CES in Las Vegas is in full swing, the Technorati are filling the digital wireless airwaves with stories of the latest gadgets and must have consumer electronics. HP has generating their fair share of buzz with the announcement of one of the sleekest 14″ laptops on the market, the HP Envy 14 Spectre. Aimed squarely at the MacBook Pro market HP has built a modern classic in glass and aluminium..

While the name may conjure up images of a villainous super organisation of James Bond ilk – SPECTRE SPecial Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion – HP’s Spectre is in fact the latest super stylised Ultrabook laptop.

HP have covered this latest Ultrabook in glass, the Emperor has new cloths on and they’re transparent. HP’s Spectre’s coverings are no ordinary glass though, toughened and scratch resistant this is as tough as it is good looking.

At 20mm thick and a tad under 1.8kg’s the Spectre is in the middle of the laptop size and weight game, with the specifications of much larger laptops shoe horned into the sleek chassis. The glass treatment continues with the touch pad surface of the Spectre. The HP Imagepad which HP describes as ‘a HD image sensor enabling highly precise multi-touch gesture control’.

Spectre can also get attention with its audio prowess. Integrating Beats Audio technology which uses a software and hardware combination to produce clear and sharp audio. The Beats Audio system drives six speakers and subwoofer to ensure that you always win the volume war with other notebook users. Other standard equipment includes a backlit keyboard that makes use of individual LEDs for each key to ensures the keyboard is well illuminated even the darkest room. The standard battery included allows for nine hours of run time between charges.

Prices for HP’s new Spectre start at $1,399 USD which includes a Core i5-2467M CPU, 4GB of RAM and 128GB SSD. The combination of SSD and HP’s SmartStart software ensures an almost instant start up time. If money is no option then specifications can include Core i7 Quad core processor, 256GB SSD and up to 16GB of RAM.

The Ultrabook market is about to heat up, while these are not a direct competitor to the cheap and light netbooks that Asus invented with their EEE-PC, Ultrabooks are far to expensive for that market. Instead they will compete with the likes of the Apple MacBook Pro’s quite well, possibly even making MacBook owners Envy-ous. This was Intel’s original intention when they began designing the Ultrabook class of laptops with their partners. A standardized PC equivalent to a MacBook Pro, allowing even the smallest laptop manufacturer to compete with the mighty MacBook’s . The only question that remains is will people buy into the dream, will they sell? A question only the people in the market for a new laptop can answer.

Source: HP Spectre