14 DAY TRIAL // Windows 8 has caused a lot of excitement, but it has also drawn the ire of many people, albeit indirectly. Simply put, PCs and tablets loaded with the new OS will be very expensive, and HP isn't trying to change that, unfortunately.
Everyone from normal consumers to market analysts have condemned the prices of Windows 8 devices, especially tablets.
There was a time when $499, the “standard” price set by Apple's iPad, and the Android tablets of its rivals, was considered too high.
Amazon still believes this really. Still, not everyone can sell tablets and e-readers for no profit like it can (it makes cash from the products sold through those devices).
Unfortunately, none of this dissuaded PC makers from pricing their Windows 8/RT tablets at $600-$1,000+ / 600-1,000+ Euro.
That said, HP's Envy x2 hybrid tablet, based on an Intel Atom CPU and equipped with an 11-inch HD LCD (1366 x 768 pixels) will ship for $850 / 654-850 Euro from November 11 onwards.
The HP Envy TouchSmart Ultrabook 4 isn't that much better. Measuring 14 inches, it should already be listed online for $900 / 693-900 Euro. A far cry from the $750 / 577-750 Euro which, itself, is considered too much for such ultrathin notebooks.
To add insult to injury, the 14-inch HP EliteBook Folio 9470m, an ultrabook powered by an Intel Ivy Bridge CPU and announced all the way back in May, will ship from October 26 at $1,050 / 808-1,050 Euro. Ironically, that's actually $100 less than initially stated (77-100 Euro).
The one mobile PC with a decent price is the HP Pavilion dm1, and it isn't even a new device. Probably because it uses AMD APUs instead of Intel chips.
Finally, the HP Phoenix H9 desktop PC, a computer powered by an Ivy Bridge CPU and NVIDIA or AMD add-in graphics, has a starting tag of $900 / 693-900 Euro.