Apple’s iPad has been selling very well for the company, at least in part because Apple’s competitors have failed to release a comparable competitor. Hewlett Packard is looking to change that with its Slate 500, which was officially announced earlier this week.
The Slate has been in the works for awhile – Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer showed off an early version of the device as far back as January. HP will finally be poised to start selling the device soon, though, and has initiated a marketing push to accompany it.
The tablet, which will retail for about $799, packs some decent hardware. It runs the same Intel Atom processor (a Z450 at 1.86GHz) as the majority of netbooks, but includes a Broadcom Crystal HD video decoder to help it handle HD video decoding. 2GB of RAM, a 64 GB SSD, front and rear-mounted cameras, an HDMI port and an 8.9-inch screen round out the hardware, and peripherals include a pen stylus and a dock. These features are mostly pointed at the business crowd, the only market where Windows-powered tablet PCs have ever seen any hint of success.
The operating system powering the device is none other than Windows 7, and this is where the Slate could fall short. Windows 7 is a great mouse-and-keyboard desktop operating system, and while it does feature multi-touch support, it just doesn’t work very well as the OS’s primary input method. Windows’ main strength is its compatibility with third-party software, but that software is also typically designed for a mouse and keyboard and not touch input. Try to imagine trying to navigate Microsoft Word or Excel’s tightly-packed Ribbon interface with your fingers – it isn’t pretty. A pen stylus is more precise, but that technology has been available for a decade and it hasn’t set the world on fire.
HP may have some extra software installed to enhance the default Windows 7 UI to make it more functional and practical for use with fingers, but it’s still no replacement for an OS built exclusively to use a touch interface. The Slate may be a modest success for HP, and it may be preferable to the bulky, expensive tablet PCs of the past, but the product is essentially a Windows netbook with a touchscreen. Color me unexcited.
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