Hasta La Gadget!

A day ago, I urged Hewlett-Packard to provide more details on their upcoming Slate tablet to the tech community, or risk being lost in the iPad hype. Unfortunately, someone apparently heard me – and leaked them to Engadget.

In any event, the document purports to be an HP in-house comparison of the Slate tablet and the Apple iPad, with certain elements identified as advantages for Hewlett-Packard, and others characterized as areas of concern. One of the latter is the price: $549-$599, well under the $829 Apple charges for the 64-Gbyte, 3G iPad. But the $549 price is also a bit higher than Apple sells its base 16-Gbyte, Wi-Fi only model for, at $499.

Basically, here’s what we know about the Slate: it uses a 1,024-by-600 capacitative touch panel, hiding an accelerometer and a light sensor. Inside is an Intel 1.6-GHz Intel “Menlow” Atom processor, with a 1 Gbyte of RAM and either 32- or 64Gbytes of flash memory to be used as memory and storage, respectively. There is a USB expansion slot, an advantage for the Slate.

Connectivity options include 802.11g, Bluetooth, a SIM card tray, and HDMI out. A pair of cameras (one VGA, the other a 3-Mpixel camera) provide the camera options the iPad lacks.

From a weight perspective, both tablets are virtually identical.

The troubling bit is the battery life: just 5 hours, according to the document, up to about 10 hours for the iPad.

Of course, there’s one other critical detail left out of the HP document: the shipping date. If HP plans to launch this tomorrow, these details become relevant. If HP delays the introduction of the Slate until a year from now, they won’t be.

Well, well — what’s this? We just got our hands on what looks like an internal HP Slate presentation given to cool down some of the iPad hype amongst HP employees, and it just happens to have specs and pricing details on the elusive Windows 7 tablet. As we’d heard, the Slate will run $549 in its base configuration, which has a 8.9-inch 1024 x 600 capacitive multitouch display, a 1.6GHz Atom Z530 processor with UMA graphics and an accelerator for 1080p video playback (we’re assuming it’s a Broadcom Crystal HD chip), 32GB of flash storage and 1GB of non-upgradeable RAM. There’s also a $599 version with 64GB of storage, and both models will have a five-hour battery, an SDHC slot, two camera, a USB port, a SIM card slot for the optional 3G modem, and a dock connector for power, audio, and HDMI out. Of course, what this spec list doesn’t cover is software, and we still haven’t seen much of how HP plans to make Windows 7 on a full slate device with netbook-class internals perform as smoothly or as intuitively as its demo videos. That’s not a small challenge, especially since the iPad is out now and setting some pretty high expectations for how this new breed of tablets should work. We’ve got our fingers crossed — show us something good, HP.

HP Slate to cost $549, have 1.6GHz Atom Z530, 5 hour battery? originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 05 Apr 2010 17:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We just had a feeling that HP wasn’t going to be able to keep quiet about the Slate while the iPad hogged the limelight this weekend, and like clockwork it’s released another rendered teaser video of its Windows 7-based tablet. Unfortunately, the clip reveals nothing about pricing or availability (though we have heard rumors of June), but there are some exciting quick demos of the Slate’s cam and video conferencing skills. Take that, iPad! We actually happen to be most interested in the brief glimpse you get at the touch UI — the icon-based interface looks similar to past TouchSmart software and seems to hide Windows 7 quite well, but it’s so obviously mocked up we can’t get a real sense of how it’ll work. It looks like you will be able to hook it up to a HDTV with some sort of dock and expand the storage space through an SD card slot, all of which makes sense given that it’s running Windows. Unfortunately, that’s really all you get, but see it all for yourself in the 30 second video after the break.

P.S.- Interestingly, the USB cable shown looks like it’s from Apple, and it’s being plugged into a Slate running iTunes, presumably to demonstrate that it can sync with iPod and iPhones. But now we’re obviously just wondering what would happen if you synced an iPad with the Slate — explosion? Confusion? Confusion explosion? We’ll find out soon enough.

Continue reading HP Slate reappears for 30 seconds, shows off camera, custom interface… and iTunes

HP Slate reappears for 30 seconds, shows off camera, custom interface… and iTunes originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 05 Apr 2010 12:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The latest word from our favorite rumor rag DigiTimes suggests that HP and Dell are both curtailing investment in the 10-inch netbook market, with their sights now set on the chunkier 11.6-inch size class. Additionally, with profits from machines built on Intel’s Pine Trail platform appearing lower than expected, both are also said to be contemplating AMD’s alternatives, presumably in the shape of the Neo CPU and Radeon integrated graphics. HP is even claimed to be considering quitting the 10-inch space entirely, which wouldn’t be that unusual given the progressive obsolescence we’ve witnessed with the 7- and 9-inch predecessors of the current de facto netbook standard. Not to worry, though, Acer, ASUS and Samsung are still deeply involved, and the 10-inch mini laptop isn’t about to disappear on us anytime soon. What may happen, according to the source, is that we could see fewer smartbooks popping up as a result, which just means we’ll have to find some other way to sate those media consumption needs.

Update: Dell has responded to the original DigiTimes article and insists that “what is being reported has no basis in fact.” Perhaps it was just an April Fools joke after all.

HP and Dell said to be investing less in 10-inch netbooks, looking to bigger and better things originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 02 Apr 2010 07:04:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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HP Envy 15 shipping for $950 after rebate originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 31 Mar 2010 11:41:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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