January 10, 2000 Web posted at: 10:50 a.m. EST (1550 GMT) by Dan Neel

From...

(IDG) -- Hoping to spare business travelers from the labors of document support and the inconvenience of not having access to home or office databases, Hewlett-Packard on Thursday opened up its new E-Center for Business, a suite of electronic services connecting users to a set of pre-selected Internet sites.

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Once installed, the HP E-Center gives the user a menu of seven services -- backup, copycenter, fax, email, music, support, and taxes. These links carry the user to co-branded pages on other Web sites such as @Backup for the data backup option, or Yahoo for the email option.

Business travelers using the E-Center can click on the copycenter link which will automatically find the nearest participating Kinko's, for example, to download reports or presentations which can then be printed out and bound as requested, according to HP officials.

HP is courting relationships with other outside companies to bring additional co-branded Web page links to the E-Center, HP officials said.

E-Center is available for $29.95 per year for a 50MB version, and $49.95 for a 100MB version.

E-Center is also loaded free on all new HP Pavilion N3200 series notebook PCs.