Hasta La Gadget!

Last night TechCrunch reported that, according to an unnamed “source briefed on the matter,” HP had stopped development of the Slate in its tracks, killing off the project entirely. Why? Well, according to the source, HP isn’t thrilled with Windows 7’s performance on the tablet. The Slate — which was officially unveiled in January by Steve Ballmer himself — had a rumored price of $549, and was supposedly launching in June. So, what should we make of all this? Well, there’s probably some major chaos over at HP with the news of the Palm acquisition, so we wouldn’t be surprised to hear some shaky — or even incorrect — information coming out of the company right now. On the other hand, HP killing off the project doesn’t sound completely out of the realm of possibility to us. We’ve reached out to HP for comment, but they’ve yet to get back to us. We’ll let you know when we hear something more concrete.

Update: Here’s the response we just go from HP — “We don’t comment on rumors or speculation.”

HP Slate killed? Rumor mill says ‘yes’ originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 30 Apr 2010 10:46:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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HP announcing that it’s going to buy Palm in a $1.2b all-cash transaction certainly took everyone by surprise, but in many ways the deal makes perfect sense. HP is a gigantic player in the tech industry but has no appreciable presence in rapidly-growing mobile space, and Palm — well, you should know how we feel about Palm by now. Even still, we can’t say we were expecting this one, and it looks like most of you weren’t either — HP only got two percent of the vote in our “who should buy Palm” poll, while Engadget (that’s us!) got… fourteen percent. Oops.

But now that we’ve had a day to wrap our heads around the news and think about what Palm and HP said to us last night and to analysts on the conference call announcing the deal, we think we’ve got a pretty good set of educated guesses on how things might shake out over the next few months. Read on!

Continue reading HP and Palm: what happens next

HP and Palm: what happens next originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 29 Apr 2010 14:05:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Late to the touchscreen MID party, Chinese manufacturer SmartQ was determined not to miss another opportunity. That’s why it spent the month of April touting its new R7 e-reader as — you guessed it — the iPad killer. With the same ol’ 600MHz ARM11 and 256MB of RAM inside as its ho-hum MIDs, that claim’s quite a stretch, but our cohorts at Engadget Chinese actually found the Ubuntu-powered 7-inch SVGA touchscreen device moderately capable in a recent hands-on. Like fellow PMP / e-Reader the Onda VX560, the device supports 1080p in most every video format under the sun, reads e-books (PDF, EPUB and CHM), and has a built-in 3G modem for on-the-go capability. Ubuntu standbys Midori and Pidgin handle web browsing and IM, respectively, and it can even stream live video and purchase Chinese magazines through SmartQ’s services. Sluggish as it might be, for $1,680 RMB (about $250) we’d say that’s a pretty respectable featureset. Video after the break, specs and hands-on pics at our source links.

Continue reading SmartQ R7 e-reader boasts 3G, touchscreen LCD, magazine service and IPTV (video)

SmartQ R7 e-reader boasts 3G, touchscreen LCD, magazine service and IPTV (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 29 Apr 2010 11:34:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Continue reading Jumper JK01-TT tablet enters the states with multitouch, 3G, Windows 7 (video)

Jumper JK01-TT tablet enters the states with multitouch, 3G, Windows 7 (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 27 Apr 2010 15:11:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Feelings about the leaked HP Slate notwithstanding, the company’s already considering its tablet PC successors — and if The New York Times‘ sources are right, they may be of Android and Linux varieties. Where the forthcoming HP Slate is, erm, slated to run Windows 7, The Grey Lady reported last week that a six-inch Android tablet was also on the way. Now, a prominent magazine editor reportedly tells the paper a Linux version may also be in development. For its part, HP isn’t denying the claims. “I’m certain that we will be announcing new Slates in the future as they are a very interesting area for us,” said media relations director Marlene Somsak, whose only added caveat was that HP isn’t currently announcing an Android slate.

HP takes chisel in hand, mulls over Android and Linux slates originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 22 Apr 2010 09:09:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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