Business Week reports that sources inside HP claim the company is readying a custom operating system based on Linux for home computer users. There are practically no details about the rumored OS at this point, aside from the fact that it's supposed to be "easier" to use than most Linux distributions.

Why would HP, a company that has made billions of dollars by selling machines designed to run Windows want to build its own operating system? Two words. Vista and Apple.

First of all, Microsoft is in the process of killing off its most popular operating system ever, Windows XP. But many home and business computer users are reluctant to install Windows Vista. So if HP wants to continue selling computers over the next few years while waiting for Windows 7 to arrive, it might not be a bad idea to offer customers an alternative to Windows Vista.

The Business Week article also quotes someone who claims that Apple could be preparing to enter the sub-$1000 laptop game soon. That's an area where companies like HP, Dell, and Acer haven't really had to worry about Apple so far. But one of the reasons Apple laptops have been gaining steam in the last few years is because the same company is behind the software and the hardware. That means you don't run into the kind of hardware compatibility issues you find with Windows Vista. A custom HP operating system could ensure that as long as you buy HP peripherals, everything you plug into your computer will work.

HP has already begun dabbling in Linux. Earlier this year the company released the HP 2133 Mini-Note, a low end ultraportable laptop designed to compete with the popular Asus Eee PC. The cheapest versions of the Mini-Note run SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop.

[via Electronista]

The folks over at The Register posted story about an amazing excess of packaging from HP. Apparently in an effort to send some licensing certificates, each set of two certificates was wrapped in a piece of foam, packed into a small box, and then the 16 small boxes were packed into one big box - which from the photo looks almost like two smaller boxes taped together. It's really stunning the amount of packaging for 32 sheets of paper.

Has HP not heard of envelopes? Or better yet, email? Next time you feel the need for bubble wrap, go virtual for your popping with this online bubble wrap popping flash tool and package things a little less.

[Via Slashdot]

If you can't convince people to use your applications or web services over your competitor's, what's the best way to gain market share? Bundle your products and services with the operating system so that people won't have to go out of their way to use them.

Microsoft has obviously known this for a long time, and got into a spot of trouble in the EU a few years back for bundling Internet Explorer with Windows XP (among other things). So it should come as no surprise that Microsoft and HP announced a deal today that will make Microsoft's Live Search the default search engine on all computers the company ships starting in January.

HP will also install the Live Search Toolbar for Internet Explorer which also provides links to HP services including Snapfish. There's no word on how much Microsoft paid for the deal. Odds are folks who really truly prefer alternate search engines like Google or Yahoo! will change their default search engine at their earliest convenience. But we're willing to bet that an awful lot of people still just use whatever comes with their computer.

Microsoft may be rolling out an incremental upgrade to its Windows Mobile operating system for PDAs and cellphones, but it's up to device manufacturers and wireless carriers to decide whether to offer Windows Mobile 6.1 to existing customers. And it looks like HP has decided that customers who have already bought current generation iPaq devices can live without the update.

One of the things that has long set mobile operating systems apart from desktop OSes is the fact that users can't just walk into the store, but a software upgrade and apply it themselves. In the olden days, OS upgrades came on ROM chips and you literally had to update a device's hardware in order to update the OS. Now most Windows Mobile devices can be upgraded via a software-only update process. But because the OS is typically customized to run on various devices, it's up to the device makers to decide whether to release an update.

HP apparently has decided to offer Windows Mobile 6.1 on new units, but will not be offering an upgrade option for current iPaq owners. Of course, when hardware makers don't step up, we've often seen that 3rd party developers will come up with their own solutions. Will we eventually see an unofficial upgrade path for iPaq users? Only time will tell.

If it feels like the online storage and file sharing market is getting a little crowded, that's because it is. Just in the past few weeks, we've seen services such as Dropbox, AOL's Xdrive Desktop, Windows SkyDrive, and more, come into the market.

Now HP is dropping its hat into the ring, with HP Upline. HP Upline offers unlimited storage for as low as $59 per year. Features of Upline include:

• Automatic Backup
• 1-click restore
• Access from anywhere
• Ability to share files with friends

HP Upline also offers upgraded packages for family and professional use. If you want to try HP Upline, you can sign up for a limited account with one measly GB of storage. The limited account expires in one year; after that, you'll need to upgrade to the paid service to access your files, or kiss them goodbye.

One other note: The Upline software requires Windows. Mac users, you're out of luck. Well, out of Upline, anyway.

It's nice to see that two formerly disparate services, online backup and file sharing, are slowly merging into one complete service, with the choice of several offerings from big players.

[via TechCrunch]

Wal-Mart has closed down its video download store. We'll forgive you if your forgot that Wal-Mart was selling video downloads in the first place. We kind of forgot too. But the company jumped on the digital media bandwagon late last year. But apparently sales were a bit lower than expected.

Wal-Mart closed down its video download store after Hewlett-Packard decided to discontinue the technology that powered the store. Wal-Mart is reportedly not going to bother looking for another partner, thanks to the underwhelming performance of the video download store.

This isn't to say that there's no money to be made in online video distribution. But Wal-Mart is the single largest seller of DVDs in the US, so whatever the company was making in digital sales was probably small potatoes by comparison. That, and while you might think of Wal-Mart when you're looking for a place to get cheap retail goods, it's not really the first name that pops into our heads when we're thinking of places to find downloadable movies.

If you've already purchased movies from the Wal-Mart download store, you can play them as many times as you like on your current computer. But thanks to the magic of DRM, you'll lose them if you ever switch computers.

