Vivienne Tam and HP team up to launch a designer UMPC

New York Fashion week is in full swing (check out Shiny Style if you don't believe me) and we have news of a new laptop! Yes, once again fashion and technology have merged to create a hugely covetable UMPC. This year HP have teamed up with Vivienne Tam and designed a gorgeous Chinese Red laptop for you to feast your eyes on. It has a 10.2 inch screen and is decorated with peonies (which I'm told symbolize the female heart). That's about all I can tell you though as they've released NO SPECS at all. It's all about fusing fashion and style with tech, and apparently important stuff such as hard drive capacity, USB slots or whether it has a solid-state drive are unimportant.

They have promised that it will fit in with their 'technology ideals' though, so you can hope that it will compare to the other UMPC's on the market. It's not going to be out till Jan 2009 though so I guess they have time to work on that. We're also told it has really pretty packaging as well, so it's a shame you'll only enjoy the stylish red box for as long as it takes to tear it open.

The peony print on the laptop mirrors the latest line of clothes from Vivienne Tam, and you'll also be able to download it as a desktop wallpaper from her new website (in October). Her site will include things such as style widgets and interactive outfit games, which should be fun.

Everyone seems to be entering the UMPC market nowadays, and the flowery design reminds me a little of this Asus. The key theme seems to be targeting them towards women (remember LG's pink UMPC?) and making it handbag friendly. It may sound a little condescending but HP tell me that women's requirements in technology actually raise the bar in production as they've realised females won't put up with shoddy processors or hard to navigate menu's.

So I guess all we can do is wait till next year to get our grubby hands on this- price also to be revealed at a later date!

Vivienne Tam and HP

See here for more lovely laptops