Profile: HP's Blackbird 002 and the Ideal of the PC
It looks, even from a distance, strangely like something Hewlett-Packard might build. Just like a Chrysler through the years has something about it that identifies it as Chrysler, the HP Blackbird 002 has the certain grille markings, shapes, and substance of the basic brand - the archetype of HP design, even the less attractive culminations.
But it is not something HP has ever built before. It's taking off, or at least it looks that way, by virtue of a shiny, single cast aluminum foot that spreads its cyan lighting like a rocket trail. Its side panel is made of deep draw aluminum - a tempered sheet that's stretched and drawn to shape over a plug, the same process used to make aircraft wing panels. It opens like a car door, and can be snapped off its hinge with a thumb lever.
Inside is a machined aluminum chassis. Its hard drives fit into plastic, glove-like mountings that snap them into individual sockets, held in place with a firm, metal lever. Its optical drives slide into a metal bay that loads in from the front panel and snaps into place. Never is a screwdriver picked up during this entire process; this is a machine built intentionally not just to be admired, but to be accessed.
The bottom line is, when we created Blackbird, we had a totally different mindset, and it was exciting for everybody because we weren't worried about saving 20 cents on a type of finish, or something, you know what I mean? We were more worried about...making sure this thing sells like a high-end car. When you open the door and you go inside and you remove a hard drive, you want to be able to feel the quality. You don't want a big hunk of plastic on your desk. This is the original mandate when we started to create it.
It may be the first HP computer produced not just simply for the joy of owning it or having it. In fact, its internal components are almost parenthetical. Its limited-run Signature Edition features Intel's Core 2 Extreme QX6850 processor, overclocked to 3.69 GHz on an Asus Striker Extreme motherboard. Although nVidia's nForce 680i chipset drives that motherboard, an ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT card powers its graphics (though some models pictured clearly show an nVidia GeForce 8800 Ultra). The Voodoo liquid cooling system is there to keep the thing from exploding.
But that's just for the limited run. When HP's configurator goes online in November, customers will be able to choose between the Core 2 Extreme buildout and one featuring an AMD Athlon X2 6000+.
RAHUL SOOD: I hear what you're saying, and I agree with what you're saying. It would've been easy for us to just pick components and put them in the machine, and go with that. But then there's the issue of customer choice, and in many cases, our customers do want a choice of what goes inside the machine. In some cases - though in most cases, actually, customers don't understand what's inside the machine and they're going to go with a recommendation based on their usage.
In the case of ATI vs. nVidia, there's benefits and drawbacks to one or the other. But in the case of the motherboard, for example, we chose the best motherboard we could find, and that has an nVidia chipset on it. We're not going to put five different chipsets on the motherboard just because we want to offer customers choice. We don't want to offer choice for the sake of offering choice. We want to offer choice because it makes a difference to the customer experience.
Yes, we are using an nForce chipset, but we're also offering Crossfire integration and SLI configurations on that same motherboard - which is, again, an industry first. No one's ever done it, but we're doing it because we get a much better competitive advantage that way. Not only does it help the customer with their gaming experience, but it gives them a choice that they need.
Because the customer will be able to choose the buildout for the Blackbird 002, it ceases to be about the specific brands or components or performance benchmarks that a high-end PC typically relies upon for its raison d'être. That might not seem logical on the surface, since for many, owning a Jaguar is about revving that V-12 engine, and owning a Harley-Davidson means somewhat more to its rider than merely being able to shine and polish its chrome.
For a PC that currently sells for about $5,600, and whose varying buildouts will eventually hover at or around that amount, you might think it needs to make a powerful statement about what's "inside." But as any enthusiast knows all too well, performance-grade processors, graphics cards, and motherboards have at best a 16-month shelf life before they get shoved over into the "mainstream" column. By that time, it would seem such a PC would sell for around a thousand, maybe less, most likely on eBay.
But here is where, by acquiring VoodooPC, HP stumbled upon an extraordinary formula: "Voodoo DNA," it's called - the modern-day equivalent of "Body by Fisher." It's Hewlett-Packard's opportunity to offer the customer something of lasting value, in a market that has suffered greatly from commoditization. And this is something Dell's competing XPS system may have missed: By offering an ordinary ATX form factor for housing the motherboard, and not only providing access to but literally encouraging the act of getting one's hands inside the system and changing things around, Blackbird 002 offers the customer a lasting component whose value transcends its contents. Sixteen months from now, supposing there are octal-core central processors and hyper-pipelined graphics processors and 1.5 TB hard drives, the Blackbird 002 owner can simply swap the inside parts out for new ones, probably with just a few hours' work.
So perhaps even ten years from now, "classic" Blackbird 002 chasses will be housing modern computers, while still gracing modern desktops. In a market where HP has already grown too accustomed to being disposable, once again it will have built something to last.
Next: How HP and Voodoo Began with Dell
[All photography courtesy HP Gaming Division]