HP Reportedly Cancels Plans for Windows 7 Tablet

A recent post up at TechCrunch claims that HP's "Slate" tablet has been canceled. Officials details for the tablet were limited, though a leaked internal presentation indicated it had an 8.9" screen, a 1.6GHz Atom processor, and ran on Windows 7. Some are now speculating that HP may experiment with porting WebOS to a similar device. Quoting: "Will WebOS emerge as a successful operating system for tablet devices? That seems very unlikely given the dominance of the closed Apple OS and the likely success of the open Android and Chrome operating systems from Google. To get traction from third-party developers with WebOS, HP will need to sell a lot of units. And it's not clear what they'd gain from all that effort, anyway. HP knows how to build and sell hardware, not operating systems."

Comments

Who writes this crap?

[davebarnes]

"HP knows how to build and sell hardware, not operating systems."
MP/E and HP-UX are what? Chopped Liver?

Re:Who writes this crap?

[Reality Master 101]

HPq traditionally has had great hard ward, but absolutely atrocious software. I have no idea why they are seemingly so incompetent with software, but it's true more often than it isn't. I remember even working with their medical devices back in the 90s. Just awful software, but bulletproof hardware (I don't know what it's like these days). But yeah, there are exceptions, but This one of the reasons I was leery of the slate. It looked interesting, but my gut feeling was that HP would screw it up.

Re:Who writes this crap?

[jhoegl]

I see more buts than I did at spring break!

Re:Who writes this crap?

[symbolset]

For a portable device like this tablet if you start with an Intel Atom and add Windows 7 then performance will be poor, costs will be high, battery life will be short. The customer experience will be unsatisfactory because W7 isn't designed for tablet use and Microsoft won't let HP customize it sufficiently to make it useful.

So no, HP didn't screw this up - it was a dumb idea from the start. Its failure was built-in. But they had to show something to try and head off the iPad.

It looks like Dell started on the right foot.

Re:Who writes this crap?

[ZosX]

There hardware slipped a lot in the 90s. I new a guy who started to work for them as an engineer and we talked about how their pcs at the time were utter sh*t. I don't expect much has changed as of late. They generally score pretty low in the reliability ratings. Yeah, this tablet had me about as excited as an enema. Compaq/HP laptops generally seem to do the worst, so what does that tell you. I know my Acer isn't far behind (and it is pretty crappy and cheap to be honest), but it still is running just fine. Anymore these days it seems like everything is made so cheaply in china with subpar surface mounting that I really don't expect hardly anything to last more than a year or two. A far cry from the 5-10 years you could eek out of 90s gear. I went through 3 mp3 players before I realized that they are all built so cheaply that they can't take any sort of abuse at all. My last sandisk fuze lasted me about 3 months before the surface mounts failed. Sure I dropped it about 3-4 times and even knocked the metal case off the back, but that sure doesn't say a lot about a device when it can't take a couple of 3-4 foot drops. My old powershot 590IS was a lot more sturdy than that, and it was a freaking plastic camera!

Re:Who writes this crap?

[joeyblades]

Well known by what standards? They are both a little dated, but they are well known by people who know OSes...

Re:Who writes this crap?

[WrongSizeGlass]

MP/E and HP-UX are what? Chopped Liver?

Both are very well established and stable OS's (I've worked with both), but they aren't "consumer" products (unless you happened to buy the "like new" HP-3000 from Prof. Frink's garage sale).

Over the last several years the people at Palm created good software that was delivered on marginal hardware and sold via substandard marketing. HP has the hardware & manufacturing and marketing know-how to re-establish Palm's software lines. The real question is going to be "can HP bring the Palm name and/or technology back to the marketplace in time to be successful?"

Re:Who writes this crap?

[causality]

For a portable device like this tablet if you start with an Intel Atom and add Windows 7 then performance will be poor, costs will be high, battery life will be short. The customer experience will be unsatisfactory because W7 isn't designed for tablet use and Microsoft won't let HP customize it sufficiently to make it useful.

So no, HP didn't screw this up - it was a dumb idea from the start. Its failure was built-in. But they had to show something to try and head off the iPad.

But.. nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft!

Re:Who writes this crap?

