HP Ships Blade PCs

Hewlett-Packard Co. started this week to ship blade PCs for corporations looking to cut desktop maintenance costs by switching to a thin-client architecture.

The HP Blade PC bc1000 is part of the Palo Alto, Calif.-based, company's Consolidated Client Infrastructure unveiled in December. CCI moves all desktop infrastructure into the data center, for easier maintenance, HP officials said.

HP claims CCI can cut in half IT spending on maintaining traditional PCs throughout their lifecycle, and reduce support costs per desktop user each year by $1,200.

The CCI consists of an access device, such as the HP Compaq Thin Client, that connects through a secure log-in to a HP blade PC bc1000 and network storage located in a centralized data center.

The HP Blade PC contains a 1.0 gigahertz Transmeta Efficeon 8000 processor, 40-gigabyte ultra ATA/100 hard drive and up to 1 gigabyte of double data rate SDRAM. The server starts at $820 per blade.A full CCI solution, including HP Blade PCs, HP Compaq thin clients, network storage, implementation, training and a support contract, starts $1,399 per seat.