Voodoo Envy 133

Before sending our pre-production Voodoo Envy back to its home, we just had to play around with its unique power brick, which Voodoo calls an Aura PowerConnect. The square AC adapter is heavy and might be a bit chunky, but its hidden powers redeem its larger than average size. The brick doubles as the Voodoo Envy’s very own portable 802.11b/g wireless access point.

Voodoo fears that you may only have a wired connection in certain situations, so you can plug an Ethernet cable into the RJ45 jack on the PowerConnect then watch the Voodoo logo light up as the AC adapter starts broadcasting a wireless signal. A point-to-point Wi-Fi connection is established between the brick and the Envy, which does not have an Ethernet port of its own .

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The Voodoo Envy 133 has a lot of striking features. Its got a more than elegant design, its power brick doubles as a wireless connection point and its got facial recognition software. Oh and its 3.4-pounds and thinner than Calista Flockhart. But what makes our mouths water is that it isthe first laptop to land in our hands with Splashtop’s instant-on mode (see our Splashtop FAQ).

Voodoo calls its Splashtop instant-on environment the Voodoo IOS and instead of having to wait until Vista boots up - in what can be more than a minute on some laptops - the Envy 133 launches users into an environment where they can surf the Web within 15 seconds (verified by our hands-on experience).

We have a lengthy video below of our experience booting up into IOS on a preproduction Envy 133 and a tour of all its Splashtop applications. When you first boot up the system, it will launch a main page with the Voodoo logo on a black background in 5 seconds.

This start page has seven buttons on its bottom dock, including a shutdown, launch Windows, browser, music player, photo viewer, Pidgin chat and Skype shortcuts. You have to click on one of those buttons to enter the real IOS environment. In our testing, when we clicked on the browser button, it took an additional 10 seconds to launch the complete IOS mode and the FireFox browser.

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Last week the Voodoo Envy got unboxed for the world to see by the Voodoo Founder. This morning I got to follow in Mr. Sood’s footsteps and undress our very own preproduction Voodoo Envy 133. Warning: if you are not a fan of unboxing you should steer clear of the video and text below. Also, please note that our un-boxing experience is not entirely accurate since we have a pre-production unit (pictures of the official packaging can be found here).

Frankly, I am not an unboxing fan myself but it felt different with the Envy. The notebook is closer to a piece of art than any other system I have ever reviewed (though the Lenovo U110 comes close). Pulling the 3.4-pound, black glossy ultraportable from its protective sheath doesn’t feel like you are unpacking a normal laptop. And the first sight of the Voodoo fiery red logo feels almost like you have been initiated into a club.

Check out our video and our first thoughts of the longly anticipated ultraportable after the jump.

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I am as excited about this unboxing as I am about Nat (Joe E. Tata) returning for the upcoming season of Beverly Hills, 90210 (no sarcasm, folks). But this isn’t just any old unboxing by your Joe Schmoe, the Voodoo Envy gets pulled from the packaging and the very Tiffany’s-esque box by Mr. Rahul Sood, the founder of Voodoo.

What also sets this unboxing apart is the number of goodies that come in the package. Included is the very unique Aura Powerconnect, which is technically an AC adapter but also establishes a one-to-one wireless connection between the Envy 133 notebook and an Ethernet connection, allowing users to roam free from the wired connection. Read the rest of this entry »

Whoa. We were wondering what would happen when the performance freaks at Voodoo teamed up with HP, and the first notebook to come out of this acquisition is a surprise. No, it’s not a gaming rig. It’s one of the sleekest and most innovative ultraporables we’ve seen. The Envy 133 (starting at $2,099) rocks an instant-on mode that lets you surf the Web and make Skype calls without booting into Windows (called Voodoo IOS) and a slick power brick that doubles as a wireless access point. Intrigued yet?

Voodoo was kind enough to let us steal a pre-production sample for a little hands-on time, and although the Envy 133 was not benchmarkable, we wanted to walk you through everything that makes this dream machine stand out. Stay tuned for a full review.

Updated: Don’t miss our unboxing of the Voodoo Envy 133 here and hands-on with the Voodoo IOS, Instant-On OS here.

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