response, the study revealed a worry among top executives that a “free rein” could lead to users tapping on IT resources that jeopardise the organisation they work for. …

When you have seen a printer, you’ve seen them all, right? At least, that’s what a lot of many small business owners like to think, when they next buy an all-in-one machine for their office or SOHO.

The Officejet Pro 8600 Plus from HP hopes to change that mindset, by essentially putting together not just the expected print features but also lots of handy features that take away the frustration of everyday tasks.
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You’ve seen the Apple iMac and other all-in-one PCs from HP, Acer and Dell make homes look a lot more stylish with their monolithic designs that integrate both screen and processing unit.

Now, your office can look as cool, while providing the needed oomph of a workstation machine. Say hi to HP’s new Z1 workstation PC that not only takes on the form of the consumer design, but also lets you snap open the screen to upgrade and replace components in the machine – something that all-in-ones never excelled in.

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If flat-screen TVs, cameras or printers had ruled previous tech bazaars in Singapore, then this year’s IT Show is surely being taken over by an overwhelming range of ultrabooks.

The latest craze among laptop makers to go really slim, yet retaining most of the power of a full-fledged machine while keeping costs relatively low, means that buyers are spoilt for choice when shopping for a PC for both work and play.

We’ve all seen how nice the first wave of ultrabooks from Asus and Lenovo are from last year. The next wave, from Acer’s Aspire Timeline Ultra to HP’s stunning Envy 14 Spectre, brings even more choice.

Here are a few to check out as you make your way through the crowds at the IT Show at Suntec City this weekend. …

The Asia-Pacific region appears more keen to adopt cloud computing than Europe and the United States, according to a survey of industry leaders revealed by HP today.

Fifty-eight per cent of chief information and technology officers in China have plans to move to cloud computing, while 56 per cent of these key decision makers are keen on the new technology in India, it said. This compares with 34 per cent in the United States and 32 per cent in Europe, according to HP executives at a regional media event in Singapore.

The reason: Asia has fewer legacy systems and thus can move faster without worrying about junking old investments. …

It’s been a month of controversial news from HP.

When the HP Touchpad was first launched in June, it didn’t do well at all. Lopping off a US$100 discount didn’t move inventory, and TouchPads languished on retailer shelves.

So HP made a drastic move during their recent quarterly announcement in mid-August: they announced the firesale of their Touchpads for US$99, and the discontinuation of all WebOS products like the Touchpad.

Result: a mad rush for HP Tablets, and HP hinting that they might resurrect the Tablet, ostensibly so as not to burn bridges with suppliers.

And oh, they made the small announcement that HP, the number one desktop vendor, was thinking of exiting the PC business entirely.

Pandemonium ensued. HP’s share prices dropped 20 percent on 19th August as investors didn’t take nicely to HP’s sudden jarring unexpected announcement.

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Finally, after days of teasing folks here in Singapore, HP has revealed that it is selling the TouchPad at hugely-discounted prices of S$118 (16GB version) and S$188 (32GB version) from tomorrow.

The fire sale will happen at the Comex tech bazaar starting tomorrow at Suntec Singapore. One hundred units of each version of the tablet will be available each day at the HP booth during the four-day event, and each person is allowed to buy just one unit. …

Expect red Dr Dre-endorsed earphones to be draped around upcoming HTC phones and tablets this year, as the Taiwanese phone maker buys up a hefty stake in audio gear maker Beats Electronics to differentiate itself from rival phone makers.

HTC’s US$309 million investment will give it a 51 per cent stake in the brand made famous by rapper Dr Dre, the phone maker revealed today.

It will also enable HTC to include Beats Audio technology - proven in good if expensive headphones as well as Beats-powered HP laptops – in its mobile devices come Fall 2011.

As PCMag smartly points out, HTC’s move is not as much about the well-known Beats Audio technology as it is about buying street cred in a race to win over non-techie users.

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UNWIRED, Singapore’s first and only independent wireless and mobile conference, returned for a second run last Thursday, and saw the attendance of top-level executives from the relevant industries from across Southeast Asia.

Opened by the Infocomm Development Authority’s assistance chief executive Khoong Hock Yun, it featured half a day’s discussion on hot topics affecting the industry and its users.

From Singapore’s expected move to next generation mobile broadband (4G/LTE) to the rise of mobile computing and winning features of a mobile operating system, the conference was packed with fresh insights from a who’s who list of the country’s industry experts, who fielded a number of questions from the audience. …