HP Slate 2: Brilliant or Bust?

First time accepted submitter redletterdave writes "After being introduced in September, HP's new CEO Meg Whitman announced Oct. 27 that the company 'needs to be in the tablet business.' However, by creating a lackluster product in the Slate 2 that runs on a soon-to-be-outdated operating system, HP will surely find itself back where it started, when furious Best Buy executives demanded HP to take back their thousands of unsold tablets piling up in storage."

Comments

HP?

[Anonymous Coward]

HP is still around? I thought they went out of business years ago. Wow, you learn new things every day.

Re:HP?

[N0Man74]

I shouldn't bother to feed the trolls, but I wouldn't count HP out just yet. At least not until we find out how their memristors turn out.

Re:HP?

[ArhcAngel]

Wouldn't it poetic irony if Agilent Technologies bought hp?

Re:HP?

[blair1q]

I remember buying into Freescale when they announced MRAM. A month or so later, Blackrock (or Blackstone, it's hard to tell those hedgies apart; they all dress alike and have the same forked tails) offered a bundle to take the company private. Haven't heard a word about MRAM from Freescale since.

Re:HP?

[Quiet_Desperation]

I was surprised Whitman was still around. I thought she disapparated back to the unreverberate blackness of the abyss after losing the governor's election.

Re:HP?

[flimflammer]

I wonder who actually found this funny?

Re:HP?

[couchslug]

"HP is still around? I thought they went out of business years ago. Wow, you learn new things every day."

HP could die tomorrow, but LaserJet 4s will be printing until the Sun burns out.

Their test equipment was also Good Stuff.

Re:HP?

[JBMcB]

There's a computer chronicles on YouTube from ~1990 that features Toshiba announcing flash ram, a technology that would replace hard drives and floppies within a couple of years. Twenty years later and it's starting to happen.

Sometimes this stuff takes a while to get to market in a usable form.

Re:HP?

[rtfa-troll]

Their test equipment was also Good Stuff.

Their test equipment is still good stuff. It's just that HP is called Agilent nowadays.

Re:HP?

[TheRaven64]

HP could die tomorrow, but LaserJet 4s will be printing until the Sun burns out.

Sun burned out on January 27, 2010...

Re:HP?

[cayenne8]

Hmm...HP with chick leaders...not so lucky with that it seems.

Re:HP?

[Kenshin]

I'd say it's replaced floppies for at least a good 5 years now.

Re:HP?

[Greystripe]

Also they've had more capacity then the hard drives from 1990 for some time.

Re:HP?

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Invertebrate, is the word that comes to my mind.

Bitch is evil.

Re:HP?

[hairyfeet]

No it hasn't as what he is talking about isn't NAND but MRAM which is supposed to give you the speed of DRAM with the non volatility of NAND. Its a really nice idea, that if they could get it to work would be a game changer. Imagine if instead of 2Gb-8Gb or even 16Gb of DRAM you instead had the entire storage functional as one giant RAM drive? One that you could kill the power to and have everything stay as it was with zero losses or need to refresh? Even if they could only get the prices down enough to replace DRAM imagine having your OS be "instant on/instant off" because it would just freeze in place when you pulled the plug. Things like sleep, hybrid sleep, and hibernate would go the way of the floppy!

That said they've been trying to come up with similar tech since the 60s in the form of PRAM and nobody has quite go the hang of it yet. its always too expensive, too complex, or too easily damaged. so I wouldn't hold my breath for it anymore than for holodiscs, flying cars, or Alyson Hannigan sexbots. Although frankly they can keep the flying cars, holodiscs AND the MRAM if they can just give me an Alyson Hannigan, preferably gift wrapped and wearing the BtVS S2 Vamp Willow outfit. I mean what kinds of scientists are we creating when they can send a man to the moon but can't even give us our own sexbots? C'mon scientists, prove you're worthy of those lab coats!

Re:HP?

[wisty]

Should that be off topic, funny, or insightful? I kind of lost my train of thought.

Re:HP?

[wisty]

Sun burned out on January 27, 2010...

