Is HP changing its Voodoo tune?
The HP and Voodoo co-branded Envy notebook in 2008.
(Credit: Hewlett-Packard)Hewlett-Packard is sending mixed signals on what exactly it plans to do with the Voodoo PC brand it acquired three years ago.
After purchasing the gaming and PC enthusiast brand in 2006, HP in 2008 began using the Voodoo name beyond powerful gaming PCs. It painted the name Voodoo and VoodooDNA on high-end HP notebooks and desktops, and talked up their premium engineering and design. They used the analogy that if the HP brand were a Smart Car and Compaq were a Chrysler, Voodoo would be their Maybach.
But a year later, HP's consumer PC lineup contains little trace of the Voodoo branding. HP had introduced the HP Blackbird with VoodooDNA and more recently HP Firebird with Voodoo DNA. Both are nowhere to be found on HP.com. In a more recent example, a new notebook, called the HP Envy was released last week. A year ago it was called the HP Voodoo Envy 133. Though the updated model takes some Voodoo ideas like the thin profile, quick booting, the power adapter, and packaging, you'd have to be a Voodoo fanboy to know Voodoo had any sort of influence at all on it.
So what gives? It seems the Voodoo team didn't have much to do with the Envy, despite its sharing the same name with older products.
"The reason there's no 'Voodoo DNA' on the (most recent) product has to do with the overall design language, the target market, and the fact that we weren't directly involved in the design," Rahul Sood, the founder of VoodooPC and the chief technology officer of gaming PCs for HP, wrote on his personal blog.
In the same post, Sood that Voodoo is "transitioning from 'desktop and notebook' manufacturing to something beyond." While it's unclear what "something beyond" means, he hints that besides HP taking some design and engineering cues from Voodoo that the company he founded didn't quite fit into HP the way Sood had initially expected.
"Voodoo, as you all know, was to be integrated into the larger business units so we could take some of our ideas and products to a much larger audience," Sood wrote. Overall, he said it "wasn't as easy as I had hoped" to integrate the Voodoo operation into HP's monstrous engineering and manufacturing machine. "It's very difficult to explain the magnitude of difference," he added.
The new HP Envy, sans Voodoo branding.
(Credit: Hewlett-Packard)HP representatives, when asked for clarification, said there's no reason for concern: their Voodoo plans haven't changed, even though a few Voodoo computers seem to have disappeared from their product line. HP says they were limited edition designs.
"To be named Voodoo, products require extreme engineering, extreme design and a premium customer experience," said an HP spokesperson. "Once the extreme engineering is scalable for high volume, then we consider moving it to the HP brand as we did with the new Envy notebooks."
Essentially the high-end products that the Voodoo name gets attached to are harder to scale at the manufacturing capacity that is normal for HP products. But when pressed on the lack of any recent Voodoo and HP co-branding, HP said we can "expect to see the Voodoo and VoodooDNA products come out at about the same pace as they have since the acquisition." If the three-year history of the deal is a guide, it looks like that means once every year or two.
That may be disappointing to some. But it was clear from the beginning that the acquisition of Voodoo by HP was for high-end cachet, not big gobs of customers. Voodoo was a Calgary, Canada boutique PC maker turning out custom gaming machines. Each computer was built by hand for enthusiasts willing to pay for machines that sometimes started at $5,000 each.
So it made sense when HP opted to use the brand first on the Blackbird gaming PC marketed as a powerful HP desktop for gamers with "Voodoo DNA." That meant that it was an HP-branded product but was built in conjunction with the Voodoo team. Then HP rolled out the Voodoo Envy notebook and Voodoo Omen desktop last year. They were a complete design departure for HP: sleek with interesting materials like carbon fiber, and in the case of the Envy, a $2,000 price tag to match, yet aimed at the same type of audience that might want a MacBook Pro or a Dell Adamo.
Though the limited-edition Voodoo Omen was discontinued after a year, the well-received Envy notebook was refreshed earlier this month. The new HP Envy sports some very Apple-esque design features, and the same high-end specs and price tag as the original Envy, but--as Sood noted in his blog--there's no Voodoo name to be found.
Voodoo versus Alienware
From the beginning, HP's approach to Voodoo was more modest than Dell's approach to Alienware, the boutique PC maker it acquired in March 2006. Dell brought Alienware as a brand into its consumer division, but uses it only on a gaming desktop, a gaming notebook and gaming mice and keyboards. The biggest change seems to be the brand's scale: Before the acquisition, Alienware was available in six countries; it's now for sale in 37.
HP seemed more ambitious at first about bringing Voodoo into the mainstream and not keeping it a strictly gaming brand. Sood writes that though he wanted to make the Voodoo Envy available in Dubai, London, and India, that hasn't happened yet.
"It was frustrating for me because I've always wanted to get the brand out there, but changing the way the machine works so that we could take it globally isn't that simple," he wrote. Sood went on to say that Voodoo is not going away, but Voodoo machines will look different than we're used to seeing. Unfortunately, for Voodoo's old fandom, they could be a bit harder to find than some anticipated in the early days of the deal.
"Does this mean you'll never see a Voodoo or VoodooNDA desktop or notebook again? Hardly, I'm sure you will...but while we hash this out you will continue to see products with our fingerprints released from various areas of HP."
