Unlike last week, when Calgary-based Voodoo PC founder Rahul Sood raised the ire of Apple lovers for cutting his birthday cake with the knife-like MacBook Air, today he is earning praise from the PC community for his company's new products, the latest versions of the Omen desktop and Envy notebook, which were unveiled at HP's Connecting Your World event in Berlin.
One can't help but assume that Mr. Sood's MacBook stunt must have been a sly hint at the new $2,099 Envy 133, the carbon fiber case of which measures just 1.79 cm in depth at its thickest point, making it 1.5 mm thinner than Apple's vaunted laptop.
Meanwhile, the liquid chilled, $7,000 Omen, a 100-pound mammoth with a solid aluminum case free of screws and featuring hidden seams, is nearly more art than machine, and certainly a marvel of industrial design.
Cable connections rest under a removable panel atop the tower, purportedly improving accessibility while reducing the flood of wires that typically run along the back side most PCs. And it has a built-in 7-inch 800-by-600 pixel LCD that will allow users to, say, keep messenger conversations alive or monitor hardware performance without jumping out of whatever application they happen to be engaged in. (Check out this video to watch Mr. Sood walk an interviewer through the Omen's interior.)
As usual, Voodoo customers can completely customize not only the innards of the Omen to turn it into a world-class performer (read: ultimate gaming machine), but also their appearance (anyone interested in wood or leather side panels?). Voodoo said at the event that a decked out Omen would sell for $20,000 or more.