Nah, it was sucked into a black hole.

Bust

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? Another Windows 7 tablet? These are garbage. We know this. Windows 8 can't get here soon enough.

Re:Bust

[0123456]

Windows 8 can't get here soon enough.

What's Windows 8 going to offer that iPad and Android currently don't? Putting Windows on a tablet is pointless if Microsoft can't convince developers to produce apps for it... and developers probably won't be interested in producing apps if most people have iPads and Android tablets.

Re:Bust

[0123456]

Oh, and I would keep making PC's and laptops, only make them better. More touch screens, maybe a best-in-class ultra light laptop, etc.

How would more touchscreens make PCs and laptops better? Touchscreens are sucky interfaces for devices that don't have a keyboard and mouse.

Re:Bust

[Anonymous Coward]

Couldn't Windows 8 tablets run windows applications? I'm not sure if the Metro interface prevents that or not, so my question is genuine.

Re:Bust

[Andy Dodd]

The only reason it took off at that price point was because it entered the "impulse buy" category for many people.

It also entered the "hack toy" category for many - Nearly everyone I know who scored a firesale TouchPad only had its stock OS as their "backup plan" - their main plan was to follow Android porting efforts for the device. That's why I tried to score a TouchPad, for example.

Had HP sold the TouchPad with Android, they would have at least managed to stay afloat in the market... It is possible to "stay alive" in the Android tablet market at the $500 price point. But $500 for a niche OS with declining marketshare - well, you're toast.

Similarly - every attempt to shoehorn a desktop OS into a tablet has been a failure, and it will continue to be that way. Win8 might be an exception because MS seems to be trying to make Win8 a "scaled up" version of WP7.

Re:Bust

[0123456]

Couldn't Windows 8 tablets run windows applications?

Some, but who in their right mind wants to run Word on a tablet?

Re:Bust

[ackthpt]

To be up front about it, she didn't really do anything for eBay, except oversee the company becoming more monopolistic and distant from their user base

You may whine about your problem to a volunteer in our forum, but we don't really care about you or your problem, especially if we've already got our cut

OR

There are 4 people head of your in the help queue, average wait time, 2 hours.

What did HP really think they were getting?

Yeah, I don't think I could do worse as CEO at HP, either and I don't even require a company car.

Re:Bust

[Synerg1y]

the HP Slate 500 was meant for a target market for uses such as myself who need to be able to use stuff like cisco vpn that is not supported on android and use windows apps that are not available on apple. Considering nobody I've ever heard of has an apple based server environment, and vpn is the only way into the network, that leaves a shocking realization... if you can't see the benefits of win 7 on a tablet, then its not for you! It's for the IT crowd who are too cool for laptops, or in my case corporate bought it, why would I say no?

Now why would I ever use my single core tablet over my m15x? Portability, but I don't own say the m11, where that would make it a tough choice for me on what to carry. Personally I wouldn't even consider it, professionally it makes a lot of sense. And even though win 7 is lame on a touchscreen, the whole concept / idea is pretty cool and you can always connect a bluetooth keyboard and mouse into it. It does everything ipad and android based tablets do, in some cases not as good, but it DOES stuff neither one of the aforementioned does, such as run mmc, if you don't know what mmc is, refer to first paragraph.

Re:Bust

[Archangel Michael]

you can afford to develop two different platforms.

Hell, if you engineer it right, you don't even have to build two different hardware specs. And if you're creative, you can have the guys over at CyanogenMod make a Tablet OS for you that is world class and always up to date, while you build WebOS for yourselves.

THEN you give people a choice, and they can change their mind later and put a different but fully armed and operational OS on it.

Re:Bust

[Anonymous Coward]

Did it not occur to you that you can put a touchscreen and a keyboard on the same device? It's not like turning a screen into a touchscreen takes up any space or anything.

Re:Bust

[0123456]

Did it not occur to you that you can put a touchscreen and a keyboard on the same device?

Uh, we were talking about laptops and desktops, which traditionally have keyboards.

