At a recent conference about tablets and the future of publishing, there was a Q&A with the CTO of HP’s person systems group. While he used typical CTO doubletalk, there was a few more nuggets of information to be gleaned from his rather cryptic words on the future of products like HP’s Slate PC.
While all this isn’t exactly new information, Phil McKinney (the CTO referenced above), had nothing positive to say about using existing OS’s with new devices. Add to that the fact that he had nothing but positive things to say about WebOS (which of course HP almost owns now), and you start to see a certain picture form. That is to say that all this is conjecture, but the smart money is starting to realize that HP’s Slate will not be running Windows. Many, many internet pundits have been snarking away about how Windows OS would be the death of the Slate, so maybe this will give HP’s tablet the edge that many are hoping for to make it a contender against the iPad.
Phil was directly asked about the Slate running Windows during the Q&A, and he managed to keep tight lipped about the whole thing. He even went so far as to make a joke about how his PR people would be happy that he kept his mouth shut about the future of the Slate. So there you have it. The Slate’s probably not dead, but the Windows version probably is. Of course, this all hinges on if HP manages to complete the purchase of Palm, but I think we’ll be seeing WebOS based Slate systems in the near future.
[via Technologizer]