“HP said Tuesday it’s readying a Windows 7-powered slate PC that it claims will offer a more complete computing experience than Apple’s iPad,” Paul McDougall reports for InformationWeek. “”With this slate product, you’re getting a full Web browsing experience in the palm of your hand,” said Phil McKinney, HP’s VP and chief technical officer for its Personal Systems Group, in a blog post. ‘No watered down Internet, no sacrifices,’ wrote McKinney. And, unlike the iPad, McKinney said HP’s yet-to-be-named tablet PC will support Adobe’s Flash multimedia format. ‘A big bonus for the slate product is that, being based on Windows 7, it offers full Adobe support,’ said McKinney.”
MacDailyNews Take: So, with this product, which has no shipping date or price, do you also get any usable battery life after the piggish Flash has had it’s way with your POS off-the-shelf Atom processor? Also, by “full Web browsing” experience, does Mr. HP Marketing Flak mean full exposure to the wonderful world of Windows viruses, worms, and trojans? The answers, although tough to divine from mere vapor as its “maker,” which for quite some time is much better known for gouging customers on printing cartridges than for advancing innovation in hardware or software, awaits the arrival of their first iPads of many in order to complete the specs and features of their wannabe device(s), are likely: “Barely” and “Yes,” respectively. This is yet another attempt to freeze a market. Too bad for HP and Microsoft that this particular market didn’t exist until Apple created it.
McDougall continues, “To prove his point, McKinney posted a video of the HP tablet in action. Similar to the iPad commercial that debuted during Sunday’s Academy Awards broadcast, the video shows a user navigating his way around the device through a series of simple hand gestures. It also shows it being used as a video player, an e-reader, and as a navigational tool. HP has yet to provide specific information, such as pricing and release dates, for its slate PC… Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer demonstrated a prototype HP tablet powered by Windows 7 in January at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, and promised that more such products are in the works.”
MacDailyNews Take: Demo videos and prototypes. And they’ll all have actual products ready to go ASAP, right after they first get some Apple iPads in their labs. Word to the unwise: Don’t ignore those patents, guys. 
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Isn’t it amazing how box assemblers who’ve been cobbling together non-selling tablet PCs for about decade now, all of a sudden, seem to have a better idea (but still wrong overall) of what to do? Why now? What the heck triggered this mass “flash” of insight? Who the heck is more like it. As always: Apple leads and the rest follow poorly and at a distance.
Maybe they can use some of those netbooks people dont want…. slip a touch screen on them and pass them off as a slate….
I just had a brilliant idea for a product — a giant iPod touch. Yeah, I know, the touch has been around for a couple of years now and this idea should have occurred to me ages ago, but I just thought of it while watching the Oscars. Don’t know where idea came from, but isn’t it brilliant? Gotta get the lab boys started on this one soon!
zmarc,
As we all know, the iPad is not a “giant iPod touch.”
agree completely with MDN’s take. The ipad will totally destroy the netbook market too, then what is dell and hp gonna make money off of?
Internal sources report that the latest tablet project is codenamed Mi2.
HP’s product will only take 2-3 minutes to wake from sleep. Can you even imagine how slow this thing will be running Windows 7? 90 min. of battery life?
Yea, let’s play flash games . . . oh, wait, no mouse; can’t do it. Hey, why’s there an ad popped up on my HP tablet thingy? I can’t click it to make it go away! OK, let’s watch YouTube . . . hey, why can’t I access the player controls? It’s Flash! I need a mouse! Where’s that damn PS/2 port?
HP didn’t mean Windows 7 phone, did it? Either way . . . .
HP used to be a reputable company.
I balked at paying near $80 for ink cartridges for an aging but reliable G95. What did I do? I found a super Canon 328 and the dealer installed a 4 x 200cc CMYK external ink feed tank supplying the std Canon print head. And a spare set of 4 x 250cc refills. It will last as long as 16 HP replacement carts. How much for the whole deal? $90.
A lesson for HP. Gouge your loyal customers and they’ll cut your legs off, at the neck!
And now trying to gouge Apple too because HP, like MS, is bankrupt of ideas or integrity. Come back Messrs Hewlett and Packard.
Maybe the solution is that on default the Flash is not on but if u touch the Flash icon on a web page it will load.
Something tells me, zmarc, that no matter how many times you try to “troll” the iPad, the real numbers of pre-orders this weekend will boggle even your mind. Truly, the coming onslaught of crazy-silly-powerful games for the Pad will make your PSP look like an archaic little toy . . . just like everything else Sony has shipped for the past two decades.
Yep: Hold your breath for the as-yet-unnamed-designed-manufactured-patent tested-released HP/MS device. Perhaps IT will satisfy your lofty requirements.