Why would I want a touchscreen when I have a keyboard? How long do you think I'm going to sit at a desk prodding my monitor screen with a finger before I say 'who the hell thought this was a good idea' and go back to the keyboard and mouse?

Re:Bust

[JorDan Clock]

What are you talking about? Windows 8 will run everything Windows 7 and before would run. Just because it doesn't have a Fischer-Price UI doesn't mean you can't use it with a touch screen. And developing for Windows 8 has the lowest cost of entry of any of the platforms, so it would be ludicrous to NOT develop apps that are desktop/tablet friendly for Win8 as well at iOS and Android.

Re:Bust

[Anonymous Coward]

cisco vpn is coming to android with the enhanced vpn apis available in ice cream sandwich. http://phandroid.com/2011/10/25/ice-cream-sandwich-will-have-cisco-anyconnect-vpn-support/

most samsung touchwiz enabled products already support it, too.
https://market.android.com/search?q=anyconnect&so=1&c=apps

Re:Bust

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

It takes up very little space(not quite zero; but not a whole lot); but a touchscreen interface worth using bumps the BOM a fair bit. Resistive sucks, Wacom-style RF stylus isn't cheap, and consumer-friendly finger-paint capacitive also isn't cheap to do well.

At that point, you basically have a laptop that costs $100 more than your identical model, for the delight of being able to smudge at a few bundleware applications because nobody does touch applications for windows...

Re:Bust

[ackthpt]

Couldn't Windows 8 tablets run windows applications?

Some, but who in their right mind wants to run Word on a tablet?

A fair point.

What's the horse power of the minimum configuration for Windows 7 PC? What will it be for Win 8? Anyone paying attention to the considerably slower processors (compared to laptops and desktops) of tablets? If Win 8 is the bloated beast of its presecessors, good luck.

Re:Bust

[Motard]

Why would I want a device I can't edit a document on? Even Windows Phone 7 runs Office.

Re:Bust

[0123456]

Windows 8 will run everything Windows 7 and before would run.

No it won't. An ARM tablet won't run anything from Windows 7 other than the few .Net applications which don't call native code other than that provided by Microsoft.

And any of those applications which do run will leave you with a WIMP interface on a crappy touchscreen. Microsoft have been pushing that for at least a decade and it's been a dismal failure.

So again, what does a Windows 8 tablet offer that an iPad or an Android tablet don't?

Re:Bust

[Motard]

Windows 8 has the same hardware requirements as Windows 7 and is said to be slightly smaller and faster.

Re:Bust

[RingDev]

I'd consider it one of the necesities.

Along with Power Points, MS Project, and Excel.

If I can't get them and an HDMI port for hooking up to the projector, the tablet loses a huge incentive for me to use it.

I'm not going to be writting massive docs on a tablet, but I need to be able to plug into a projector at a meeting, present project plans and status reports, open spread sheets for SME's to see data models, etc...

The Tablet isn't a replacement for the Laptop/PC, it's just a tool used to increase mobile ability. One that I have so far lived with out, and probably wont bother with until a next gen ASUS Transformer comes out.

-Rick

Re:Bust

[tripleevenfall]

Because existing android tablets are all underpowered, overpriced, or both, I think MSFT probably surmises that the #2 spot in this market is out there for the taking.

the Kindle Fire is a strong bid for #2 at the moment, but consumers aren't buying anything but iPads right now, and these other companies would be wise to bring a sub-$500 tablet to market that doesn't require a monthly service agreement.

Re:Bust

[Anonymous Coward]

now eBay becomes a rubbish company and lot of buyer went away to other shopping cart. I seldom buy from them, now deal with

hkcolordigital

for the electronics products.

Re:Bust

[Lunix Nutcase]

People who use tablets for more than fart apps and Angry Birds? Why wouldn't want to run it on my tablet?

Re:Bust

[ackthpt]

Windows 8 has the same hardware requirements as Windows 7 and is said to be slightly smaller and faster.

So... without significantly paring things from it it will be a cow even on the fastest tablet.

