HP’s EliteBoard made me imagine in keyboard computer systems once more

For so long as I can bear in mind, I’ve all the time wished to have a keyboard pc — that’s, a pc the place your entire machine was stuffed within 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 appears a typical desktop keyboard, however it has the total energy of a Copilot+ AI PC inside. You’ll be able to 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 you’ll want to do is add a monitor and a mouse, and you have 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 the direction of standardized desktops and laptops. There was a short spark of curiosity with the UMPC (extremely cell PC) development within the 2000’s, which Engadget covered extensively as a young blog, in addition to ASUS’s Eee keyboard. However they could not survive the rise of the smartphone and pill. It seems placing a whole pc behind a display screen was extra compelling than stuffing them right into a keyboard.

I used to be capable of check out an early EliteBoard prototype, and whereas the expertise wasn’t good, 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 method to energy it by one port and cross a video sign by the opposite. Fortunately, my Anker USB-C charging hub was capable of juice it up, and I additionally had a USB-C hub with an HDMI port, which allowed me to connect 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 capable of begin up Home windows although, I used to be much less irritated and extra amazed that the keyboard contained a whole pc. I suppose I should not be too stunned, as Intel’s Compute Stick placed a functional PC in a much smaller case, however not like the failed product, the EliteBoard really felt usable. I used to be capable of load up a number of browser home windows with tabs, edit just a few photographs and even play just a few 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 job: Being a boring workplace pc. Again in my IT days, I definitely would have most well-liked deploying just a few gentle keyboards as a substitute of the tank-like Dell desktops we usually ordered.

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