A pair of new laptops from HP are awfully close to the MacBook Pro in appearance, even if they don't share all the same features.
HP's Envy line come in 13- and 15-inch flavors, and their resemblance to Apple's flagship notebooks is due mostly to their slim, rounded appearance and silver finish. They're aluminum-coated, but a magnesium frame makes the Envy laptops a bit lighter than MacBook Pros. The 13-inch model weighs 3.74 pounds and the 15-inch model weighs 5.18 pounds, Engadget reports.
One other shared feature is the glass click pad, which does away with two buttons in favor of one pad that detects left and right clicks, as well as touch gestures. The Envy line also commands a high price point, like Apple's premium laptops, at $1,699 and $1,799 for the smaller and larger notebooks, respectively.
HP makes a couple of interesting decisions that stand out. These laptops don't include an optical disc drive, likely contributing to their smaller weight and size -- and I think most laptops are fine without them. The Envy 15 also has a staggering maximum 16 GB of DDR3 RAM, which makes for a powerful computer when paired with Intel's Core i7 processor and ATI's ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4830 graphics, which has 1 GB of video RAM. Finally, unlike Apple's unibody laptops, the Envy has a removable battery.
Is it fair to make comparisons to Apple? I think so. The slim, gray form factor is the first thing consumers will see, and when they realize both are high-priced, well-spec'ed computers, they'll probably find themselves making a hard choice if they're not married to either Mac OS X or Windows 7.
The Envy 13 and Envy 15 go on sale in the United States on October 18.
