rahul-sood posts

The founder of a well-know gaming PC maker has now got himself a new job. Rahul Sood, the founder of VoodooPC, announced this week on his official web site has now joined Microsoft as the general manager of "System Experience in the Interactive Entertainment Business." If you are wondering what that means, Sood doesn't give us much more saying, "I'll be working on some really....really...really cool stuff come January 2011."

Sood founded VoodooPC in 1991 and in the late 1990s and early 2000s began gaining a foothold in the gaming PC market thanks to its well designed systems. In 2006, VoodooPC was bought by HP. However the marriage between the two companies didn't seem to work with HP releasing only a few new VoodooPC products since the merger. HP no longer sells PCs with the VoodooPC label.

[Via Engadget]

The news on the HP Firebird gaming PC was leaked out last week but this week HP and its subsidary Voodoo PC made the news official this week. The slimmed down and powered down gaming PC product will be made available for purchase online later this week with the starting price of $1,799.

However, many people (including some of our comments at Big Download) have questions whether the new HP Firebird is indeed a bargain at its price with some saying they could make a PC using the same or better componants for less. On his official blog site, Voodoo PC owner Radul Sood says HP worked with Nvidia to create new video cards that are smaller but have comparible perfomance to their larger counterparts. Creative Labs was also asked to make a smaller version of its X-FI sound card for the system.

That and other changes make the Firebird unique, according to Sood. He states, "You're going to hear a lot about the HP Firebird with VoodooDNA, because I truly believe it breaks new ground for the performance PC industry. It's the first of its kind, not only for HP, but for all of our partners." He adds, "Sure there will be people who say things like 'I can build one for less' – but they simply cannot. You will not be able to build a PC that offers a balance of performance, silence, size, scalability, reliability, and efficiency for less."

Earlier this week we reported that VoodooPC and its parent company HP would officially launch their "cheaper" gaming-oriented PC at CES next week called the Firebird. However, both VoodooPC and HP have also been working on concepts for a gaming-oriented PC laptop. Now Laptop Magazines's web site has the exclusive first hands-on look at this concept laptop, the HP Firefly.

This massive laptop weight 13 pounds and that includes a one pound power brick. It has a 17.1 inch-screen, backlighting for the keyboard buttons and a multi-touch trackboard. It also has a 4.3 inch LCD screen below the main screen. It can act as a second screen for people who want to play World of Warcraft on the main screen but check an email or watch a YouTube video on the smaller display. It also has a night vision camera for people who want to game in the dark but still have a video chat with friends.

As VoodooPC head man Rahul Sood states in his blog entry about the HP Firefly this product is being shown at CES next week but is a concept model only and will not actually be sold to the public. However you can bet that some of the ideas in the Firefly will be put in future HP and VoodooPC laptops.

The gaming PC hardware industry has been reeling from Voodoo PC head Rahul Sood's recent remarks that declared the era of the super powerful and super expensive gaming PC is "dead". Next week Sood and Voodoo PC's owners HP plan to put their PCs where their mouths are with the launch of the HP Firebird.

Our sister site Engadget reports that the Firebird will be much smaller and more compact than the huge Blackbird gaming PC (the first product created after HP bought Voodoo PC in 2006). Inside the Firebird will have quad-core 2.83 Ghz Intel Core 2 processors, 4 GB of RAM, and dual Nvidia Geforce 9800S video cards. However the power supply for the PC is placed outside the case and only uses 350 watts of energy, far less than the typical high-powered gaming PC. The catch? The Firebird is not designed to be easily upgradable. PC World reports that the Firebird will go on sale online at voodoopc.com on Jan. 9 for $1,799.

Voodoo PC founder Rahul Sood posted up a note on his personal blog about his opinion that the super-powerful and super expensive gaming PC era was coming to an end. That editorial generated a ton of spirited comments (including some here at Big Download) so Sood has now posted up a follow-up to his original post.

Sood claims a number of smaller PC makers have made some negative comments about his editorial but he stands by his statements, saying, "I do believe the high end personal desktop will change - and you will see at least one new fresh direction in the extreme high end space later this year." He added, "It's time to take a step back and look at the big picture and re-think the way performance PCs are built. I'm speaking mostly to the small companies out there who work 24/7 to stay afloat - because I do believe there is a strong need for 'boutique' companies to stay competitive in order to keep things interesting."

The whole topic of "Is PC gaming dead?" has been talked about so many times that's its not worth mentioning anymore (except to say, "No, it's not"). However is the era of the high end $5,000 gaming PC rig dead? Rahul Sood, the founder of the gaming PC maker Voodoo PC (now owned by HP) has posted up a new editorial on his personal blog site that says, "Yes."

Citing the current economic crisis as part of the cataylst for this move, Sood states, " There was a time when selling high-end hardware was easy, because we believed in it. Now we're retooling and retasking our configurations so they make sense; let's face it, high-end hardware has delivered diminishing returns in terms of value. This is why you don't see ridiculous offerings like Quad SLI and 2-kilowatt power supplies coming from our company."

Sood feels that PC game developers know they can't rely on the high-end hardware audience to buy their titles anymore. He states, "The glory days of wicked-stupid hardware requirements are pretty much gone. Game developers are in the business of making money, and thus want to distribute their games to the widest possible audience."

They have been teasing us for some time, but finally the Voodoo PC gaming brand of HP has finally put out the fires and revealed its new web site. It has also launched two new products, one notebook (the Envy) and one desktop (the Omen). But according to Voodoo PC head Rahul Sood that's not all they are launching. As he explains in his blog site, the brand is actually branching out in two.

One is called HP with VoodooDNA and represents PCs with high performance (such as the Blackbird 002 that was launched last September and will soon be released to retail stores). The other is the pure Voodoo brand which is aiming to also have high performance but is also going to look and feel more stylish than the normal PC design. Sood's blog site has the specifics of what the new Envy and Omen will be like. The Envy will be released this summer for a starting price of $2,099 and will be based on carbon fiber and weigh less than 3.4 pounds. In an odd bit of marketing the new Omen will only be sold at first to people who have purchased a Voodoo PC before with general availablity later this summer. It will have a starting price of a whopping $7,000 and include features like a 7 inch LCD display on the front of the case, advanced liquid cooling and more.