Re:Bust

[NoNonAlphaCharsHere]

That's like asking "Why would I want a vehicle I can't tow a boat with?" Answer: lots of reasons; not everyone wants or needs to tow a boat.

Re:Bust

[MBCook]

I can tell you what I'd do to make HP's computers better. I'd kill 90% of their products.

I'd like to see a big computer maker try doing things Apple style. Stop trying to be all things to all people. It may be OK for corporate purchases (although at this point I'd think people would be looking for something to replace HP since they seem so... stable), but in the consumer market it's a major pain. Two or three laptops, two or three desktops.

Computer shopping is a major pain. Just a quick look at HP's site shows they sell 5 categories of laptop, with a total of 24 models between them. Once you pick one of those, there are still configuration options. There are 28 desktops in 5 categories. That's a LOT of choice. Once you cut down the number of models, you can afford to spend a lot of money and get custom parts designed for them. That way you can shrink the laptops thinner and get better economies of scale.

Is it copying Apple? Yes. But it's pretty easy to pick out a Mac, where as the major PC makers are just giant matrixes of choices. If HP gives you 7 basic (and clearly defined) choices and Dell gives you 45, which do you think consumers will prefer shopping? They'll go look at Dell's site, get frustrated, see HP's, and think "Now I'm getting somewhere."

Re:Bust

[uniquename72]

Agreed. I use my gf's iPad occasionally, and constantly think to myself all the things I'd LIKE to use it for if it had a better port set, broader file support, and a little more horsepower.

Re:Bust

[yog]

And you know for a fact that the Touchpad would not have sold at $200 or $250 or $300 because...?

Everyone you know doesn't mean everyone in the market for a tablet. Several million people want to buy an Amazon Fire which is a lowly 7" tablet that doesn't even run regular Android, only a customized Amazon version, for $200.

WebOS was not declining until they screwed up the phones (that's another whole discussion). It was innovative in its day (a year or two ago). This is my main point. Lower the price of the Touchpad and people would have bought it. It didn't need to go down to $99. I'll bet they could have liquidated them at $200 just as easily, and maybe kept the business running at $300.

Agree about Win7 fail.

Re:Bust

[recoiledsnake]

Windows 8 will run everything Windows 7 and before would run.

No it won't. An ARM tablet won't run anything from Windows 7 other than the few .Net applications which don't call native code other than that provided by Microsoft.

And any of those applications which do run will leave you with a WIMP interface on a crappy touchscreen. Microsoft have been pushing that for at least a decade and it's been a dismal failure.

So again, what does a Windows 8 tablet offer that an iPad or an Android tablet don't?

More powerful x86 slates that you can dock to use all existing PC apps but still use Metro apps on the go.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8-K1ELv6DE
  Of course these will probably be bigger and heavier (and more expensive) than Win 8 ARM tablets or an iPad, but Microsoft and their OEMs think there is a market for them.

Re:Bust

[MBCook]

It just proved the obvious: You can't sell a sub-iPad product at an iPad price. Why buy WebOS (not well known, no apps, slower hardware) when I can get an iPad (huge app and accessory ecosystem) for the same price? There is basically no point. If they had priced it better they'd have had a much better shot.

I really liked an idea I read somewhere, possibly on Darring Fireball. The person suggested that HP should have just given the things away with any purchase of a HP computer over some amount (say $1000) for a few months, just to push penetration. All of a sudden, the tablets would have a decent install base, and people might be more willing to buy a computer from you if there is a tablet thrown in.

Re:Bust

[Anonymous Coward]

What's Windows 8 going to offer that iPad and Android currently don't?

The ability to run both proper tablet apps AND classic Windows apps, within a proper tablet UI (launcher, etc). This will ease the transition of the reluctant masses. Windows 7 tablets will just bitter people towards anything that isn't an iPad.

Re:Bust

[h4rr4r]

How does the cost entry get lower than free?
Android dev has no cost entry at all, assuming you already own some sort of computer.

