HP Begins Shipping Its All-In-One Z1 Workstation

Workstations are brawny, powerful machines typically favored by digital media, entertainment, engineering, medical imaging, and oil and gas exploration companies. Workstations have not traditionally been designed with space saving in mind, but the Z1 packs a lot of computing power into a relatively small package.

The Z1 fits inside a 27-inch white LED display with 30-bit color support and a palette of over 1 billion colors. Its panel flips open like a car hood, giving users easy access to internal components, including a 400-watt power supply and space for two hard drives or SSDs. The Z1 display offers a 178-degree viewing angle and an in-plane switching panel.

In the course of HP's 18-month product development cycle for the Z1, it became readily apparent that customers in many parts of the world are dealing with space constraints, Mike Diehl, HP's worldwide product manager for personal workstations, told CRN.

"Users work environments are getting smaller all the time," Diehl said. "Office space is at a very high premium, and workers are being set up in smaller and smaller areas."

The Z1 is priced in the U.S. starting at $1899 and is available through HP partners. It's part of HP's new Z workstation line, which the company unveiled last month and are equipped with Intel's new Xeon E5-2600 processors, additional memory capacity and support for multi-threaded applications.