In brief: Ever since the Coronavirus forced some people to accept working from home as part of the new normal, it was only a matter of time before hardware companies incorporated that situation in their sales pitches. The latest is HP, which is poised to release a new line of desktops and all-in-ones designed around hybrid work.
Conferencing between people working at home and in offices is the central theme of the press release announcing a series of new PCs from HP this week. Expected to launch at various dates between February and May, the computers feature Intel's Alder Lake processors and a host of HP's new video conferencing technology.
The HP Store shows four Elite 800 G9 models as "coming soon," all of which come with Alder Lakes. The all-in-one model can come with up to 64GB of DDR4 RAM, up to 6TB of NVMe storage, and an optional RTX 3050 Ti. It should launch sometime in May. The other three models have DDR5 RAM but presumably, only have SATA storage.
The mini, coming in late March, can connect to up to eight displays and, like the all-in-one, has an optional 3050 Ti. The Elite SFF, also expected in late March, has configurations of up to 128GB of RAM with an optional Nvidia Quadro T400 GPU. The Elite Tower should arrive slightly sooner (late February) and sports up to 128GB of RAM, with an optional RTX 3070 GPU.
The company also pushed HP Presence – a new set of conferencing products HP announced in October. They include a 4K camera, an audio-video bar, microphones, and a conference control system.
Work-from-home HP product efforts started last June with what it called "the world's first Zoom-certified monitor." The E24mv G4 came with a pop-up webcam with 25 degrees of tilt, pairs of speakers, and microphones.