Re:Bust

[mikecase]

Uh, there are several sub $500 android tablets already on the market. In fact, the Asus Transformer can be had for $350, and if you shop carefully you'll find standard spec tablets (e.g. the Acer Iconia) for ~$300. These are pretty competitive power wise with the iPads, but cost hundreds less. They only lack in mindshare.

Re:Bust

[swb]

It may make some sense, but it strikes me that there's something inherent in marketing or pricing theory that causes businesses to have a large number of apparently superfluous/redundant products and purchasing options.

They almost seem to need to have them to demonstrate that they have the "specific solution for you", as well as to create the complex pricing tiers that makes it difficult for purchases to choose which product suits their needs; inevitably you end up buying too much widget to get a specific feature you need or to ally some other concern.

Dell is a good example -- I seem to recall that it was almost impossible to get the display I wanted in a laptop (the consumer choices seemed better) and the CPU and OS support I needed (business choices). I'd like to believe they do it on purpose, but maybe they don't.

Re:Bust

[0100010001010011]

All I heard was "what is Windows 3.1 going to offer that System 6 didn't.

Re:Bust

[Anonymous Coward]

That is, of course, assuming that your company will allow Android devices on its network. Many don't allow Android phones, even, because they cannot control them. They can at least lock down Windows and Apple devices.

Re:Bust

[93 Escort Wagon]

Couldn't Windows 8 tablets run windows applications?

Some, but who in their right mind wants to run Word on a tablet?

When paired with a bluetooth keyboard, Apple's pages works quite well on the iPad.

I'd still prefer doing such things on a laptop or desktop, though - mainly because I find myself moving the text cursor (e.g. which works much better using a mouse) more often than I find myself inserting/moving pictures.

Re:Bust

[Anonymous Coward]

$799 is reasonable, if they deliver the tablet by dropping it out of a helicopter!

Re:Bust

[Thud457]

One thing that was pointed out in the recent memorialization of the the late Steve Jobs was that when he was brought back to Apple, he said "Our product line is to complicated. Let's simplify it - high-end/low-end X desktop/laptop". Seemed to work for them.

Re:Bust

[Chris Mattern]

More like asking, "Why would I want a vehicle I can't use to bring groceries home?" There might be a some people who don't want to write documents, but it's really cutting off a large amount of your customer base.

Re:Bust

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you tried it? It runs great on slates. I've tried both on an ASUS and on the official Samsung that was handed out to participants at the Build conference. It runs amazingly well on them. Very smooth and fast. If you watch some of the demo videos you can see it run smooth on ARM as well (although you can't run your normal windows apps on ARM). The slate from Samsung runs classic Windows apps very well - although I do agree with the poster that asked why you would want to try to run Word on it - slates aren't the best for typing long documents and applications that aren't designed for touch aren't the best tools on slates either.

Re:Bust

[yuhong]

The funny thing is that Best Buy in fact is already doing something like this:
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2011/11/the-hp-touchpad-has-reappeared.ars?comments=1

Re:Bust

[tchuladdiass]

Not to mention items like the Nook Color (Barnes & Noble). You can install CyanogenMod 7 (a community-maintained Android distribution) on it; you can even run it 100% from an SD card so you won't have to mod the device itself (the Nook tries booting from the SD card first before booting from internal storage). If you do run CyanogenMod from an SD card, make sure to use a Sandisk (class 2 or class 4) card. It is the only card I've tested that has good performance on small read/writes (even beats out all the class 10 cards).

Only thing missing on the Nook Color after running a generic Android port is front/rear facing cameras, GPS, and 3G.

Re:Bust

[Anonymous Coward]

Absolutely. Even Acer has like 45 Acer Aspire Ones. What, we can't count to 2?

Re:Bust

[Anonymous Coward]

They almost seem to need to have them to demonstrate that they have the "specific solution for you", as well as to create the complex pricing tiers that makes it difficult for purchases to choose which product suits their needs; inevitably you end up buying too much widget to get a specific feature you need or to ally some other concern.

Dell is a good example -- I seem to recall that it was almost impossible to get the display I wanted in a laptop (the consumer choices seemed better) and the CPU and OS support I needed (business choices). I'd like to believe they do it on purpose, but maybe they don't.

