For years now, Voodoo PC's fearless leader (that'd be Rahul Sood) barely went a month without teasing this or that, or better yet, introducing the new hotness. In terms of cutting-edge design, these guys were at the front of the class. And then came the HP tie-in, along with the worry that the Voodoo name (and "DNA") would eventually be swallowed whole. After dishing out a smattering of VoodooDNA machines under the HP label, Rahul and his company went radio silent. In fact, we haven't heard a peep from Mr. Sood for nine whole months, and we really began to wonder what was going on when HP issued the new Envy 13 and Envy 15 with nary an official hint of Voodoo's fingerprints.

Now, at long last, Rahul has emerged from hiding, and he's got a story to tell. In short, Voodoo is still alive and well, but it's certainly not the same company that shocked the world with its ENVY m:790 laptop in late 2004. In fact, Rahul's been working on some pretty unorthodox projects, ranging from healthcare (okay?) to futuristic stuff for HP's Innovation Program Office. In a lengthy letter to the world, he explains that the initial push to get Voodoo completely underneath HP's wings was done in order to give Voodoo access to global partners, and in turn, to ship its products to every corner of the world. When speaking about the Envy 13 / 15, he proclaims that HP's own laptop team simply lifted ideas from Voodoo prototypes and designed them internally; the truth is that Voodoo didn't design either machine, it only influenced them. The removal of the "VoodooDNA" tagline -- according to Rahul -- has to do with "the overall design language, the target market, and the fact that [Voodoo] wasn't directly involved in the design."

In the end, Sood admits that there's still a chance you'll see another Voodoo-branded machine in your lifetime, but he also confesses that it has transitioned from a desktop and laptop company to "something beyond." He also makes clear that he hasn't forgotten about his promise to change the future of desktop gaming, and that new products from HP will continue to boast Voodoo's fingerprints. Typical Rahul -- it just wouldn't be a formal conclusion without a tease or two, now would it?

It's been months since we've heard a peep from Voodoo or its swaggering founder, Rahul Sood. Now it seems that one of the changes headed to the Voodoo brand is no branding at all judging by the pics of this purported Envy 13 from parent company HP -- it steals both the name and size-indicative numbering from the Voodoo Envy 133 without a hint to its heritage. The 13.1-inch laptop is said to run Windows 7 on an Intel chipset. Visually we can see a pair of USB jacks, HDMI, and trackpad that looks to be packing some special sauce. A peak at Sood's Twitter account calls Tuesday "D Day" with the promise of "new product coming out in September/October (ish)," that will make you, "the envy of all your friends." In other words, we expect to learn more tomorrow. Backside pic after the break, more over at notebook italia.

Read -- notebook italia
Read -- Tuesday is D Day
Read -- New product September/October(ish)

HP was nice enough to send us a prototype Firebird 802 gaming rig, and while we haven't had a chance to fire it up and start sucking at Crysis quite yet, we thought we'd throw up a quick unboxing for you. It's pretty slick stuff, all around -- the box has big plastic latches that pop open, and the machine itself is held in by swing-out cardboard panels, giving everything that "top-secret missile codes" feel you'd expect from a gaming PC. The Firebird itself looks just as nice in our living room as it did at CES, but there are some sad surprises here -- the super-heavy external power brick has a troublesomely lame connector, and the included wireless keyboard is pretty simply crap -- the slightest downward pressure basically bends it in half. Plus, we're not at all sure why the mouse and keyboard require a plug-in USB dongle -- why not just build the receiver into the gigantic chassis? We're guessing the lameness of these two is why HP also sent along a Gaming Keyboard and Laser Gaming Mouse with our tester -- we'll have those two unboxed along with our in-depth Firebird impressions a little later. For now, hit up the gallery for the full unboxing!

After arguably the biggest hype-fest of late 2008, HP's Firebird with VoodooDNA was revealed as Rahul Sood's ambitious little secret. The miniaturized gaming rigs began shipping out during CES, and we've no doubt that a few of you with space constraints and a lust of high frame rates have already chomped on the bullet. So, does the machine live up to the hype? Is it worth the asking price? What features weren't included that should have been? Has it handled your gaming demands with ease? Feel free to sound off below -- who knows, maybe Mr. Sood will tune in and hear you out.

We just hit up HP's booth to check out the new Firebird gaming rig, and it's pretty slick looking, although it's a lot bigger than we expected / hoped. The side panels are actually a cool translucent smoke finish, and the blue LED lighting might be the first classy gaming PC light kit we've ever seen. HP was demoing the Firebird with Left 4 Dead and Crysis, and the gamers on hand seemed pretty pleased -- we'll have see how the $1,799 machine's 2.83GHz Core 2 Quad and dual NVIDIA GeForce 9800S graphics cards benchmark out when it's released on February 1st. Check it all in the gallery!

We figured it was destined for a CES release, and HP has confirmed that today's the day. The hotly anticipated Firebird with Voodoo DNA has been properly introduced to the world, and within it will come an Intel Core 2 Quad CPU, twin NVIDIA GeForce 9800S graphics cards in an SLI configuration, hot-swappable 320GB hard drives (two of 'em) and an advanced thermal management system to keep things cool, calm, collected and quiet. As we'd heard, the rig will be available starting on January 9th for as little as $1,799 directly from Voodoo, while those too frightened to hand over their credit card information online can hold tight 'til it hits select retailers (read: Best Buy, most likely) on February 1st. Have a look at Rahul Sood and team gloating ad nauseum over this thing just after the break.


