HP aims to banish the box

The Concept PC II will never go on the market but it provides a peek into the future. PETER GRIFFIN reports.

Last year it was the lunchbox-sized "Deep Forest" that Hewlett-Packard said represented the PC of the future.

This year, a wall-mountable multimedia hub resembling a late-70s twist dial TV set has taken its place.

Unveiling the Concept PC II in Auckland last week, Gerhard Schiele, Hewlett-Packard's marketing manager for commercial desktops in Asia Pacific, said the new design was still about regaining desk space but concentrated on separating "personal" and "computing" elements for computer users.

That sees less emphasis on the hard drive and box, which is expected to take on an "out of sight, out of mind" existence as PCs become more reliable.

"Put [the hard drive] in a closet, take it away from the end user. That provides control to the IT manager and makes sure no one can mess around with the network," said Mr Schiele, who added that the hard drive could be up to 12m from the screen.

On the personal side, that leaves an 18-inch LCD (liquid crystal display) facing the user. Nestled behind the display panel is a vertical CD-RW (read write) drive (HP's DVD+RW drive does not come in a streamlined format to fit the Concept PC II).

An awkward-looking web cam stares out from alongside the concept PC's single speaker, the only features on a flat, empty surface that tempt you to look for a removable panel hiding some TV tuner knobs.

But that is not part of the concept just yet, although Philips is this month launching a 15-inch LCD that doubles as a TV monitor - with Teletext.

The screen allows users to switch from PC applications to a TV feed or even display a picture within a picture, running TV and applications on the screen at once. Plug in a VCR or DVD Machine and watch movies full screen.

Such convergent devices will enter the market on an increasing scale this year but appeal to the high end - the Philips display retails for $2499.

Mr Schiele said the Concept PC II with its wireless keyboard and mouse and built-in Bluetooth module remained "priceless" but would probably fit the price range of high-end commercial desktops.

"Tomorrow you can't sell PCs $200 more than today just because they look good."

And when will we see the new concept PC on the market?

Possibly never, but elements of it will exist in the company's future models. Aspects of Deep design were incorporated into Hewlett-Packard's e-pc range, after all.

But while most will commend Hewlett-Packard's clutter-reducing intentions, a more adventurous design would go down well, judging by the positive response to one rival computer maker's new offering.

"We'd love to put out something like the new Mac," admitted Mr Schiele, "[but] if we did that for our business users, they'd just freak."