Absolutely true. It has become almost impossible to get a decent screen on ANY laptop from a large manufacturer like Dell or HP. You can customize every other damn thing, but not the screen. There is usually exactly ONE model that has a screen resolution greater than 1366x768, and it is marketed for "HD Movies" or some such bullshit. If you want an actual "business" laptop then forget it, you are hosed.

As far as I am concerned, the display is the single most important component of any laptop. If it has less than 1000 vertical lines of resolution then just throw it in the garbage, it is of no use to me.

Re:Bust

[tverbeek]

I'm pretty sure I already commented on this strategy.

Re:Bust

[Anonymous Coward]

I wholeheartedly agree with and back this strategy. If you are trying to establish a platform mediated network (an "ecosystem"), you likely have to subsidize it to bootstrap a positive network effect, especially when that market thus far is a winner-take-all with an established winner.

Re:Bust

[symbolset]

BTW: the first gen Transformer has Polaris Office standard, and edits Word, Excel and Powerpoint documents just fine. They're selling something like 1.6 million of them this year, which is no iPad but a billion dollars in first year sales for a breakout product isn't exactly a failure either.

Re:Bust

[Solandri]

Re-hire the WebOS team that they just fired, develop a world class, well engineered budget tablet to take the low ground away from Apple, and stay in the market for LONGER THAN SIX WEEKS

The whole fire sale of the Touchpad was odd. Normally when you EOL a product, you gradually lower the price so they'll sell out over a few months. With the Touchpad, they went straight for the lowest clearance pricing, resulting in all stock selling out in a matter of days. I really suspect there's a company politics story buried in all this - someone(s) at HP wanted WebOS and the Touchpad dead, and wanted it to leave such a black mark on the company that it could never be revived.

Re:Bust

[samkass]

Windows 3.1 succeeded because it installed onto the dominant hardware platform of the day and because it was blessed by the dominant hardware maker. Unless they figure out how to get Windows 8 to run on an iPad, that advantage won't hold here.

Re:Bust

[ArsonSmith]

"And you know for a fact that the Touchpad would not have sold at $200 or $250 or $300 because...?"

mainly due to all the unsold auctions at that price on Ebay.

Re:Bust

[rtfa-troll]

More like asking, "Why would I want a vehicle I can't use to bring groceries home?"

I think more like "Why would I want a vehicle I can't use for transporting radioactive materials?". It's true that some specialists need full Word documents and especially legacy marketing presentations which have to be rendered perfectly (serious marketing people have switched to iPads quite a while ago; they can't be seen to be out of touch; however they still keep a Mac with office available for special cases) but for 99.9% of the population Google apps is actually a better choice simply because it has fewer options to confuse them. Those people will be happier if they don't have to deal with the complexity of having two different kinds of application on one operating system.

Re:Bust

[AliasMarlowe]

Some, but who in their right mind wants to run Word on a tablet?

Someone, somewhere is probably dreaming of running IE6 on a tablet. And someone else probably wants it to run a SAP client (the only thing more horrifying than IE6). Let us hope all such evil maniacs are ignored.

Re:Bust

[Anonymous Coward]

The WebOS-based TouchPad was innovative, but it was over-priced. HP proved that by lowering the price to fire-sale levels and it took off. Maybe they should have priced it at about $300 as a loss leader, to build up a market for apps. Amazon's losing money on their Fire tablet, for example. Seems like a smart strategy, and they're big enough to pull it off. Just fire a few of these over-paid execs like Whitman and presto! you have plenty of money for R&D.

Regarding this Slate: at $699 no one's going to buy this moldy old thing. They'll go with Apple or a Fire for $200 or some of the other up and coming budget Android offerings. Come on. Motorola proved that there's no market for a premium priced tablet that under performs compared to an iPad.

