The Honeycomb slate market is getting crowded. With new devices launching every day and current models getting incremental updates that put them on parity with just about anything else out there, manufacturers gotta have a gimmick.
Like Power Rangers or Reservoir Dogs, Honeycomb tablet manufacturers must depend on one or two defining characteristics to convince a restless consumer base to pick up their devices. Samsung has the thin one, Motorola has the first one, and LG, with its unique and clever G-Slate, has the 3D one. All we need now is the slate for stoners and the pretty one and you’ve got an episode of Scooby Doo. Add in a waterproof one for Gilligan’s Island. → Read More
With all the talk of Playbooks and TouchPads these days, it’s sad that poor old LG hasn’t had much traction with their 10-inch G-Slate aka The Optimus Pad.
Well how’s this for traction? This bit of fanfic shows the Optimus Pad fighting, Michael Bay-style, high over a futuristic cityscape. While we all know Honeycomb is going to be amazing, did you know it could shoot fire and lasers? → Read More
Apple just announced its massive Q1 numbers yesterday; they sold 4.13 million Macs. Now that’s only in one quarter, but HP thinks they can also pull off some massive numbers by selling 45 to 48 million notebooks in 2011. In 2010, HP did….
More after the break. → Read More
Here is our hands-on video of the HP Slate 500, HP’s new business slate. For those of you still on the fence, HP has posted all of the final specs for the device as well, including the fact that it has an active digitizer as well as an Intel Z540 Atom Processor Z540 (1.86 GHz, 512 KB L2 cache, 533 MHz FSB) and 2GB of memory.
You can take a gander at the product page and see if this is the slate for you, Win7 lovers.
Video after the jump. → Read More
It’s been a long, hard road but it looks like some of the big boys are finally figuring out tablets. To wit: the new HP Slate 500, a business-only tablet designed for retail, hospitality, medicine and anything else that isn’t all about having fun. Let me explain. The Slate 500 is a very nice tablet. In fact I’d say the Samsung Galaxy Tab and the 500 are close cousins in terms of style and usability. The iPad may be the gold standard, but someone needs to think of the legacy applications! That’s what the 500 is here for. → Read More
The HP Slate is a real product — numerous mentions from HP VPs and various leaks state that — but it’s far from “official.” Somehow, though, a somewhat-thorough video review was just posted on the ol’ Interweb for the whole word to see. Remember, this product is headed for the enterprise market and you can’t even buy it, so don’t get all flame-happy when you see with your own eyes that Windows simply isn’t meant to be controlled with you fingers.
This demo is a laughable mess when it gets to the UI demonstration even though the person recording says the Slate is ”pretty responsive, pretty quick.” Yeah, alright. At least the hardware looks solid. Click through for the video and your first chuckle of the day. → Read More
HP revealed most of its tablet strategy yesterday at the Fortune’s Brainstorm conference. The Windows 7 HP Slate is headed to the enterprise sector this fall while the webOS-power Palmpad will go head-to-head against the iPad later. The plan itself really isn’t that surprising as I saw this coming shortly after Palmpad was trademarked. But what I didn’t expect was the outcry from consumers who actually want a Windows 7 Slate. It’s clear HP should take a long look a limited consumer market release for the Win7 Slate.
I’ve said it over and over and over. Windows 7 is horrible via a touch interface. It’s simply not meant to be used with your fingers. However, the HP Slate is said to come with a stylus and if said stylus is an active digitizer like Wacom tablets, it could be awesome and what’s been missing from Windows tablets for so long. I still believe webOS has a better chance to catch on as Windows tablets have been around longer than Apple has been making the iPod and have yet to sell well, but why not have both options available and let the market decide? At least our readers want it. → Read More
Here come the slates. Send in the slates. Todd Bradley, EVP, Personal Systems Group, for HP just announced that their Windows 7 tablets will arrive “this Fall” — something we suspected after said slates showed up on HP’s website with SKU numbers and all. The rumored (and almost certainly real) webOS slates were touched on tangentially, with the non-answer that we can expect a “family” of slate devices. Jon Rubinstein pretty much confirmed that they’re coming out, but wouldn’t give any dates. → Read More
Palmpad, eh? That sounds nice and could signal a sort-of departure from the normal slate business model. HP might be prepping more than one tablet product line. Perhaps the Windows 7 Slate project isn’t dead after all. We all know the story. HP bought Palm for a billion dollars, partly for the webOS mobile phone platform. Said operating system will soon be found in other HP devices, including printers and tablet computers. However, HP is unlikely to rest its tablet’s future on someone else’s defunct brand name. There will be more than one tablet model from HP right from the beginning. → Read More
The iPad is the king of tablets and might hold that title for years to come. However, there are a ton of alternatives that we’ve featured over the last few months, mostly in these two posts (1 & 2) detailing the top 14. But since I ran those posts, a lot has changed and while some managed to make it to the market, others were delayed or scrapped entirely.