[Kral_Blbec]

I've been using my eee t91mt netbook/tablet convertable for months and I love it. I really see no point in a true tablet when for a marginal price increase you can have the best of both worlds in a convertible. Win 7 works just find in tablet mode, but there will always be times when the keyboard is useful.

Re:Who writes this crap?

[tomhudson]

Or maybe they realize that something like the Evo 4G is an iPhone/iPad killer.

50% bigger screen than Apple's next-gen iPhone that was leaked, (4.3"), and yet it's still a smartphone, Small enough to fit comfortably in one hand, unlike the iPad.

HDMI out, runs flash, works as a hotspot for up to 8 other devices, Yes, it even does pinch-to-zoom. And at 4.3", it's got 50% more surface area than the current iPhone (and the leaked iPhone's screen is even smaller).

A tablet's too big to just shove in your pocket or purse. The iPhone's screen is too small to really share. This is "just right". It's a tablet-killer. So maybe HP sees that the tablet market, after more than a decade of trying to take flight, is going to nosedive, and will come out with something Palm-ish in a 4.3" format?

Re:Who writes this crap?

[Bert64]

And it wasn't owned by HP back in those days when it was quite popular...
Also their handhelds didn't run HP software...

Re:Who writes this crap?

[MartinSchou]

But.. nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft!

That's not true. One place I worked the receptionist got fired after she went to the store to buy fruit and came back with ten copies of Microsoft Office.

Re:Who writes this crap?

[AHuxley]

Critical and important computer systems are what this generation, NSA and Narus?.
The rest seems to be a race to getting a MS box installed so some 'admin' can dial in and point and click from home between xbox and ps3 time.

Re:Who writes this crap?

[symbolset]

I know you were going for funny and got it, so I get the joke and I'm not hateful. You had to dig back a quarter century for that.

For those who don't remember: Once upon a time IBM owned computing. They owned the datacenter and the IBM PC was the only PC. It was not until their dominance in the field was threatened by challengers that the phrase "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM" became common. It's an '80's reference. It was the end of IBM's dominance in the datacenter. Once the salespeople had to say that the game was over.

Incidentally, the IBM PC was an accidental rogue engineering program that got out of control and managed to release product before Corporate understood what was happening. By the time the suits understood what was going on it was all over. There's a lesson there.

If the salesman has to resort to telling you that you won't get fired for buying his product, then he lied. You boss pays you to think about what's best for your organization, not to avoid unemployment.

This thing does not exist

[symbolset]

I said so then. The thing didn't do what it was intended to do: kill interest in the iPad and Android slates. The of Microsoft killing progress by announcing vaporware is over.

The real story...

[farrellj]

The real story about HP's purchase of of Palm is that now they have access to versions of Linux that run on everything from their SuperDome Supercomputer all the way down to cell phones. It's been the dream of HP for a long time to have one operating system that runs across the whole range of hardware that HP sells.

So I can see they would cancel the Windows 7 based Slate, and will probably replace it with a WebOS based Slate. Contrary to the obviously less than clued in article says, it's all Linux, be it Android, Chrome or WebOS.

ttyl
          Farrell

Dell coming out with Android Tablets

[N!NJA]

Dell seems to have realized http://www.androidcentral.com/dell-looking-glass-tablet-tegra-2-love a lot earlier that Windows 7 would not be responsive enough on a slow processor and made the conscious and responsible move towards an alternative OS before HP. It has taken HP months of tests to realize that an Atom CPU and Win7 aren't a match made in heaven. They even posted videos on their YouTube channel recently! HP should either upgrade the Slate's CPU and stick with Win7 -- which would give them a larger-than-life ecosystem -- or they should go with Android, which, not only is open, but it's also growing in popularity at a great pace http://www.tgdaily.com/mobility-features/49518-android-market-hits-50k-app-mark/.

Re:Dell coming out with Android Tablets

[mlingojones]

Not sure why everyone assumes that Android is a better choice for HP than webOS. Who cares if it's "open" - HP now owns the codebase to webOS, so while there may be an advantage to going with Android over Windows 7, there isn't one to going with Android over webOS.

Not So Sure

[Voyager529]

I asked someone at HP about this on Friday, and this was her answer...

