Someone in HP's marketing department has very dark sense of humour, or events have conspired to produce one of the most serendipitous pieces of product name irony I can remember. Barely three weeks after announcing to analysts that they were looking to either spin off its PC business as a separate company or sell it off altogether , HP have launched a brand new gaming PC.
It's called the Phoenix.
The HP Pavillion HPE Phoenix to be exact, but the question is whether or not this is a deliberate reference to the fact that HP were hauled over the coals after their statement about the Personal Systems Group (PSG)? It would be a less than subtle reflection of UK PSG MD* Paul Hunter's defensive statement that " the team in the UK remains committed to creating and supporting great products and services ."
Look, see, you thought we were dead, but we rise again and all that.
I suspect, however, that given the length of time it takes to develop product marketing and the fact HP's announcement was a surprise to almost everyone, this is just one of those instances of perfect timing.
So what of the Phoenix itself?
There's not much in the way of specs available at the moment, beyond 16GB of RAM and a "250W graphics card" - which is co-incidentally the TDP of a very nice Radeon HD6970. But it looks acceptably garish and - if my GPU guess is right - has an even more attractive price tag of £949. Especially if the monitor and peripherals pictured are included.
It'll go on sale next month, and I'll update with more specs as they become available.
*Beat that, acronym fans.
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