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Hip-e All-In-One PC
stallard writes "Yahoo! News reports this story:
'In November, Digital Lifestyles Group Inc. plans to ship the
hip-e, a new Windows-based PC inspired by the iMac, specifically designed to cater to teenagers. It was Chairman and CEO Kent Savage's own experience after his son asked him for an iMac that led to the new all-in-one system's creation.'"
CPU?
Latest Intel processor: high performance, low power consumption, quiet, Intel Pentium-M System
Memory?
Plenty of memory capacity - up to 2GB
The configuration page only lets you add accessories and change the "skins" for the computer.
Vague specs and zero customability! hip-e, Fuck Yeah!
"It was Chairman and CEO Kent Savage's own experience after his son asked him for an iMac that led to the new all-in-one system's creation.'"
Kind of like the dad who goes out to the workshop and whips something up, instead of going to the toy store.
As a typical teenager, this is perfect for my X-treme, hip, on-the-go lifestyle! I can use it to listen to my rock-n-roll music which I have stored as "MP3s", or I can use it to send electronic messages to my friends when I'm hanging out at the malt shop!
Any teenager who doesn't have one of these is a total square, if you ask me.
Hip-e
It's spelled "Hype" actually...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
take a look at the specs. at $1699, this is a ripoff. you're paying for eye candy basically.
i can make a MUCH better computer for that price.
Marge, get me your address book, 4 beers, and my conversation hat.
Well, it sure was a lot cheaper to design and build the whole Hip-E than to just buy the kid an iMac!!
I've met other Windows users that were equal in thier utterly pathetic traction to the Windows platform.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I can't put my finger on it, but the design if this thing just makes me squirm. Why not be intelligent and just rip-off Apple instead of revisiting the mistakes of the Barbie and Hot Wheels PCs?
Three Squirrels
Now here's a teenager that is really, really pissed at his dad.
Just imagine you'd asked your dad for an imac and instead of saying yes or no he's actually going to build something similar running windows?
Jeez, it's like wanting to have this really cool sneakers and your mom coming home with these crappy imitations that, at least to her, look just as cool and are so much cheaper. Bah.
The hip-e is supposed to sell for $1699, isn't that the same or maybe even more than an iMac? So what's the point? The CEO's son wanted an iMac, so he designs something that costs more. That's real smart.
Once again, marketing drones fail to understand that 17 year olds are quite as stipud as you think they are, and when 40 year olds try to design for 17 year olds they often get it wrong.
There's more to the offer!
Buy your hip-e now and you get to join their hip-e squad! as a squad leader!! If your friends join your hip-e squad and buy a hip-e of their own, you get $10!!!!
Of course, all of the money goes into a convenient MasterCard that you get from hip-e, just in time to teach those teens the value of living your life with a credit card bill!!
Become a squad leader! All your base are belong to hip-e squad leaders!
-=*(CC)*=-
Apple may take concepts that have been tried before (like the HD MP3 player), they just make pratical devices that actually do well in the mass market instead of flopping like a carp dropped on a highway.
So the "Hip-E" is indeed a copy of the iMac, in that you are assuming they are trying to copy a device that actually sells vs. one whose sales start out in the toilet with one hand on the handle.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
the 17" iMac with DVD-Burning Superdrive sells for $1,499.00 If you add some RAM you are at the same price, as this vaporhardware. Buy the original instead! Get a life. Get a Mac.
What on earth are they thinking? Somebody needs to go back to product design school.
Look at how the thing is built. Spec wise it's a solid product, but the way they have made it makes it look as if it was targeted towards 10 year olds and tweens.
If you are a self respecting 16 year old and if you had the option, would you get one of these or an iMac? Part of the whole point of selling high tech toys to teens is that teens who own them want to feel older, more pro, more.. well script kiddie 1337.
You make a product that takes that away and instead says to them "You will be looked upon as a kid who only does innocent things" and expect it to sell?
Sometimes I wish I was a plumber, then I'd know how to deal with other people's shit.
Check out the video card, the LCD resolution, any number of other aspects of this machine. I suspect that it integrates a large number of laptop components, rather than desktop components.
Very odd.
