Now that’s a tablet!
Powerful CPU? Check! 1.6GHz Intel Atom.
Capable of HD video? Check! 1080p!
Camera? Check! 1 front, 1 back.
Flash Player 10.1? Check!
Adobe AIR 2? Check!
HDMI-out? Check!
USB port? Check!
Expandable storage? Check! SDHC card slot.
Pen/digitizer support? Check! Perfect for your finer art/graphics projects.
I can install whatever I like? Check! Runs Windows 7 Home Premium.
Multi-tasking? Check!
Easy to use touch UI? Check! HP built their own touch enabled layer on top of Win7.
Cheaper than Apple’s tablet? Check! $549 for 32GB model vs $599 for Apple’s 32GB model
Available now? Not yet… but I can wait! I want this one soooooo bad! :D
The leaked specs also mention that it comes with a 5-hour battery. While that may seem a lot less than the 10-hour battery Apple promises, we all know that you have to take Apple’s battery promises with a grain of salt. My MBP is supposed to be able to give me 8 hours but I’ve never gotten more than 4 out of it. Perhaps if you switch off WIFI, turn down the brightness to 1 and don’t do anything you get the 10 hours they promise but you can hardly call that usable… 5 hours sounds decent and honest enough.
Update: As pointed out in the comments, some reviewers are posting some good reviews about the battery life of Apple’s tablet. However, keeping my experience with my MBP in mind, I think it’s only fair that I am a bit skeptical about that.
Now this is a tablet I can get excited about!
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- Jesse - It's NOT about the HW dudes! It's about the UI! http://bit.ly/b7ZtgI RT @domin8r: Blogged: Now that's a tablet! http://bit.ly/d1gCoH
- MCM-COM - RT @sjespers: Now that's a tablet! http://bit.ly/94mgqN. i heart HP. always.
- Timo Stamm - @matzon ich nehm lieber das hier :) http://www.webkitchen.be/2010/04/06/now-thats-a-tablet/
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Well if Apple gives only theoretical battery lifetime, so do all the other manufacturers, especially HP (my former laptop was an HP). So no, 5 hours is definitely not gonna make it, especially if it falls down to 3.5 in practice. In addition to that, Apple’s claim is not a promise anymore. The few journalists who had it beforehands reported from 9 to 11 hours of autonomy in normal usage.
Plus, you know very well that it’s not a matter of raw spec, exactly like the iPhone. It’s about a user experience. And Windows 7 is so poor from that perspective that HP had to add their own UI layer on top of it. And we all know what it does to the reactivity of the system (HTC Touch, xPeria X10, etc.)
Neofonie is coing to release a tablet as well, it will be with android…
also a killer against iPad
http://www.neofonie.de/pdf/neofonie_Factsheet_WePad_english.pdf
@Danel: The WePad looks great… but I’ve tried to get in touch with Neofonie 3 times now… Sadly with no results.
if the touch screen is as good as this one from apple, i will also go for it :)
andrea buys one. Check!
With Meego installed, it will probably provide a very good user experience compared to Windows 7. Except that I don’t know if flash is running under Meego
From http://bit.ly/9VyBRW it seems that HP and Qualcomm are working together on a prototype Snapdragon netbook with the Android OS, therefore it won’t take long to have Android on the slate too.
Is it just me or the video shows the tablet moving at like 10fps :S
“we all know that you have to take Apple’s battery promises with a grain of salt”
Yes, and in this case it’s happened again – many high-profile reviews have reported that it’s out by about two hours; that is it will, in real-life, play video continuously for 12 hours, not 10.
I smell sour grapes!
Several reviewers have easily had 10+ hours of continuous use from the iPad. Here’s one:
http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/03/apple-ipad-review/
Plenty of people have listed the iPad’s shortcomings, but no one has complained about battery life.
Using baseless, bitter comments won’t help you sell people on 10.1. You need to be positive to move forward. Focus on Flash strengths. Rather than showing video and gaming clips, promote how Flash can be used to publish to all desktop and mobile devices. This guy gets it:
http://gregsramblings.com/2010/04/04/christian-cantrell-shows-off-one-code-base-running-on-ipad-iphone-android-macos-windows-linux-browser/
No sour grapes here. Merely saying that I do not get the 8 hours promised on my MBP and thus am a bit skeptical about these kinds of promises. I don’t think these are bitter comments and you will find that my blog is full of great examples of Flash’s strengths.
Tablets are a dumb idea. The clamshell-style design a la Laptops / Netbooks is just way better. The design folds up and protects the screen – not with some otherwise useless protecting case – but with a piece of the computer that is crucial to its functionality – the keyboard / mouse. In addition, it opens up to create a natural way for the computer to rest and for the screen to be most viewable.
