INDUSTRY

PALO ALTO, CA -- Hewlett-Packard Company (NYSE:HWP) today celebrated the 35th anniversary of HP Labs, outlining a future in which billions of people would be automatically connected to personalized services on the World Wide Web through easy-to-use devices. HP Labs -- which revolutionized office and home printing with thermal ink-jet printing, created the first desktop and pocket scientific calculators and helped Intel® develop a new generation of computer chips -- celebrated its anniversary at its Palo Alto headquarters with a meeting that was beamed by video to its lab in Bristol, England, and other locations around the world. ``Although computers have increasingly become a part of everyday life over the last 35 years, we at HP Labs believe we're only at the beginning of the Age of Computing,'' said Dick Lampman, vice president of research at HP and director, HP Labs. Billions of people using cell phones, PDAs and other portable, wireless devices would be linked to service-centric data centers around the globe in an architecture called ``planetary computing,'' Lampman said. HP already has product offerings in this area, including the recently announced HP Utility Data Center (www.UDCandSoftware.com). HP Labs researchers also are working with universities and commercial partners to develop ``location-awareness'' for such devices. This helps determine who and where the user is, enabling easy-to-use services based on the person's needs. HP is uniquely positioned to provide support in the future, Lampman said, because it offers a wide range of products and services -- from easy-to-use devices to Internet infrastructures for businesses. As the world's leading provider of consumer IT services, it also addresses the needs of both enterprises and individuals, he said. Researchers at the anniversary celebration outlined progress in planetary computing, ``smart'' access devices, new markets for printing and imaging and sophisticated security software. They also described efforts using advanced mathematic algorithms to predict new patterns of use in the World Wide Web and discussed research into future replacements for silicon technology.