Ben, 16
(Ben obviously hasn't gotten laid yet).
"hip-e is the fastest, most customizable computer on the market.It's perfect for me because I can make it fit my style."
Sean, 16
(Sean obviously hasn't checked out the specs of his perfect machine.)
Between me and my friends (who are between 15 and 16), we would never buy this. We'd rather have an iMac G5 for the same price, or even a normal tower PC with Linux running on it. Looks don't matter, it's how it runs. I doubt this Hip-e would perform anywhere near a Mac or PC of the same price. And I can't even see the cool factor in the Hip-e, so it's pointless.
I'm going to go create my own technology news site, with blackjack and hookers. You know what? Forget the news site.
The iMac has a standard mount (VESA - does Hip-E do the same?) so you can in fact hang it on the wall, and use a bluetooth keyboard and mouse from your bed. Yes the Imac also has speakers built in.
You can run your PC software using Virtual PC - except for games, that's why you have consoles...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Perhaps this is the point entirely. It's possible that they looked at the Mac and thought, "hey, these guys are selling stuff based on nothing more than cool factor, so let's design something that looks hip and cash in on the market."
If indeed that's what they were thinking--and judging from the price v. specs I'd say that was the case--they missed the whole point of the Mac, which is more than fancy hardware. It's also about all the rest of things that Mac users already know about, such as great hardware plug-and-play reliability, solid OS and software that makes the machine instantly useful even to newbies.
His kid lost out.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
It's a multi-level marketing scheme, too!
For only $1700, you can get in on the ground floor, and get $10 every time your friends buy one. Plus you get to be called a "squad leader!"
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
I just spent $1,400.00 on a 1.6 GHz G5 iMac with 512Mb RAM and bluetooth keyboard and mouse running a robust BSD-based Unix operating system for my son when I could have spent $1700 on a 1.5 GHz WinTel Box?!?
Think of all the "Life Lessons" my son will miss out on with his Mac. He won't be exposed to all those viruses, and spy-ware programs - how will he ever learn to properly secure his computer system in the "real World"?
He won't have the experience of paying annual subscription fees to Virus vendors to keep his virus software up to date. He won't be hit with pornographic pop-ups left and right, so how will he be prepared when he sits down at a friends computer or a computer at work and surfs on their Windows Box?
He won't have the experience of re-installing his OS every time he needs to really clean the spy-ware and mal-ware off his box.
He won't know how to search for and install drivers for all his peripherals. Not to mention knowing how to go through the troubleshooting process of determining which software package just overwrote that all-important .dll or how to edit a registry.
He'll might learn the bash shell and vi and ssh and scp and how to tweak apache config file to do what he wants instead of learning DOS commands and how to use TweakUI.
His computer will never be able to be used on a "Windows" network or on the internet because "Macs aren't networkable" (according to the "geek" at our local computer store)
If only I'd have known about this Hip-e sooner. Well, maybe one of his friends will have pity on him and let him use theirs when he visits - anyone want a G5 iMac cheap?
"terrorism" and "pedophilia" are the root passwords to the Constitution
That's exactly what I first thought when I read that line.
Just to clarify for everyone, Kent Savage is the same guy behind the Netpliance iOpener. He's one of those dot-com bubble masters who doesn't really 'get-it' but can spins some concept up that looks great on paper and board rooms. Other people who also don't 'get-it' in these meetings sucker into his pitches and invest in stupid ideas like this without recognizing the fatal flaws.
The fatal flaw with the Hip-E??? They're trying to out-mac Apple. That's like trying to out-weird Michael Jackson. No slight against Apple in this comparison. They've done a tremendous job building brand awareness, applying inspired industrial design, and conceptualizing cool products. While the Apple store is located in a shopping mall here in Austin, the Hip-e folks have one of those ridiculous kiosks in the mall like those ones selling t-shirts with your picture ironed-on that says "worlds's greatest grandpa."
I read the Yahoo article linked to above and I think it's poor journalism for the writer to have not mentioned that Digital Lifestyles is the new name of Netpliance.
Here's a little blurb about them on Engadget.
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
They can call their Windows Media player the "wmp-e."