“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.