And Windows 7--excuse me? Do they really pay these executives millions of dollars to make these kinds of decisions? Heck, I'll take the CEO job for about $250K (with about a $100K golden parachute) and I'll set that house in order. Re-hire the WebOS team that they just fired, develop a world class, well engineered budget tablet to take the low ground away from Apple, and stay in the market for LONGER THAN SIX WEEKS. Offer an Android tablet, too. Come on, you're a $100 billion corporation and you can afford to develop two different platforms.

Oh, and I would keep making PC's and laptops, only make them better. More touch screens, maybe a best-in-class ultra light laptop, etc. Listen to the customers, HP. Corporate America is not dropping out of the desktop and laptop markets any time soon. Consumers don't want a Windows 7 tablet (as far as I know); they want an Apple or an Android.

Well said.

Re:Bust

[Anonymous Coward]

These Board Executives are completely clueless because they live in a bubble excluded from the rest of the world. Who in their right mind is going to pay $700 for this POS! I bet most venders including Best Buy will tell HP "No Thank You! We don't want any!"

Re:Bust

[doomicon]

You are absolutely correct, and I'm sure a majority of HP employees see it your way. Unfortunately, Cxx's don't listen to the little people below. As they will explain that "you just don't understand the big picture". Big Picture is only 3 months long, quarter to quarter.

Rarely do you see a leader with guts, vision, and the ability to make intelligent decisions based on a long term strategy.

What happened to the fundamentals. Just make a damn good product, offer it at a competitive price, and offer damn good support.

Re:Bust

[bolthole]

Offer an Android tablet, too. Come on, you're a $100 billion corporation and you can afford to develop two different platforms.

they dont have to "afford to" do that. They've already proven they dont have to: all they have to do is make the hardware available to the right people, and they'll make sure Android runs on it for free. What's not to like, from a corporate perspective?

Re:Bust

[Obfuscant]

Why would I want a touchscreen when I have a keyboard? How long do you think I'm going to sit at a desk prodding my monitor screen with a finger before I say 'who the hell thought this was a good idea' and go back to the keyboard and mouse?

I would imagine that it depends on the software interface you are using.

If you've got something written well for a touchscreen, a touchscreen is intuitive, simple, and fast.

If you've got something written for a keyboard and mouse, a touchscreen sucks.

I can't imagine playing Angry Birds on a laptop with just a keyboard/mouse. I find most drawing programs that are mouse-based to be annoying and hard to use. Simple web browsing where everything is linked well, a touchscreen is good. "Go THERE".

But I'd never want a touchscreen for editing documents where there's a lot of words and characters involved. Rearranging an existing document to put pictures here and words over there, yeah, a touchscreen would be reasonable. Creating the words, give me a keyboard. And when I need to enter a URL by hand, touchscreens fail.

Although, I am reasonably impressed with my Android touch-keyboard, which appears to adapt to the kind of stuff I'm entering. Like when / and : appear on main keys for entering URLs, and @ and . for email addresses.

Re:Bust

[Anonymous Coward]

The hardware isn't actually slower, is it? WebOS itself is inefficient (at least, was until the latest patch which was very overdue), which made the whole experience sluggish. Users don't care about inferior hardware, they care about an inferior experience. WebOS (previous to this version) was logging everything (e.g. every dropped packet), to the degree that it actually slowed the whole thing down. And there were probably other inefficiencies too. In any case, enough that every review pointed out how slow and horrible the UI is. It's not actually too shabby now, but it's too late. And I'm rambling.

Re:Bust

[Edzilla2000]

The same Microsoft and OEM that think there is a market for Windows Phone? Where are they at on the phone market right now? 1%? 2%?

Re:Bust

[Pharmboy]

We are in a completely different biz, but what did wonders for us was changing our product line to good/better/best. Three levels, with economy, mainstream, and deluxe being a pimped out version of mainstream with all the options at a discount. So 3 levels, 2 assembly lines since 3rd product is just 2 with all the options.

Whether it is with 2 or 3 levels, simplicity (but with options) makes it easier for the customer and makes them more likely to stay on your website. And obviously, the key to making money is making your site sticky.