The MDN take is so very true. I’m starting to find it offensive that HP or Dell (or Motorola, or…) go around and beat their chests about how great their iProduct-killer will be, implying that Apple didn’t get it “right” themselves, but only do so after their object of derision has been out in the world generating mindshare, introducing people to the ease of consumer technology, and basically paving the way for their crappy offerings. Apple does all the heavy lifting and these other guys try to waltz in and steal Apple’s thunder. Thank God that tactic almost never works.
Apple should be applauded if they can grind these guys into dust. Apple faces a daily barrage of criticism from people who think they’re too much a walled garden, too expensive, too elitist, too disruptive, too whatever, yet these same people can’t wait for other companies to make the very same damn things Apple makes. For these people, Apple’s ideas are awesome just as long as someone else executes them. Screw them all. They’re pathetic.
I used to do 200-page magazine proofs each issue on my HP Colour Laserjet, until the ink prices became extra-extortionate.
(What happened? The ink trees got a disease?)
Now I just do PDFs! Saves me a fortune.
HP deserve every deep cut and twist of our pent-up revenge.
And I hope their silly tablet is as bad as it sounds.
These lousy ass scum bastards start cranking out this fukken PR to try to get consumers to hesitate, the whole time sitting on their lazy, lard stupid asses. Like scum shit Nokia all they can do is ‘copy with pride’. Ask asswipe Anssi Vanjoki.
The iPad is a giant iPod touch, and that’s A Good Thing – consistency in simplicity.
Unfortunately, HP’s strategy of muddying the waters before the iPad launch will work on the average Windrone. Using mockups and unsubstantiated claims (that the media echo without researching) HP and MS can lull PC lemmings into believing that they too will be able to get an iPad clone from their beige box makers.
You don’t get something for nothing.
I think Apple has made some very smart design trade-offs.
It will be interesting to see how these other products perform in the real world when they finally appear.
The lesser product often has a longer spec sheet.
The iPad is indeed a larger, faster iPod Touch with some better custom software.
I expect this to be like a video game console release where the first version is more niche audience, then the second or third revision brings its price and features into a mainstream sweetspot and it kills from there on.
I don’t see how any one can navigate the web more efficiently with this than a mouse and keyboard, but it probably feels more fun…until you go to sites that use flash…and I’m always finding them on my iPhone. : (
Historically, and even somewhat now, vaporware and FUD work. They help keep people at jumping for Apple introduced products, to wait for a cheaper (I mean that in both senses of the word.)Dell, HP, MS, or Moto product.
I wonder just how many people are still waiting for iPhone on Verizon, with all the false stories of porting, that have been out out there in the past few years.
You know a company is already out of ideas when they have to rely on another company (Adobe) to differentiate themselves from the competition.
Next week, Asus, Dell, Lenovo, Sony, etc. will advertise their new iPad killers with Flash as well, and HP will be forgotten in all the excitement.
Not only is flash a battery vampire, so is Windows 7 itself.
Anyone else notice that HP and Microsoft only started using the word “slate” after it was widely rumored (and almost universally believed) that Apple’s product would be called the iSlate?
Aw, man, do we have to go through the “-killer” cycle again, like we did with the iPod and iPhone? First we’ll have a series of clunky, awkward looking knockoffs, that all have the same extra feature that Apple doesn’t. For the iPod it was an FM tuner. For the iPhone it’s multitasking. So I guess for the iPad it’s Flash. Then the device manufacturers watch in despair as no one gives a crap about their knockoffs, and as Apple innovates and improves their product so fast, they can’t keep up. After a few years of losing money hand over fist chasing Apple, the competitors give up and cede the market.
Am I the only Apple fan who’s a little depressed that Apple seems to be the only company who truly knows how to innovate? How much energy is wasted chasing Apple that could be devoted to leapfrogging Apple to the “next big thing”? But these other companies just don’t have what it takes to do that.
——RM
Wow, W7 on netbook hardware running Flash. Battery life will be abysmal. Of course, when the iPad really gets 10 hrs of life, those Windows users will still say it’s not real, because they know Windows battery life specs are never real.
Let’s see….
Q1: How does the HP address “Mouse Over” in Flash on a touchscreen display?
Q2: Does the HP get 10 hours battery life?
Q3: … and still weigh only 1.5lbs
Q4: … and whose starting price is $500 (or less)
Q5: … and whose UI performance metrics are just as fast?
YMMV, but that’s the minimum required for being able to honestly claim that one is ‘better’.
-hh
“More complete…”
As in: “more sucktastic”
. . . a more complete computing experience than Apple’s iPad. . . .
I stopped reading it at that point. Complete is an absolute. Nothing can be “more complete” — except the fantasies of a Windows ad flack.
It’s as silly as “a more perfect union.”
Windows 7…
a billion ideas,
a pile of suck.