Guy Kewney

I was going to repeat the theme I've worked on for some months now: how the PC market has been in the doldrums since the Y2K panic buying spree, how the machines bought then are starting to run out of stability, how people are fed up with maintaining them and, most importantly, how there's been nothing really exciting as an alternative - apart from some beautiful boxes with Macintosh hardware inside them.

I expect a lot of people to say: "You know, it's really time I got a new machine, and the next time this thing gives me a blue screen of death I'm not going to reinstall Windows like I've been doing once a month for the last six months. I'm going to tell systems it's dead."

Then an odd thing happened. HP rolled out a new series of notebooks. I borrowed two of them to test. One was the NX9005, the other the NX7000. They couldn't be more different.

The NX7000 is a wide-screen model for DVD playback, with a display that's almost the size of a real wide-screen compact TV; a Centrino chip set; the option of a DVD writer; a nice little socket to take SD cards; a really quick Pentium M processor and quite reasonable battery life.

By contrast, the NX9005 is about £500 worth of Athlon XP processor, a standard 1,024 by 768 pixel display and no pretensions whatever. You will find bigger lumps, but not too many. It's no lightweight, having a built-in CD-Rom drive. It even appears to have something called a 'floppy disk drive' (whatever that is) and it comes with XP - and that's it.

Now, before I go any further, I have to stop and sidetrack about the NX7000's display. It's huge and it does fit on an airline meal tray - just. But what makes it remarkable is that it doesn't seem to have a 'best viewing angle'.

You can, it seems, stand or sit, or stand to one side, or walk around it. Ten people can watch it from a distance of three feet. All of them will get a perfect view of what's on the display. I've never seen the like before and it's awesome.

So, I took it around a few people and I showed the NX9005 to others, canvassing reactions. They all wanted the NX9005. They said: "My, that display is big and clear!" I replied: "But look at the one on the NX7000!"

"Ah, yes," they said. "But it's nearly £2,000."

"Well, no, it's quite a bit less ..." They looked at me. "But the other one is £500." And they liked the TFT screen. Resolution, for the typical user, doesn't go above 1,024 by 768. That's what a computer does. But it's big!

"It's bigger than my office desktop TFT and look how much brighter it is!" Ah, yes, indeed - it is bright. And the viewing angle, while not as all-round 180 degrees as the NX7000's display, is pretty impressive. And the colour temperature is far closer to what we see as 'real'.

All these people wanted was something that would replace their current desktop system, which, typically, was an old Pentium III or early Pentium 4 with a CRT monitor. And this did exactly that - plus it was portable.

Battery life? Who cares? They aren't going to travel across the Atlantic with it. Lightweight? What do you mean - it's portable, isn't it? "Look, I can pick it up - with one hand, nearly!"

We'll have to see what happens at the entry level with the 64-bit chip. If something comes out like the NX9005 for under a £1,000, I suspect it will sell and sell. What does that mean? "Oh, much faster, more powerful, future proof."

Look, it really doesn't matter if it's true. If it's cheap and gee-whiz, it will revive the PC market - and that's that.

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