On the 26th of March, I was invited to Supperclub at Odeon Towers to check out the new laptop from HP, the HP Pavilion dv2 entertainment notebook pc. If you’ve been reading this blog you probably know I don’t usually talk a lot about the gadget itself but more on the communications efforts behind it, but this time I’ll say this is one gadget I really do like.
In terms of what a laptop is, no biggie, it’s a regular laptop. Moderate processor, 12.1 screen, no cd drive. But the big plus points for me: It’s 1.6kg and its’ price starts at $1,299. I mean seriously, I bought my current laptop for double that. I think in the current day and age where mobility is a huge factor, the HP Pavilion dv2 stands out. Why would I buy a $800-$900 netbook and squint my eyes out at a 8 to 10 inch screen, when I could shell out a few more hundred bucks and get a proper laptop? It’s quite a no brainer.
The other thing that’s awesome is a width. Check out the picture below and you’ll know what I’m talking about. It’s less than one inch thin. Oh, and it has a HDMI port too. Another thing my current laptop doesn’t have.
HP Pavilion dv2
The event itself was one of the more intimate ones, and that’s a good thing. I make it a point these days to try not to attend events that are shared with mainstream media, simply because it’s just too difficult to get someone’s attention and a demo of the product. With this event, no problem. Within three minutes (literally) of stepping into the room, I had a drink and a product manager letting me have a hands-on go at the Pavilion dv2, while he was there to handle any questions. I think the premise behind this is simple: The more the blogger plays with the product, the more he/she can talk about it.
One thing I will say (and I’m being cheeky here) with regards to the communication effort. I wanted to say that not having a cd drive isn’t a dealbreaker these days because seriously, how often does one use it anyway? Then I realised all the press materials they handed out were on a cd. It would’ve been nice to emphasise that cds are really not that important anymore with a small thumbdrive, sd card, or just a downloadable link!
All in all, if I were in the market for a second, backup laptop for school or travel, this would be it. Sure, it doesn’t have the gaming power that my current laptop does, but there are some days when I’m heading out for just a three hour class or I want to sit somewhere and just blog (like I’m doing now), and on those days, a lighter, slimmer laptop like the dv2 would just be awesome.
Earlier tonight, about ten bloggers were invited to a Linksys event at the Hyatt to check out their newest product, the Media Hub. At first glance, the Media Hub sounds like a normal external hard drive, but it does have certain differences. For one, users can access items stored on the Media Hub remotely anywhere in the world and can be synced up with all your devices to keep files and media in one centralised space.
The Review
As an average home user, I was a little skeptical of the need to buy a relatively expensive external hard drive just to be able to access it remotely. I asked why I’d pay money, when Dropbox and Hordit are free, and got the relatively satisfying answer that not everyone knows how to sync their items up in the “cloud”, and it can be more intuitive to have everything on one single drive. Given the recent issues with helping my mum get all her data into one external hard disk, I can certainly see how this is an advantage.
Personally, between my family of four at home, we easily have 10 or more drives that each contain pictures and videos, and it would be ideal to be able to sync all our drives centrally, and then be able to access that at any time.
The Communications Challenge
The challenge for Linksys is to convince the average, non-tech savvy consumer, that this is not an overpriced external hard drive, and that it can make data storage and portability more intuitive than before. I could certainly see the benefit of such a system when I have a spokesperson explaining it to me and demonstrating the capabilities face to face, but for the average consumer passing it by on a shelf, $499 for 500GB can seem steep, especially since you can get 1.5TB for $300+ these days.
While the positioning seems to be geared to the normal consumer, I think there’s potential in the small business market too. I’m part of a media club in school dealing with TV and radio, and the capability to sync all our databases and then access them remotely, securely and wirelessly would be a huge plus. I suspect there are many other student clubs and small business that would similarly benefit.
Social Media Communications
There were a few things I really liked about the approach to this event.
Firstly, the bloggers had their own session, and mainstream media had their own session in another part of the day. This meant we could ask questions that were more important to our personal niches, instead of catering to the cookie cutter mass media questions.
Secondly, the press release had links to Facebook fan pages (Digital Cribs) as well as their forum page and even the Media Hub video on YouTube.
[edit: Wordpress is giving me issues while I'm trying to embed the video, so check it out here]
Finally, the press release had suggested tags for us bloggers at the bottom and a cd with the hi-res product pictures, which I found to be very useful to me. As a result I have the tags, the pictures and the video used one way or another in this blog entry.
I think it would be a fair assessment to say the Media Hub is a pretty good effort for a version 1.0 launch. There are features that I personally will be looking forward to like multi-user access (for club usage) and a HDMI cable for direct hookup to my TV.
Note: There is seemingly a subscription required for the remote access. The fee is not announced at the time of this blog post.
