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Electronista: Activist group Greenpeace has released a new edition of its Guide to Greener Electronics, which ranks major high-tech corporations in terms of their alleged environmental friendliness.

Among the companies favored by Greenpeace’s press efforts is Apple, which the group notes recently disclosed its carbon emissions.

Apple has risen in rankings from 11th to 9th, aided not by the disclosure but by being the “most progressive” computer maker in terms of removing product toxins.

Greenpeace comments that Apple’s emissions tracking will only affect the next guide, and that the company must actually act on reducing carbon levels.

Despite holding onto 14th place, HP has been commended for the ProBook 5310m, which is said to be the company’s first PC to eliminate PVC and brominated flame retardants (BFRs) from everything but the power supply and cabling.

Dell and Lenovo are criticized for postponing toxic phase-outs indefinitely, with the latter shifting in rank to second-last, ahead of Nintendo but below Fujitsu.

LG has slipped in position from 4th to 11th, as a result of dropping plans to eliminate PVC and BFRs from all products by the end of 2010.

Philips has jumped from 7th to 4th through work on recycling policies; Sony is up from 12th to 8th due to changes in waste and chemical handling. Dominating the guide this period is Nokia, followed by Samsung and Sony Ericsson.

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Register Hardware: Bendy plastic displays might actually arrive in a year or two – HP has developed a prototype of a flexible display screen with Arizona State University’s Flexible Display Center.

Flexible displays could be pulled out from a PDA-like device to provide a viewing area larger than the device itself. They could also be used as a form of paper, signage, or as displays stretched between supports for a meeting and then rolled away and packed up.

Making them is difficult because the flexible material obviously moves, meaning it deforms, and this makes it excessively difficult to add precisely aligned display components to it and ensure they stay aligned and don’t become unstuck.

An HP statement says: “Mass production of such [flexible] displays can enable production of notebook computers, smart phones and other electronic devices at much lower costs since the display is one of the more costly components.”

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Engadget: Details on this one are about as light as can be at the moment, but The Wall Street Journal has it that HP is aiming to expand its iPAQ smartphone line into the consumer market with a new model that it’ll market to both average consumers and corporate users alike.

According to “people briefed on the plan,” the phone will have both a touchscreen and a keypad and, naturally, it’ll run Windows Mobile 6.1 — oh, and it’ll be able to “send and receive emails, and access the Internet.”

Word is the device will be available in Europe first within the next two months.

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SlashGear: HP have a duo of new digital photo frames, one intended for portable use and the other better suited to the mantelpiece. 

The 3.5-inch df300 stores up to 45 images on its internal memory, and has a 320 x 240 resolution display with a 400:1 contrast ratio. The 10.4-inch df1000a, meanwhile, has 512MB of onboard storage and an 800 x 600 resolution display.

Capacity on the smaller display can be boosted via an SD/SDHC/MMC slot, and it can run either off AC or USB power, or via its internal rechargeable battery.  A full charge will last for two hours, enough to bore any friend or relative with your latest holiday snaps.

The df1000a, meanwhile, has a USB port and 5-in-1 card reader, and can either display a single image or a composite of four images (or, alternatively, a mixture of images, calendars and clocks). 

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Slashgear: HP continued its home entertainment and connectivity rollout at CES 2008 with the launch of the MediaSmart Receiver, a compact set-top box that connects to an HDTV via HDMI and instantly links it to the home network.  Compatible with systems running XP and Vista, as well as HP’s own Home Server, it also gives access to Microsoft’s Online Media download service.

Once linked, content – including pictures, music and video – from multiple PCs can be displayed on the attached TV, all in high-definition.  WiFi a/b/g/n is included, with a three antenna array, and it’s also compatible with the UPnP and DLNA streaming standards.  Front mounted USB ports let you load media directly from a memory stick.

HP have given the MediaSmart Receiver a strange, patterned top, a little like one of those compact Zen sand gardens you’re supposed to rake when stressed.  Otherwise it’s a generally classy, if subdued affair, with the standard piano-black finish and blue feature lighting.  Neither price nor expected availability have been revealed.

The company has also put the same technology into its latest range of HDTVs, in an attempt to further popularise MediaSmart.

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Evertiq: DisplaySearch has released its Q3’07 Quarterly LCD TV Value Chain Report, which states that 23% of the 20.1 million LCD TV units shipped in Q3’07 were made by external OEMs such as TPV, Jabil, AmTRAN, Quanta, Proview, Vestel and Wistron. Many LCD TV brands outsourced 100% of their LCD TV set manufacturing, such as Grundig, HP, Polaroid, Vizio, ViewSonic and Westinghouse.

