HP's EliteBoard made me consider in keyboard computer systems once more

For so long as I can keep in mind, I’ve all the time wished to have a keyboard laptop — that’s, a pc the place your complete machine was stuffed inside a keyboard. Possibly I caught a glimpse of the Commodore 64 at an impressionable age, however for no matter motive, the concept has all the time intrigued me. Now HP is bringing the idea again with its new EliteBoard G1a “Subsequent Gen AI PC.”

It is an IT administrator’s dream: It seems a typical desktop keyboard, but it surely has the total energy of a Copilot+ AI PC inside. You possibly can equip it with Ryzen 5 or 7 CPUs and their embedded Radeon 800 GPUs, as much as 64GB of RAM and as a lot as 2TB of NVMe SSD storage. All it’s good to do is add a monitor and a mouse, and you have got a full-fledged desktop setup.

The extra I give it some thought, the extra unhappy I’m that the arc of the computing trade trended in direction of standardized desktops and laptops. There was a quick spark of curiosity with the UMPC (extremely cellular PC) pattern within the 2000’s, which Engadget coated extensively as a younger weblog, in addition to ASUS’s Eee keyboard. However they could not survive the rise of the smartphone and pill. It seems placing a whole laptop behind a display screen was extra compelling than stuffing them right into a keyboard.

I used to be in a position to take a look at out an early EliteBoard prototype, and whereas the expertise wasn’t excellent, it is nonetheless an intriguing computing choice. I had bother setting it up initially as a result of it solely had two USB-C ports on its rear, which meant I needed to discover a technique to energy it by way of one port and go a video sign by way of the opposite. Fortunately, my Anker USB-C charging hub was in a position to juice it up, and I additionally had a USB-C hub with an HDMI port, which allowed me to hook up with my monitor.

Sadly, the general setup was a jumble of wires, and never the clear structure I anticipated from a keyboard PC. As soon as I used to be in a position to begin up Home windows although, I used to be much less aggravated and extra amazed that the keyboard contained a whole laptop. I suppose I should not be too stunned, as Intel’s Compute Stick positioned a purposeful PC in a a lot smaller case, however in contrast to the failed product, the EliteBoard truly felt usable. I used to be in a position to load up a number of browser home windows with tabs, edit a number of images and even play a number of gentle video games, like Vampire Survivors. And sure, typing on it felt fairly nice too.

Since I used to be testing out prototype {hardware}, I agreed to not benchmark the EliteBoard. However from the efficiency I noticed, it felt about the identical an entry-level laptop computer. Principally, it is completely suited to its most important process: Being a boring workplace laptop. Again in my IT days, I definitely would have most popular deploying a number of gentle keyboards as an alternative of the tank-like Dell desktops we usually ordered.

Whereas the EliteBoard is focused at industrial customers, HP is contemplating it an experiment to see how folks reply to a keyboard PC. There’s an opportunity we may see one which’s ultimately meant for mainstream customers. I am undecided if that is precisely, mandatory, although. The entire idea of a desktop PC primarily appeals to tinkerers and IT of us. And for anybody who needs to get their palms on an EliteBoard quickly, there’s actually nothing stopping you.