[Via DesktopReview]

While most of the hype surrounding Voodoo right now pertains to the Firebird gaming tower, LAPTOP has discovered yet another undercover rig from the company's arsenal worth swooning over. Before you go getting too excited, we must caution you that the Firefly is merely a prototype at the moment, but we all know concepts are made with the intent to commercialize. With the fine print behind us, it's worth reading up on what this Voodoo DNA'd machine offered up; for starters, you'll notice a 17-inch panel and a hefty 13-pound frame. There's also a multitouch trackpad, keyboard with customizable backlighting, a secondary 4.3-inch 800 x 480 display sitting beneath the main screen, a 2.4GHz Core 2 Extreme CPU, 4GB of RAM, two ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3870 GPUs and a 250GB HDD. No benchmarks were allowed, but Far Cry 2 ran "silky smooth" even with details maxed. For the rest of the nitty-gritty, we'll direct you to the read link, and before you get all irate that this isn't available for purchase, just be thankful this post isn't about yet another teaser from Mr. Sood.

It'd be a gross understatement to say that we weren't remarkably excited about the HP Firebird 803 when we caught wind of it last week, but now you can safely say that our emotions have settled down after hearing the price. Granted, the $1,799 starting figure for the Firebird 802 isn't totally unexpected -- after all, the Blackbird 002 went for upwards of three large -- but we still see the sticker as a touch high given the weaker innards and the lack of upgrade options. Those of you who vehemently disagree can certainly hand over your wallet starting on January 9th, or you can wait for the boxes to hit unnamed retail outlets in February.

We always loved us that Voodoo-designed HP Blackbird 002, but it was certainly a behemoth. Now it looks like the duo are going for a more realistic size -- and hopefully pricepoint -- with the all-new HP Firebird PC 803 that just fell in our lap, a gaming tower which flips the disc drive and most other components on their sides to save on space. The resulting kit seems to have more in common with gaming consoles than desktop PCs in terms of design, with very little configurability or expansion available, but the leaked specs are still quite palatable to the modern PC gamer:

• NVIDIA nForce 760i SLI chipset
• Core 2 Quad Q9550 2.83GHz processor
• 4GB of RAM
• Dual NVIDIA GeForce 9800S cards
• Two 320GB SATA drives
• Blu-ray
• 5-in-1 card reader
• 6 USB, 1 FireWire, 2 eSATA, 1 S/PDIF and 1 DVI dual-link
• Bluetooth
• 802.11n WiFi

To save on space (and heat), the Firebird actually uses an external power supply, but we suppose the included wireless keyboard and mouse should help to make up for that clutter. As you've probably gleaned from the specs, those small form factor 9800S cards aren't going to be putting away the frame rates quite like the cutting edge cards from NVIDIA and AMD, and the seeming lack of expandability makes the (theoretical) up-front cost savings seem a bit less exciting, but for a certain type of gamer the Firebird could be a welcome respite from monstrous, unrealistic and just-as-quickly-outmoded performance towers.

P.S.: Rahul's dubious rant about the boutique gaming industry -- which Voodoo still serves -- makes a lot more sense in this light. [Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

While low-cost laptops are all the rage right now, there's still a solid chunk of folks out there willing to pay a premium for potent ultraportables. The Voodoo Envy 133 is undeniably one of the sexier small machines we've seen of late, and the internals are rather impressive given the size of the enclosure. Still, this here rig costs a pretty penny, and we've all ideas those who splurged have a thing or two to say about it with nearly two months of usage under their belt. Has the Envy 133 lived up to your surely lofty expectations? Are there aspects there you wish were different? How could Voodoo go about tweaking things whenever it finally decides to actually launch another product at all its successor?

Oh Rahul, why must you tease us so? Over a month after you referenced that "some other thing," we're still left to wonder what exactly "that thing" is. In a recent video response (posted after the break) to a question surrounding the HP Blackbird 002 gaming PC, Voodoo's founder closes things out by informing viewers that a product "way ahead of its time" is sitting just behind him, but he confesses that he can't show it off just yet. Of course, he also threw in the "forward-thinking" buzzword and assured us that the industry would "absolutely embrace" it, but as of now, there's simply nothing there to wrap our retinas around besides that smile. The game's growing tired, Mr. Sood.

HP's Voodoo Envy 133, first announced in June, has struggled a bit off the blocks, with manufacturing problems keeping it out of buyers hands until last month. Of course, HP has a good excuse: carbon fiber. The notoriously difficult material wasn't used sparingly on the Envy 133, and if you've been looking for a laptop dripping with the synthetic material, HP's got your number. We mention this to remind ourselves that, like the MacBook Air before it, this laptop is about looks first, function second, and the Envy 133 succeeds in that regard wildly. There's always room for taste in these things, but HP makes quite a statement here no matter what your persuasion. We're not going to run through a full review here, but we'll let you know our first impressions after the break.

Here's a curious one -- merely months after HP essentially revitalized the Voodoo brand and cranked out the undeniably sexy Envy 133 laptop / Omen desktop, in flies word that the branch may be broken in the foreseeable future. In response to rumors that the Voodoo PC division would be canned entirely, Rahul Sood (yeah, the same guy that pimped an undisclosed new gizmo barely a week ago) stated that "HP is working on a plan to better leverage its existing resources to bring Voodoo products to market faster and make them more accessible to consumers." An HP spokeswoman was also quoted as saying that "[it] continually assesses and re-balances the size of its work force relative to the business environment and market conditions." In other words, no one is denying nor confirming the whispers, and while we have our own suspicions about what that means, we'll let you make of it what you wish.

[Via CNET]