A company called “Digital Lifestyles” has a new product line out called “hip-e,” which after you get done cringing over the name look fairly decent, but probably way overpriced to properly market to the teen segment. The whole concept revolves around the “node,” a Pentium M-based iMac-esque desktop PC, with a 17-inch built-in widescreen LCD (1400 by 900 pixels). The node is an odd mixture of cut corners and nice options, such as 512MB of RAM standard – that’s nice – but only “high performance video,” which means it will probably not play videogames worth a damn (and that’s before you factor in the 1.5GHz processor). So it’s hard to decide what parent or self-sufficient kid is going to want to drop $1,700 on a neat but underpowered machine when they could probably get a couple of eMachines or something for the same price.
Clearly, though, Digital Lifestyles is hoping the cross-promotion of the Hip-e will push more units, and they’re doing it in both interesting and annoying ways. The detachable “beatbox” that comes with the node PC also functions as external speakers for the “playme” 512MB flash drive ($150); that’s a pretty cool trick. But the “Squads” idea, which looks to be some sort of viral advertising masked as teenage social networking looks really pathetic (although it’s not out yet, so take that for what it’s worth).
Marketing to teens is a fine idea, but the Hip-e may be trying a little too hard. Kids can sniff out focus groups’ pawprints from a mile away. (Thanks, Mike!)
Read – System Page [hip-e]
