HP's new fall collection includes new designer series ultraportables and the HP Envy 15, HP's most powerful laptop ever. Check out all the new HP laptops here.
HP today took the wraps off a slew of new machines for the upcoming 2009 Holiday season, including some new ultraportable machines, a couple inexpensive business and multimedia laptops and even a pair of new HP Envy laptops to fill out the high-end. Some of these are available now, but most will become available at the end of October, when Windows 7 hits the market and a slew of new devices start taking advantage of Microsoft's new Windows OS.
Envy, with a little less Voodoo
At the high end, HP today released what the company is calling the "fastest consumer notebook" that it has ever made. The HP Envy 15 is a 1-inch thick, 5.18-pound system, clearly reminiscent of Apple's high-end Macbook Pro machines. The new Envy 15 will use Intel Core 2 Duo processors, up to the new Core i7 processor that's just starting to drain batteries in laptops across the globe. That's just the top of the Envy 15's high-end specs. The thin new performance machine will also use an ATI Mobility Redeon HD 4830 card for graphics, with a full 1GB of extra memory for the video processor. This will help the machine drive DirectX 10.1 graphics on Windows 7.
The new machine will also support up to 16GB of DDR3 RAM. The 15.6-inch display will come in a couple configurations, including an LED backlit display with Full HD support and a light output of 300-nits. On the inside, you can fill the HP Envy 15 with 2 separate solid state drives (SSDs), running in Raid0 configuration for improved performatnce. The HP Envy 15 even gets a cool webcam, an HP model that can record in zero-light with the help of an infrared LED built-in.
 The smaller of the two HP Envy laptops, the HP Envy 13, won't get the full performance of it's larger sibling, but it will still retain a high-end feature set, along with the etched metal look that defines this generation of HP Envy machines. HP may have dropped the Voodoo moniker from these flagship notebooks, but they still get a stylish enhancement as HP's first two etched metal machines. The HP Envy 15 will get an etched design on the lid and near the trackpad, while the Envy 13 gets an etched trackpad only.
Even with its smaller stature, the HP Envy 13 is nothing to sneeze at. The 13-inch display will be the brightest in its class, according to HP, with a 410-nit output and the ability to run 82% of the color gamut. The HP Envy 13 is less than 1-inch thick, at 3.74 pounds of aluminum and magnesium shell. For graphics, the HP Envy 13 will get a switchable configuration from ATI. The device will use the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4330 card when performance is key, then scale back to Intel integrated graphics to save power.
Both notebooks will have an HP Extended-Life Notebook Battery available. The HP Envy 13 will get up to 18 hours of life out of the extended-life battery. The larger, higher-performance HP Envy 15 will get up to 7 hours of use out of the extended-life battery.
Mini, now with more style and ION power
 The HP Mini lineup also got an interesting boost with today's announcements. HP today unveiled the new HP Mini 311, the company's first NVIDIA ION powered ultraportable notebook. The combination of Intel Atom processor and NVIDIA Ion LE graphics should provide enough of a graphical boost to let the new HP Mini 311 display high-definition content either on its own screen or an external display. The Mini 311's screen is a pixel-packed 1366 by 768 resolution monitor, capable of 720p videos. The device also comes with an HDMI output to show videos up to 1080p on an external HDTV.
The HP Mini 311 uses an 11.6-inch display, slightly larger than the 10-inch screens on the HP Mini 110 device. The ultraportable otherwise keeps the same basic look and feel of HP's smaller notebooks, with rounded corners and an imprinted design on the lid. Like other HP netbooks, the HP Mini 311 also uses a keyboard that is 92% as large as a full-sized notebook keyboard.
 The HP Mini 110 also gets a stylish update for the fall season. The Mini 110 is now being customized by Studio Tord Boontje. The design studio has added an HP Imprint 3-D surface, which layers multiple surface layers to create a 3-D effect on the diminutive ultraportable's shell. HP is calling this a first. The device still uses a 10.1-inch display, though it seems the screen will now be displaying custom desktop themes and wallpapers, also from the Tord Boontje studio. The Mini 110 will also come in a box that is made from 100% recycled materials, with manuals printed using water- or soy-based inks.
Both new HP Mini computers are available now for pre-order, and both will ship at the end of October, to coincide with the launch of Windows 7. Both will be available for $400.
When the going gets tough, the Pros get aluminum
 To round out their notebook offerings, HP also refreshed the mid-range for their prosumer and multimedia families. The new HP ProBook 5310m strongly resembles a slightly larger version of the company's HP 5101, but this notebook is aimed more at the performance-minded business user. To that end, unlike the unltraportable model, the HP ProBook 5310m will be available with a full-powered, Intel Core 2 Duo processor, though ultra-low voltage Celeron options will also be available. HP claims the ProBook 5310m is the "thinnest full-performance notebook," measuring under 1-inch and weighing less than 4 pounts.
The HP ProBook 5310m uses a 13.3-inch LED-backlit display, capable of showing high-definition video content. The machine is clad in a black anodized aluminum frame with a magnesium chassis, coated in a soft touch paint. The professional HP ProBook 5310m gets up to 7 hours of battery life with the standard battery, and HP says an extended-life battery will be available later in the year.
The HP ProBook 5310m will also be available with the Qualcomm Gobi chip, a mult-network integrated WWAN chip that lets users surf the internet wireless on cellular networks. That's a great option for business users, but all of these powerful options are sure to drive up the price for this machine. The HP ProBook 5310m will ship for $700 with a Celeron chip, and will start at $900 for an Intel Core 2 Duo processor, with custom options adding to that price.
 For multimedia fans, HP has also updated their HP Pavilion family with the new HP Pavilion dm3, a thinner multimedia notebook that uses an aluminum frame. Like the ProBook, the new HP Pavilion dm3 will use a 13.3-inch display, and the laptop will measure 1-inch thick, and weigh just over 4 pounds. With a standard 6-cell battery, the new HP Pavilion dm3 will get up to 10 hours of battery life, or so HP claims.
HP will have a number of graphics options available for the HP Pavilion dm3, and buyers will be able to mix and match AMD or Intel processors. Using an AMD processor with an ATI graphics card, users will be able to select a performance option or a shared graphics option that uses integrated graphics to save power while the machine is running on battery life.
The HP Pavilion dm3 won't have a built-in drive, but there will be an optional external drive available from HP, including an external with a Blu-Ray player. Like the ProBook 5310m, the HP Pavilion dm3 will also have an option to add WWAN for data over cellular networks. The Pavilion dm3 will ship on October 22, the day Windows 7 ships, with a starting price of $550 for an AMD-powered unit, or $650 for an Intel-powered device.
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