It’s sad, really. While the iPad caters to the masses with the Luddite-approved iOS, others crave much more usability and none of the tablets announced that claim to fulfills these needs have been released yet. Click through to see what I mean. → Read More
The HP webOS Slate is one-step closer to the market now that HP officially owns Palm. It has a real chance to be the iPad-alternative of choice when it launches later this year. Hopefully HP engineers and designers have been taking notes about the iPad from the beginning because even though the iPad is selling like Girl Scout cookies, it’s far from perfect. The Apple branding alone is part of the successful launch, but HP is, well, HP and a major player in the consumer market with deeper distribution channels than even Apple. If any one company can stand up to Apple in the tablet space, it’s HP — but only if they take advantage of learning from Apple’s mistakes and success. → Read More
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 nuggets of information to be gleaned from his rather cryptic words on the future of products like HP’s Slate PC. → Read More
Uh oh! Sounds like someone is going to be in trouble. The word is out on the probable spec and pricing on the HP Slate, and HP is definitely aware of the iPad. Obviously an internal document, it’s very interesting to see exactly what HP considers a threat, and what they consider to be an advantage. → Read More
HP may not have shipping product but by gar they’re going to show you mock-ups.
The HP slate may not be shipping and there may be another slate overshadowing it this week but HP wants you to know it runs social networking apps. The slate, which has a 10-inch screen, will run Windows 7 and should cost a little under $600 when it is released this summer.
Click through for video. → Read More
The Inkia MID500 just hit my desk and I have to show it off. Well, it’s kind of my job. I’ll publish a full review in a week or so, but for now, click through for a video hands-on and my initial pros and cons about the $349 5-inch tablet computer. → Read More
Last night, during his keynote address at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer showed off a prototype for a new HP Slate computer running on Windows 7. It was supposed to be an Apple-stealing moment and it was Microsoft’s moment, which is probably why Hewlett-Packard has not yet publicly mentioned that it is working on another tablet/slate computer that is running on Android. You know, Google’s mobile operating system.
HP did announce an Android-powered netbook yesterday, but that has a keyboard. A source who has seen a prototype of HP’s Android Slate says it looks just like the Windows-powered one Ballmer held last night (see image below), maybe a little smaller. “It is almost identical in every respect to the one he showed off except for the OS,” says my source. → Read More
We knew the thinnest QWERTY keyboard phone was coming, but AT&T and Pantech have officially launched the Slate. The phone measures less than one centimeter deep and is equipped with standard 2006-circa specs: 1.3MP camera, Bluetooth, and multimedia functions. To be honest though, the phone is only going to be $50 after a two-year agreement and a $50 mail-in rebate so what more can you want? → Read More
Here’s another phone that’s destined to be bought by dozens of people, the Pantech Slate. This AT&T-branded device, which is due for release later this month, comes with all the normal (for 2006) fixings: a 1.3-megapixel camera, e-mail, IM, yada yada. Supposedly it’s the thinnest QWERTY device out there. You really do wonder, though, as everything these days is thin to one degree or another, how much traction can Pantech, AT&T or whomever get out of calling a device the “thinnest.” She should cost $50 with two-year contract. → Read More
So if you haven’t heard lately, you can get a huge spike in traffic by praising Nintendo’s Wii on your Website. However, if you dare criticize and hate on Nintendo’s “next-gen” console, prepare to alienate all your readers. Erik Sofge over at Slate has written an article called “Nintendon’t” in which he has the courage to point out that the Wii does in fact, have a flawed control system and that first-person shooters are terrible to play on the Wii. I personally have been saying forever (and by that I mean the past three months) that the Wii is great for the casual gamer who wants cheap thrills for an hour. The graphics are terrible for a lot of games (though some are good, like Madden ’07) and that stupid-ass Wiimote shouldn’t be used for every single game. Glad to see that someone else in this industry actually can be critical of a system and its flaws. Nintendon’t: The case against the Wii. [Slate] → Read More