Philips outsourced more than 60% of its LCD TVs shipped in Q3’07 to OEM makers. Some brands intend to increase their outsourcing share for certain regions and products as the market expands, while other brands intend to bring more volume in-house as they expand into new regions. The Quarterly LCD TV Value Chain Report is an excellent means of tracking these trends by manufacturer.

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Camera Core: Toshiba is building on its strength in the laptop market with an expansion into the smartphone arena.

The company is developing a sub-brand called Portege and releasing two slider phones for business users – the G500 and G900.

The phones are rich in features suggested by respondents to a survey of business smartphone users, and will compete with brands such as Palm, HP and HTC.

Both phones have HSDPA and Wi-Fi connectivity, plus a two-megapixel camera, Windows-interface and microSD cards. Security features include fingerprint recognition.

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Engadget: After Australian researchers delivered a damning report claiming that HP’s printers were at the top of the heap for expelling dangerous, potentially cancer-causing, ultra-fine particles, the company responded with a lengthy press release which essentially “debunked” the study’s findings — and now the researchers have fired back to the Australian press.

The printer-maker claimed that the study of ultra-fine particles was a “new” science, to which Lidia Morawska, head of the project, says simply isn’t true. According to her, the European Commission has added a particle number limit to its emissions standards for light vehicles, which Morawska claims is a normally “lengthy” process. Additionally, she says that there is “considerable toxicological evidence of potential detrimental effects of ultra-fine particles on human health,” based on the current World Health Organization’s Air Quality Guidelines.

The scientist further refutes HP’s claims that the particles “cannot be accurately characterised by analytical technology,” by stating that the study found plenty of printer models which carried no dangerous emissions at all, suggesting clear differences in the variety of particle output.

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NaviGadget: After two years of silence, HP is about to reconsider their mobile series with a whole new line-up of Windows Mobile 6 devices. The iPAQ VoiceMessenger 514, made available only a couple weeks ago, has been the first representative of this new generation. 500 series will be made up of basic smartphones (only one for the moment) at a very affordable price and we’re happy to hear that a few other series will also include integrated GPS functionality.The other series will be configured in the following way:

• 100 Series: the substitute of old the rz1710. Entry range PDA with no phone but at for a very low price
• 200 Series: PDA/PND (autonomous GPS) hybrids, replacing the range iPAQ rx57/59
• 300 Series: devices dedicated to business professionals and equipped with a VGA screen (replacing ancestral the iPAQ hx4700)
• 500 Series: medium range smartphones
• 600 Series: 3G PDA phones equipped with keyboard and integrated GPS. An alternative to series 900, with a different design.
• 900 Series: the true successor of the HP iPAQ hw6915. Expected to have powerful features specially designed for business users such as keyboard, Wi-Fi, GPS…

The first devices from the new HP line up should be announced by September, and be ready for the market at the end of the year…

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EE Times: Hewlett-Packard plans to make available this week on select consumer desktop PCs dual-format drives that can play HD DVD and Blu-ray high-definition discs. (…)

Computer makers are moving aggressively with high-definition features in hopes that consumers eventually will use the machines to manage content and deliver it to the HDTV in the living room. Even though the amount of HD content on cable and DVDs is limited, HDTV sales are strong because of falling prices.

The dual-format drive HP plans to start offering May 9 can read/write Blu-ray discs, but is read only for HD DVD, the company said Monday. The drive also will be able to read/write standard DVDs and CDs. (…)

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BBC: US computer and printer manufacturer Hewlett-Packard has unveiled plans it hopes will make it a major force in the global video and online gaming market.

HP bought specialist gaming computer firm VoodooPC at the end of last year, and said it would now expand the hardware the firm was able to offer.

Ideas on the drawing board are a curved computer screen and a handheld device that let users play on the move. (…)

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Digital Trends: HP has begun marketing 37 to 50 inch LCD and plasma screens.

As part of its 2007 offering, HP is rolling out two LCD-based MediaSmart HDTVs, offering 1080p resolution and screen sizes of 42 and 47 inches, respectively.

These are balanced by a 42 and 47-inch 1080p LCD TVs, and three LCD panels (the LC3272N, LC3772N, and LC4272N) offering 720p resolution and screen sizes of 32, 37, and 42 inches, respectively.

And HP is also in the plasma television game, offering 42 and 50-inch units with 720p resolution.

HP’s MediaSmart TVs are designed to tie into users’ existing wired or wireless home networks, enabling them to access photos, music, and videos from other computers and media sources in the household, as well as access selected Internet services.

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