It may be pulling out of the personal computer business, but Hewlett-Packard has announced plans to introduce eight new desktop PCs in the next two months
HP said that their new offering will include four touch-screen models and three TouchSmart models aimed at consumers with starting prices between $600 and $900 beginning this month.
A TouchSmart Elite computer for small businesses, priced as low as US$850, will be available in North America on September 21.
Touchscreen desktop PCs are nothing new for H-P. It began marketing them with the launch of the HP-150 in 1983, but it flopped for a number of reasons: a lack of software, disdain by typist-secretaries who didn’t like to take their fingers from the keyboard, and the rise of the mouse with the launch of the Apple Mac in 1984.
In the more recent reincarnation, it’s been making TouchSmarts for a while. But their future is unsure. H-P has said it will spin off its Personal Systems Group, which generated sales of $40.7 billion last year, as CEO Leo Apotheker, formerly of SAP, seeks to reposition the company for expansion in business software.
