It will never going to work
HP together with Toshiba, Samung, Acer, Lenovo and others did nothing but flooding the retail channel with almost identical size, dull black/grey colored with low resolution lousy glossy screen laptops and desktops. Whenever you get into the PC section of big retailers you notice right away there is no differentiation. There is nothing to inspire you, nothing to elicit that "wow" you hear when you look at each new generation of Mac. Having both hands untied, Apple experimented freely with materials, from factors, screen resolution, graphics, colors etc. in order to get that appreciation from consumers. During this time on the other side, PC makers who kept pumping the same design for more than a decade tried to make a breakthrough first with netbooks but Microsoft said tsk, tsk, get back in line! Now they came up with ultrabooks but at two to three times the price of regular older laptops they bring nothing in terms of design. Apple has clearly shown that consumers are willing to pay more if they perceive some value in the product they purchase and, yes, differentiating yourself from the vast mass of PC users seems to confer some value, at least according to the money Apple is making.
One other missed opportunity for HP was the tablet form factor. Toshiba, Samsung, Acer and others decided to give it a serious try. HP and Dell both listening to Microsoft whisper decided to skip this and promptly killed the attempt.
HP CEO promises more beautiful PCs ? Not going to happen, ever!