“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.
The HP Slate offers nothing new except a touch interface that will be severely hampered by Apple’s patents and Windows 7 touch edition which speaks for itself.
The biggest issue for this and any Windows tablet will be the lack of touch optimized applications. There is absolutely no incentive for developers to spend any time updating there applications for the tablet. This point alone insures that the HP Slate will be nothing more than a “flash” in the pan.
Not saying the iPad is a giant iPod touch since I’m not a moron.
However, if there was a giant iPod touch on the market, I would buy one. And so would a lot of other people.
@ Spark – 12:50 pm
(…) 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.
If you read PC discussion forums you’ll see that that’s exactly what the PC user thinks: the clone will “do the job”, have more ports and will cost less than the iPad. User experience and design is not a criterion for them, and they think viruses are “part of life”.
We have a new class of products from MS & Intel: vPad (or vapor pad).
Freezing the market away from Apple doesn’t work. iPod wannabes tried it. iPhone wannabes tried it. This pitiful attempt flies in the face of what everyone already understands about Apple’s painstaking product development.
And including flash is a feature?! Why not put a slide out keyboard on it too, and call that a feature?
As sad and pitiful this is, it’s still hilarious. Oh, and H-P, don’t forget Apple will now sue your ass if you try to steal its intellectual property.
you gotta roll with the punches to get to what’s real
For those that are wondering about mouse. Stylist and gesture touch screen combo.
Why can’t people just read an article and move on. Anytime there is anything remotey negative about any Apple product. The gambits (including mdn) go nuts. Chill out. Apple makes nice stuff. But so do others. Stop being childish about every article that is written.
need a Windows 7 party for this novel experience.
The HP iPad killer is bigger, heavier and according to HP can do more than the iPad. Therefore they are marketing it as a Maxi-pad.
@Andreeccm
Oh oh oh oh oh, stop it, you’re too funny!
Same old crap – from mock-up screen (Ballmer’s bogus keynote at CES) to mock-up video.
Vaporware for sure…
For a company who store the macbook design in their HP Envy line, they just blatantly announced that they are up and ready to steal the ipad design
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Has anyone seen an HP Envy 15 besides me? those things run HOTTER than HELL… – My friend (againt my advice) bought one. Two hours of battery life and the ability to cook eggs on the back cover (no kidding – External temps were about 45 degrees celcius! – we checked with a thermometer)
Win: a device that’s the same size as a netbook, has 90% of the functionality of a laptop without the thickness, weight, lag and lack of battery life.
Fail: a device that’s the same size as a netbook, has the same OS, weight, thickness and battery life of a netbook without the keyboard.
It really doesn’t matter if it’s vapourware or not.
If the product doesn’t materialise, the potential buyer will buy an iPad. If HP’s slate does materialise, it will have to compete with Apple’s very aggressive price point. As we’ve seen with PCs and netbooks, those customers are very price sensitive and will always be more interested in a lower priced product.
Apple knows that it will sell tens of millions of iPads and has designed a high quality product for economical mass production. HP will have to match the quality but without any guarantee of large sales numbers. It’s hard to see how they can get remotely close to matching the iPad offering and still make money out of it.
That in itself is a tall order, but on top of that, they need to match the iPad user experience and Apple’s app store. There’s also the fact that the iPad will have been in the shops for 9 months before Microsoft are claiming to have available a suitable OS for a tablet.
By the time that HP’s device hits the streets, iPad II will be about to be announced and the game will change again.
It’s the wannabe song.
Me too, me too, me will release one too.
It will be better, cheaper, faster me too me too.
It will make the competitor look like crud.
That is, if you believe MS FUD.
Perfect marriage. Now the world can see what these two misfits are incapable of when they combine their best efforts.
Okay, you obviously don’t get it. Let me explain.
HP thinks it can kill the iPad by making a vapourware demo video of yet another tablet PC, with the usual pointless features nobody cares about, running Windows 7 and Flash – two things which fail amazingly on a touchscreen.
It can’t kill the iPad by doing this.
Hence, teh funny. You need to get your sense of humour checked.
Andreeccm,
You are totally right. I’m amazed how quickly the vitriol flows the moment anyone says anything negative about an Apple product. I’ve been using Apple products for years now, and would probably never go back to PC, but Apple has it’s shortcomings.
I don’t like the way they are controlling the app store, for example. And all of their hardware problems lately (it took me 5 shipments to get a working iMac 27″) and their incompatibilities (Snow Leopard killed half my software). Don’t get me started on my Time Capsule (failed, predictably like everyone elses at 18 months due to an over heating issue Apple refuses to acknowledge).
Bottom line is, we are all Apple supporters, but let’s not be “everything else” haters.
I’m still kinda miffed that the only iPad worth getting is the most expensive one. Who wants one of these things without 3G? And 32GB? Really?
I’ll wait a year.
Yea! Someone gets it! “apple supporter. Not everyone else hater”
Perfect statement.
Btw. I intend on using my ipad (non 3g) with my jailbroken iPhone. Use it’s 3g for wireless tethering. I am not paying AT&T;twice.
It isn’t flash that is going to kill the battery on that tablet, it is the anti-virus and other anti-malware you are going to have to run on it to stay safe.