The tablet design means your screen is unprotected unless you use some kind of a case. And if you have to carry a case – why not just use the clamshell design and have a keyboard / mouse? Also, there’s no way to set the thing so it’s propped up for viewing.
Tablets fit a niche market more as a silly toy than anything else. Even when HP, etc produce their far superior tablets, this will continue to be the “case”.
I think this one is in fact one to look out for. However: The video is horrible.
Not only does it look very unprofessional, the video/sound combo make me feel like the whole device’s experience will be kind of bumpy…
Looking forward to reading the first reviews on this one!
@Ronny: Make sure you also watch the video that demos Flash and AIR to get an idea on its power. http://www.webkitchen.be/2010/03/08/number-1-on-my-wishlist-hps-slate-device/
If you switch your video card over to the 2nd less powerful one when you are using batteries it will give you a few more hours on your battery on a mbp. I said the same as you until I did that and now I get about 6-7 hrs.
As far as tablets go I’m sure there will be bigger and better ones and hardly anyone will care.. same as always. Until HP gets it’s customer service up to par and gets rid of windows and takes off the 50gb of crap they pre-install they won’t be compete. These are the same arguments people tried with the iphone and look what happened.
The ipad isn’t so much for us techy folks as it is for our moms.. it’s everything my mom could want or use. Or think about traveling, would you want a clunkier hp tab that might.. mighttttttt get 3.5 hrs of video time in or a lighter, thinner ipad that you can squeeze out at least 10 hrs. That makes a long flight or drive that much better plus say if you are driving and have smaller kids in back you can hand the ipad to them and they can run it themselves now hand them a clunker with windows on it and listen to them cry instead. Plus the “multitasking” with win 7 home only lets you use I think 3 apps at once which is better than 1 but still. I also read where they took apart an ipad and there are areas seemingly prebuilt for cameras.
As for flash.. who cares. I read where adobe called apple hard to work with and steve jobs saying adobe was lazy so that ain’t hard to figure out. Obviously steve wants everything to run right and adobe won’t put forth the effort to optimize flash correctly and doesn’t like steve telling them that until they fix that god awful & easily breached piece of junk that apple won’t support it. Looks like adobe has taken the stance to not fix flash and I don’t think that is a good idea for them right now with the roll apple is on.
@Dave: Thanks for the battery tip.
Re: “Looks like adobe has taken the stance to not fix flash”
I have to strongly disagree on that one! Adobe does everything in its power to get Flash Player to run as smoothly on Apple’s devices as they do on Windows (it runs great on Windows!). Emphasis on “in it’s power”. If Apple does not give access to the same sort of APIs that Windows does provide (for instance for hardware acceleration), it’s pretty hard to get the same performance as on Windows. Also, if Apple only provides incomplete crash reports, it’s also very hard to track down and fix the issue…
How much of that 32gb of storage does Windows 7 take up?
I bet it’s close to 25%, which might be why they charge $50 less…
“The ipad isn’t so much for us techy folks as it is for our moms.. it’s everything my mom could want or use.”
There is a lot of truth to this statement.
I always wonder whether the iPad will cannibalize desktop / laptop sales. The only thing I can think of is that an iPad (and other tablet PCs) is much more personal in the sense that it’s not really a household tool you can share with others. In a way, they will be more like mobile phones and will not really curb the need for other computers.
Regarding Flash, I wish Adobe could develop an iPad / iPhone app which would be similar to Chrome and include Flash. Maybe, just maybe, the battle won’t take place in the browser for these devices. The apps is where it’s at if you take into account the general public’s adoption of mobile apps.
@Charles: Apple does not allow apps like that in the appstore…
Want one !
Look at you guys………………..we all have laptops from 3 years ago that’s stronger then this or an ipad. Like charles said, if this teck stuffs your life stop crying about specs. No ones gonna make any of theses there new work box. To us guys its just a toy. I would say milestone but tablets have been around for ten years (touch 2-3). Leave it to apple to make anyone care about one
Hp Slate will probably be doing a last minute change of the OS. It is rumor that HP will be dropping Microsoft 7 OS from their Slate device. WebOS (most likely) will be their operating system of choice. Last heard is that HP was NOT happy with the performance of Microsoft 7 as a touch screen device. With HP purchasing Palm recently and with it came WebOS, it seems only likely that HP will be using WebOS as their OS for the Slate.
HP may also be dropping the Intel processor for something “LESS POWER HUNGARY”. If they go to the new OS they won’t need the Intel processor and thus will gain a few more hours of battery life. Something that they were hammered on in hands on testing.