Heads up on your Slate post to me this morning. I had to delete it! I flagged the rumor to our team and they asked me not to comment on it at all. Not that I said anything either way about the status of the slate, personally I thought it was laughable, but they said they wanted to manage the rumors and not want anyone to address it. I should hear something back soon and when I do, I'll share it.

If the PR team is planning to "manage the rumors", I'm hesitant to believe that the rumor is accurate. After all, if HP was really killing the Slate, why wouldn't they want word out as soon as possible, or why would they care about managing what's said?

One of the other rumors going around is that they're ditching Win7 for WebOS on the tablet, but the hardware will stay mostly the same. That's possible, but I'm wondering what the benefit would be to them if they already had a Slate ready to go with Win7, but opting to ditch it just because of the software. Personally, I've been hoping for a Win7 tablet for some time now, and there's been plenty of other positive feedback from the idea on HP's Facebook page. I'd rather see them put two SKUs out whereby the software was basically the only difference. The WebOS one would be cheaper and likely have better battery life, but the Win7 version could run desktop apps. It'd be trivial to do, but I guess we'll have to wait for the official word.

Re:Not So Sure

[magnwa]

I could see how they'd want to manage it in the sense of "let us put it off until we have the slicky material for what we're doing in two years time" from the PR team.

Re:Not So Sure

[lurch_mojoff]

If the PR team is planning to "manage the rumors", I'm hesitant to believe that the rumor is accurate. After all, if HP was really killing the Slate, why wouldn't they want word out as soon as possible, or why would they care about managing what's said?

Actually, I'm reading this exactly the opposite way - if HP were not killing the Slate a simple response would be sufficient, something like - "Of course no. That rumor is ludicrous. We are still shipping the Slate in the already announced timeframe."

On the other hand, if they are "killing" the Slate and, say, replacing it with the same hardware but running WebOS, they probably need time to assess how much time will that take, or whatever, so they can come out and say - "We are killing the current Slate device if favor of releasing so-and-so in six months."

I may, too, be reading it wrongly, though. Probably it's best if we don't assume either way until HP comment on the matter or release the device.

Intel Atom has Barely Improved in 2 Years

[Anonymous Coward]

FTA: "HP may also be abandoning Intel-based hardware for its slate lineup simply because it’s too power hungry. That would also rule out Windows 7 as an operating system." The Intel Atom has barely improved over the past two years. For the first year, it was paired up obsolete chipsets (945G, 945GSE), and only recently has Intel improved on that with Tiger Point. Still, the core has not changed (at least, I'm not aware of any announced changes), it's still manufactured at 45nm. When Intel announced their push to 32nm, many people speculated that the Atom would be the first to be manufactured because of it's simplicity. I guess it just wasn't profitable enough: Atom won't go 32nm until the second half of 2011 as Cedar Trail. The upcoming dual-core (dual die?) Atom netbook processor (N455) expected this summer will help, but it's probably too little, too late.

ARM and their partners, on the other hand, are barreling ahead. Single core Cortex A8 designs nearly reach performance parity with the Atom at about 1/4th the energy consumption, and dual-core A9 designs are being demonstrated now. (Nvidia's Tegra 2 comes to mind.)

Re:Intel Atom has Barely Improved in 2 Years

[steveha]

Intel doesn't really want the Atom to improve. They don't want to give up any of the Atom sales to AMD, but what they really want is for everyone to buy more-expensive and more-upscale Intel CPUs such as Core Duo or i5.

Their problem is the Tegra 2. This is an 8-core chip that draws tiny amounts of power and yet is overall more powerful than the Atom. For half a Watt or less, you get an ARM 7 core (probably for "housekeeping"), two ARM 9 cores clocked at 1 GHz (with out-of-order execution and dual issue) for data processing, audio and graphics accelerator cores, video encode and decode cores, and an image processing core that can support a camera. This thing can decode HD movies in real time without even using the ARM 9 cores for anything!

The Apple iPad uses the Apple A4 chip, which is believed to be basically an ARM 8 core at 1 GHz. ARM 8 means no out-of-order or dual issue. So the iPad has a single 1 GHz core and a graphics accelerator, and it can already give a pretty good user experience; just think what people can do if they get multiple cores all working at once with the Tegra 2.

