$199 HP Stream Machine newsOK, HP yanked all the product spec stuff off the web and hid it from the public, but the service arm of the HP company has indeed posted a PDF of the service manual for the completed unit as it is concepted as of now. It tells you all there is to know about the unit, complete with part numbers. It also tells you there is WIDE LATTITUDE in parts which can be sold in different marketplaces -- this is not a monolithic same-same product by any means.
It can be changed on the fly if needed improvement parts already exist.
http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c04400176.pdfGot some last minute refinements to the design showing up here, example the big arsed heat sink is
bigger and is now made of copper for better thermal conductivity.
The copper heat sink is now as big as the entire motherboard.
The entirety of the SOC heat produced total thermal heat flow exits the machine straight up, through the left hand upper half of the keyboard. The other side of that flow hits the bottom of the case and then the operator's lap in a more concentrated fashion since it has no heat spreader or thermal packing on that side.
One assumes the case mounted Mullins sensor is located right there which will see that concentrated heat and dial things back too quickly.
The bottom of the case and the user's lap will catch the short term concentrated radiated heat of the turbo'd processor against a small patch of case/lap with no intentional spreading effect ..... not good if that part of the case is resting directly on skin at the time.
Adding another large very thin heat sink over the bottom inside of the case might be a smart thing to help with any adverse user heat impressions by spreading that heat out over a large area.
This would also perhaps allow the unit to use the Mullins SOC turbo function more effectively for much longer durations without cutting it off prematurely. Such ongoing structural tweeks would show some pretesting of finished units is going on,
changes are being made and real production is imminent. It does not reflect all the final changes, some of which will come from purchaser feedback and early failure analysis.
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Why is this unit worth following?
Microsoft "lives or dies" by this unit as their "ability to be desirable" will be reflected by the performance of this unit.
It goes head to head with the Chromebooks with same exact model made by same vendor in both ChromeOS and Windows versions.
It is a perfect review case of the good vs the bad for both system types.By choking off all spec info, Microsoft and HP has tried to make the pre-Christmas debut a marketing event not based upon any prior facts, actually trying to get "emotional purchasing factors" to control the impulse purchasing of the machines
as they apparently perceive "knowing all the facts" could be getting in the way of sales at this time.
By losing track of the PDF Service Manual, HP has now let all them wayward kitty cats out of the sack accidentally.
Heat and Battery Life will be the issues of the day with the Stream Machine (and moderate new efforts to minimize these issues already show up in the HP Service Manual).
Battery now lists in the component listing as a 32watt/hour battery (battery size was increased considerably, from 24 up to 29 up to 32 watt/hour).
New bigger copper heat sink on the processor itself tries to put all the heat out under the keyboard proper, keeping it away from the new much larger battery by and large.
Good thing to know they thought about these things and tried to fix these issues (somewhat) ahead of time, this is a good thing for HP to have done.
Issue remains that it still has only 32 or 64 gigs of soldered in place eMMC memory for the local storage "hard drive" (but it does allow you to plug in a SIMM card for up to 128 gig of slower additional storage, so this isn't really a deal killer).
"Includes 32-GB of eMMC for use in models without the Windows operating system" is something new, that mebbe hints at a Mullins SOC based Chromebook is to come later, or perhaps an Ubuntu based machine is in the works for Europe/Far East.
Windows OS and MS Office will eat up a good bit of this faster standard 32 gig hard drive space, which could be dodged a bit by making Office Online the default operating Office. HP looks to sell an upgraded unit with double the systems memory but since the eMMC is soldered-in-place NON-replaceable eMMC look to see users upgrading memory with cheaper SIMM memory cards on down the road, purchased on sale for far far less money than HP wants for the "bought at a premium" eMMC upgrade Stream units.
We shall see .....
Go guys, put you together a really really good loss leader Chromebook killer and
I hope you really really make a good showing with it.
Competition is good, and you will make all them Chromebooks respond by getting better in return. Google responds fairly well to direct challenges,
which they need so they too will get better faster.
Trust me, users and reviewers will compare the units and offer up their comments on YouTube to both camps -- both of which should
listen and make the necessary changes ASAP.
Verslagen may be buying 2-3 of these thingies ASAP at $199 for his college kiddies if the reviews are really good and they actually really do provide the full Windows experience in a light weight inexpensive unit.