S-Bomb Interview with the Sun Media in Canada

I won't keep posting these, otherwise my blog will end up being nothing but interviews in the coming days and weeks. Saying that, however, this interview is pretty funny - a friend of mind forwarded to me with a message attached asking if I had Media Training yet :)

He was only kidding of course.... I think?

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The Blackbird sings
High-end computer performs like a dream

By STEVE TILLEY

NEW YORK -- Like so many other truly good things in life, if you have to ask how much a Voodoo desktop computer costs, you probably can't afford one.

Calgary-based VoodooPC, now a part of consumer electronics giant Hewlett Packard after a friendly acquisition a year ago, has carved out a reputation for high-performance, meticulously built desktop and notebook computers that can literally cost as much as a small car.

But their latest desktop PC (and the first Voodoo-bred machine to carry the HP logo) is the Blackbird 002, aimed at a broader market than Voodoo's usual affluent customer base. It's for people with Ferrari aspirations, but a Corvette budget.

And its creators are not exactly modest about their new hot rod.

"To put it bluntly, this machine, this system, there's nothing like it out there," says Rahul Sood, chief technology officer for HP's global gaming business, who founded Voodoo in 1991.

"This system kicks the living (expletive) out of our top competition right now."

(As an aside, any time an executive at a Fortune 500 company starts dropping s-bombs in conversation, we're willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.)

Unveiled Wednesday at an HP product showcase in New York, the Blackbird 002 is Voodoo and HP's first joint effort since HP bought the Canadian company.

But it doesn't mark the end of the separate Voodoo and HP computer lines; rather, this is a hybrid of sorts. And everyone knows hybrids are hot right now.

How hot? Well, the Blackbird 002's design is without equal.

A giant ebony wedge perched on an aluminum foot that looks like Darth Vader's Star Destroyer, the machine is built to allow supremely easy access to its innards, so enthusiasts can pop out components without tools and upgrade at will.

ALL-ALUMINUM

The inside of the all-aluminum chassis is tidier than Martha Stewart's kitchen, with dozens of nice touches like a swing-out side door that can be easily removed, a side-facing column of five hard drive bays that can be yanked out and swapped at will, and a heat shield separating the video cards from the CPU and memory to further help with cooling.

And the enigmatic 002 in the name?

It seems the original version of Blackbird, which was completed and ready to head to manufacturing, was scrapped after Voodoo and HP took a long, hard look and decided it just wasn't cutting-edge enough.

"It was a nice machine and everything, but it wasn't a game-changing system," says Sood. "It didn't really bring innovation back to the desktop, which is what we're hoping for."

We were able to take the Blackbird for a spin, running pre-release versions of several graphically demanding upcoming games, and it performed like a dream: quiet, fast and smooth.

Orders for the Blackbird 002 started this week at www.hp.com/blackbird, with the units being built at Voodoo's expanded manufacturing facility in Calgary and set to begin shipping in October. It won't be long before customers will be weighing on whether they think the machine is, as Sood says, a game-changing system.

But whatever the case, this Canadian company with humble beginnings is now a major player in the full throttle race to build a better PC for high-end users, multimedia junkies and gamers.

"Gaming to the PC industry is similar to Formula One of the auto industry," says Satjiv Chahil, a senior vice-president of global marketing at HP, who likens the Voodoo name to Porsche and Rolls Royce.

"Voodoo is our luxury brand, the brand you crave."