The Tegra 2 plus Android (and plus a Pixel Qi screen) is the combination to watch. Microsoft can't be happy; they want everyone to license the mobile Windows stack, but Android is both compelling and free, so that will be hard to compete with.

Intel can't be happy, because they have no way to keep the Tegra 2 from eating into the Atom market share. "Smartbook" computers and tablets will be better with a Tegra 2 because they will dissipate less heat (no need for a cooling fan) and use less battery life while getting more work done than is possible with an Atom. It's win/win/win, but you can't get it with Windows 7, you need mobile Windows or Linux, and it's going to be Linux (Android).

If Intel made a dual-core Atom on the 32 nanometer process, with an appropriately low-power chipset, not only would it go into netbooks but companies would start making desktop computers out of it. Why not? Get an "Energy Star" logo in the USA and sell them as "green" corporate computers or thin clients. Performance wouldn't be quite as good as a Core 2 Duo, but more than good enough, and Intel would be making less money because the margins are thinner on the Atom. Intel won't want that... (Remember Intel putting limits on how good a netbook can be? Screen can't be too big or touchscreen, can't have too much RAM, etc. Intel is trying to protect the market position of their mobile processors above the Atom.)

steveha

Yeah, right

[xPertCodert]

HP knows a lot more about operating systems than Google, for example. It still develops one of the best OS of all times, OpenVMS and not to forget about Digital/Tru64 Unix. There is enough knowledge in this company to create a very good and usable OS.

Re:Yeah, right

[ducomputergeek]

That was DEC and not HP. And DEC pretty much was destroyed by Compaq and then obliterated by HP.

Re:Apple knows how to sell computers not phones...

[Jer]

Apple knows how to sell Apple - they've gotten very good at it over the past few decades. A few missteps back in the 90s, but nothing that really tanked their image. If anything, a few of their missteps (like the Newton) played into their image even as they flopped in the market.

HP, on the other hand, never really realized that branding was important. They know how to sell hardware, but they have never been really good at selling HP as a brand. Which means it will be much harder for them to expand into a new market than it was for Apple. Buying Palm probably won't help much - Palm isn't exactly the most respected name in the market either these days.

No big mystery here

[gyrogeerloose]

Several previously-announced tablet projects have been canceled now and the reason should be obvious. Before it's release, everyone was predicting that the iPad was going to be priced around $1000. Many companies felt that they could release a competing product that could undercut that price and started designing hardware. When it turned out that the price of the iPod was half of what it was expected to be, suddenly those $800 (or whatever) tablets became pointless. The companies had two choices: drop the price to $499, which would have meant losing money on each unit, or drop the project. The smart thing to do was obvious.

Atom tablets are a bad idea. WebOS or Android?

[steveha]

Unless there is some ultra-low-heat version of the Atom chipset, an Atom tablet will need a cooling fan, and cooling vents. Part of the tablet will get warm and warm air will vent out one side. And this means that battery life is being wasted, converted to useless heat. Bigger, heavier, clunkier, and less battery life. Lose/lose/lose/lose. And your major advantage of the Atom is that it runs off-the-shelf Windows (or Linux) but off-the-shelf doesn't take good advantage of a touchpad; you are better off with something like Android.

I don't know if HP will put Palm's WebOS on their first tablet, or take the conservative choice and just do another Android tablet. I'm no marketing guy, but I just don't see much cachet in the WebOS; if you want to advertise lots of apps and a nice app store, Android would be the way to go. It's good for everyone (except Apple and Microsoft) if Android becomes a very standard platform with lots of units in the field to build a market segment that wants Android apps. (Right now if you are an apps developer, it's pretty much a given that you need to support iPhone... and maybe you don't even bother to support anything else! I'm hoping that the Android will become at least an equal target for apps, if not bigger than iPhone.)

On the other hand, would HP pay 1.2 billion dollars just to get Palm's expertise and staff? HP must have some sort of plans for WebOS. Which argues that they are likely to go with WebOS on their new tablets. But I don't see how they can turn that into a sales advantage. ("We have an OS nobody else has... it's exclusive!" sounds better than "You can't use the Android app store apps on this platform" but they mean the same thing.)

steveha