[via paidContent]

We're officially getting to the point where it's harder to find a computer manufacturer that doesn't sell a consumer oriented Linux PC than to find one that does.

Of course, you still don't have a wide variety to choose from in the US, but Acer is selling a laptop loaded with Ubuntu in Singapore. And now HP plans to sell desktop systems with Red Hat 5 in Australia.

The HP dx2250 has a base price of $AU600, which is about $490 US dollars. The systems come with OpenOffice, Firefox, and Evolution preinstalled, which is pretty much all you need to make a Linux desktop useful for most computer users.

Now if we could just get HP to offer the system in the US. Sure, you could go ahead and install Red Hat, Ubuntu, or your Linux distribution of choice on almost any HP computer you might pick up. But it's nice to buy a system that you know has been tested for driver compatibility first.

Hewlett Packard has made the puzzling decision to stop bundling Microsoft Outlook with its Ipaq line of Windows Mobile devices starting in April. Customers are instead told that they can purchase Outlook through Microsoft's website.

But here's the thing. A PDA or smartphone is of limited use if you can't synchronize it with your desktop. Try transferring hundreds or thousands of contacts from your old device to your new one without Outlook.

Sure, you could use BirdieSync or Finch Sync to synchronize your PDA with Thunderbird. But after dropping $300 to $600 on a new device from HP, it's a bit baffling that the company would tell you to cough up some more money to make it useful. We can only hope that this doesn't become a trend among PDA manufacturers.

[via Pocket PC Thoughts]

HP has acquired online image editing site Tabblo for an undisclosed amount of money. Of course, HP already had an online image editor, Snapfish. But Tabblo has a few extra features and a slick interface.

As we pointed out a few months back, Tabblo lets you resize photos, make posters, print them as calendars, or share them with friends.

It looks like the plan is not to mush Tabblog and Snapfish together, but rather to make Tabblo's tools available on a variety of other websites. This makes good business sense for HP. Find a way to make printing photos more fun, and you get to sell more printers and ink.

[via GigaOM]

Clearly, HP is attuned to the market demand for open source and attributes $25 million in hardware sales for its support of the Debian distribution in its Europe, Middle East and African market, (see HP: Debian Cha Ching!). It's never been a question of when brand name PC's come pre-loaded with Linux, but more a question of who will be the first to lead the way.

Clearly, there are alternatives to commercial distributions and companies who tool up to support them can add a nice, fat profit to their bottom line.

Microsoft's just announced Windows Home Server (WHS) receives what are mad props from long-time Microsoft critic and beta tester Paul Thurrott, which is encouraging. He says a lot about WHS and prov ides some great details on the system. Mostly that it will make backing up, restoring, file sharing and media distribution easy and almost fun for even the average consumer. Contrary to the buzz, the box is not primarily for media, though it is one of the features you can use it for via Media Connect. HP will be offering specialized hardware for the WHS software from Microsoft, or you can buy your own hardware to put the software on, if you want. If WHS is as simple and useful as Paul says, I can see a lot of non-techies buying a home server.

WHS software is built on Windows 2003 R2 and allows the home PC user to add hot-swappable storage, remotely access any PC on your network, backup all PCs on your network, whether they are wired or wireless, and automatically keeps track of all the files stored as well. There are no drive letters, just one big storage pool. Several Microsoft research technologies are used to bring many features not seen before in this type of device. Read Paul's full review for a lot more detail and the whole idea behind the Windows Home Server.

So now we have another manufacturer who is recalling Sony batteries for its laptop computer products. Lenovo has issued a voluntary battery recall for over 500,000 batteries. Where does the carnage end? Will Sony still provide batteries for laptops after this, or is this a minor set-back? I know mistakes happen, but I don't know that Sony can afford another big battery catastrophe like this if they want to keep their battery business. Do they even care? Sony is a big company, so what do you think, will this incident hurt their bottom line enough to matter? This is the one time when I am actually glad I have an older laptop. One that isn't subject to a battery recall. It really isn't much of a consolation, but its something, right?

Patricia Dunn, who it seemed allowed private investigators to use pretexting to obtain information on media leaks from board members at HP, is apparently done working for HP as chair and on the board. Amidst rumors that HP CEO Mark Hurd had something to do with the "sting operation," Dunn has stepped down from her role as chairwoman this week and resigned from the board as well, at the board's request instead of staying on until January as she originally said. Congress will hold a hearing on the incident on September 28th, and has invited members of HP's management and of the security contractor who performed the "pretexting" operation to appear at the hearing. All because someone on HP's board was allegedly leaking information to members of the media. Peachy.

HP Chairman Patricia Dunn hired a investigation company to discover where there may be information leaks to the media from HP's board of directors. The investigation company then hired a contractor who used pretexting, a questionable practice to obtain information on several board members and several members of the media. The contractor accessed personal phone records, by posing as someone other than who they were (pretexting) which is considered shady at best and is against HP's privacy policy. HP's privacy policy prohibits the use of what some deem "unethical" means to obtain data, which Dunn clearly violated, directly or not. Dunn stated that she was not aware the contractor had used such practices to obtain information. Who knows. Many are calling for Patricia Dunn's resignation from HP, though the board has not yet released a statement after their meeting on the subject. I guess you could say that HP obtained data under false pretexts, or something like that.

[Via News.com]

UPDATE: HP's board has just now decided to have Mark Hurd (President and CEO) take over for Patricia Dunn after Jan 2007. Dunn will remain a board member.