HP may have a trick up its sleeve, though. Whitman says that this fall it will have "a new line of PCs and tablets with a focus on design," perhaps to rival iPads and Microsoft's Windows 8 Surface devices. 

These design-focused devices will include some HP secret sauce, says said John Solomon, senior vice president of America sales for HP's printing and personal systems division, in an . "We will be very focused on the commercial tablet opportunity, which is completely under penetrated. And, we have some unique intellectual property that we're going to apply," Solomon told CRN.

VMware is upgrading its desktop software to support Windows 8 virtual machines so the platform will be ready when Windows 8 launches in October.

VMware Workstation 9 does more than just run Windows 8 on a virtual machine, the company says; it supports specific new hardware features such as multi-touch.