So HP's acquisition has been reduced to mere fingerprints? Not exactly, but it's increasingly clear there will be no Voodoo-ization of the broader HP product line. And when the economy picks up, demand could return for high-end machines and perhaps more Voodoo.
"Given the economic times it probably makes a little sense not to come with a really high end system, when (average selling prices) are dropping so quickly these days," IDC analyst Richard Shim said. But "If they were to get rid of it, it would be a mistake. It takes a lot of credibility and investment to build up a premium brand."
Erica Ogg is a CNET News reporter who covers Apple, HP, Dell, and other PC makers, as well as the consumer electronics industry. She's also one of the hosts of CNET News' Daily Podcast. In her non-work life, she's a history geek, a loyal Dodgers fan, and a mac-and-cheese connoisseur. E-mail Erica. 
HP majkes a very lousy notebooks, lots of friends of mine and I speak of experience as well, are so afraid to touch or putting a 10 feet pole on any HP laptops because the hardware and sofwares breaks down so easily...
my experience when i bought my HP Pavillion, last 2007 its lovely to look at and very expensive, and guess what...after 3 months everything brokes down always experience BSOD brought it several times to HP store and they got so annoyed of me becaus ei keep coming back to them as everytime my computer breaks down...until i decided to throw away that stupid laptopt at the expence of my hard earned moiney worth around $1,200
I thought its only me who is experiensing such thing to my horrors my 3 other friends who also bought an HP also experience the same...
That brand is so stupid, and we are so stupid to believe that they make great laptops...
Now see what happens, when word of mouth and consumer experience get the most out of them? no one trust that brand anymore...see what happens to their products no ones wanted to touch them...from voodoo to envy to what have you...
So I would say HP you better go back in making photocopiers and printers theyre good at but when it comes to computers and laptopts a big NO NO...
that is if you want to be screwed of your hard earned bucks..you go buy HP laptops..
Get real... this model isn't far off the designs that VooDoo put out even before HP took them over. They were known for somewhat slim high performance laptops that came in all kinds of colors. If anything one could argue apple copied their designs.
And so when Apple comes out with that, will you concede that Apple copied others? NO!
So, to sum it up, they're freaking computers- its like two year olds arguing about who's matchbox car is better.
Hedley (aka Hedy) Lamar
I would hope that everyone that owned, operated and worked for Voodoo would just open another shop under another brand name and start selling high end PCs again.
Big companies like HP just don't seem to get it. The whole point behind companies like Voodoo was the hand made PC with attention to details and custom components, cases and designs. HP's idea that, "wow we can really get more sales by just plastering Voodoo on everything we make that could be considered high end" just proved the point. Now they're not even bothering with that, just letting the name die a slow death.
You can't mass product something like that. It defeats the whole purpose.
HP branding is suffering. I'd consider an HP version of the Thinkpad but all I can find is cheap consumer crap that I would fully expect to break in a season. HP is great at putting out specs that sound good but perform like what you just paid for.
HP needs to get their branding figured out and then release some easy to figure out products instead of a thousand variation of cheap crap that drive folks who are atually willing to spend money on computers that don't break, to more solid brands.
Now matter how they try, HP cannot "buy" cool.
Dear HP. either take a **** or get off the pot and sell Voodoo. Some of us have no problems dropping 3 grand. As it stands when Dell updates the Alienware m17x with i7 it looks like I won't be comparing ANYTHING in your lineup to that. Thanks for making one decision easy.
Please mark the word enthusiast, which is a different segment than professional systems made by outfits like BoxX Technologies - these firms still dominate the true "custom" market.
Custom does not mean Chinese Menu gamer brands like Digital Storm and Falcon NW at the high end. With hardware prices having crashed during the past few years, these brands' cachet will also fall by the wayside if they are not swift to adapt to new hardware price realities. We're waiting.
At the end of the day, I wouldn't count out newer direct - to - market brands like ASUS and MSI. Of the world's Top Three OEM's, Acer remains the only serious contender to watch - has their Gateway brand had its early misfires? Of course it has. But in the wins to losses race, Acer remains the only one of the three big global OEM's to keep winning on average. What do market-slayers like ASUS, MSI and in the mass market space Acer share in common? They're all Taiwanese firms.
You want great looks a la Apple but in Windows units? You need look no further than the Japanese brands Sony and Toshiba.
And if it's cutting-edge gaming units a person wants, I reckon we have to define our terms a lot better. What is a cutting-edge gaming unit anyway?
If people mean systems supporting games that require the latest and fastest Intel and Nvidia processors, then those people are shop-outta-luck. For a very simple reason - such games aren't really being released because there's no financial incentive for developers to develop for such cutting-edge hardware.
And gamers must stop kidding themselves about there being any significant indie development houses left - they just don't exist anymore because they don't have the capital required to promote today's top-ranked and top-selling games.
The bottom line is that, where so-called "hardcore gamers" are concerned, they can easily play any new title released on a self-built system for less than $1,200 and on a pre-built (or Chinese Menu built) system for less than $2,400.
Where's the room for Voodoo or Alienware sort of cachet sales in that? In 2009 and looking forward, nowhere.
- by mojobone October 3, 2009 3:26 PM PDT
- Anyone up for yet another game of bait and switch?
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