Re:Bust

[Anonymous Coward]

The WebOS-based TouchPad was innovative, but it was over-priced. HP proved that by lowering the price to fire-sale levels and it took off. Maybe they should have priced it at about $300 as a loss leader, to build up a market for apps.

This meme is dumb. Reducing the price to fire-sale levels caused sales to take off because fire sale pricing is fire sale pricing, not because the original price was too high. At $99 it became a geek impulse buy with no real downside. By all accounts the web browser was good and the hardware was about what you'd expect from a $500 tablet (maybe not quite as good as iPad2, but solid), so even with no future for apps, the $99 Touchpad was an insanely great value if bought purely as a couch / bed websurfing machine. A hell of a lot better than any cheap crappy $99 Android tablet you could find for that purpose, that's for sure. I was tempted just on that basis, but waited too long and they were all gone.

At $300, nope, not gonna do it. I'd rather spend $200 more and get an iPad, because for several hundred dollars I want something that does a lot more than browse the web today, when I buy it, not at some unpredictable future time once people write apps for it.

Re:Bust

[Jay L]

I think it's that if you are control-freakish enough to make sure there is absolutely no duplication of effort or market share anywhere in the company, you end up stomping out innovation*. Free-market vs. planned economy inside the corporate walls.

* Unless you're Apple, of course.

Re:Bust

[adonoman]

the Nook tries booting from the SD card first before booting from internal storage

Yay for boot-sector viruses!

Re:Bust

[MBCook]

The Touchpad had a 1.2ghz CPU (which I think was dual core), but the iPad 2 has a 1ghz dual core CPU. I'm guessing that the A5 is simply much more efficient per clock, although the graphic processor in the iPad may be responsible for the difference. I read somewhere that WebOS ran much faster on an iPad 2, since the GUI and apps are all HTML they would have been able to test that without too much fuss. I also seem to remember reading that HP was already making the Touchpad when they bought WebOS, so the hardware was already pre-chosen. It wasn't designed for the OS in any way, it was a "This is our tablet platform, ship on it" kind of thing.

Re:Bust

[nschubach]

To be fair, the only reason they see a reason for x86 tablets is the library of Windows apps. I'd go out on a limb and say Windows ARM Tablets will fail horribly and only hurt the Windows image for the casual user when they go to install the same app they have on their desktop on their new/inexpensive Windows ARM tablet. MS would be better off focusing on two systems (Windows Desktop and Windows Phone/Tablet) instead of trying to shoehorn Windows Desktop on a tablet.

Re:Bust

[recoiledsnake]

http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/02/gartner-idc-windows-phone-to-steal-second-place-from-ios-by-2015/

On the other hand, you're absolutely right. Microsoft and their OEMs should dissolve themselves and give the money back to shareholders since failing at one thing means they will fail at another and they shouldn't even try to go against Apple who is the invincible winner forever and ever in tablets. I mean look at the Touchpad and Android tablets failing. Right?

Re:Bust

[nschubach]

It potentially has a lower cost to either Windows Phone or iPhone development because you can even dev it on a free OS (Linux). All you'd need is hardware, no cost in licensing involved.

Re:Bust

[thsths]

> Some, but who in their right mind wants to run Word on a tablet?

I would - it is one of the main uses for a netbook. Speed isn't important, but compatibility is. Throw in a keyboard, and the tablet can do the work, with much less weight.

Re:Bust

[Edzilla2000]

no, they shouldn't disband themselves, but they should stop pouring money down projects with no future.

Let's see, what happened with the Zune?

What happened the courier tablet? Or the Kin phone?

They are making more money off the android patent trolling than they are of windows phone...

And I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that Bing lost around 5 BILLIONS since its creations.

The touchpad only sold well because of the fire sale, when HP sold it at a huge loss...

Re:Bust

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry, I don't get your strategy. Let's see if I've got this right. Drop the strategy that has HP as the largest computer manufacturer in the world, and replace it with the strategy of the number 5 or number 6 (I can't remember where they're at exactly) manufacturer. Is that what you're suggesting?

I'm glad you love your mac, but that seems a pretty piss poor strategy.

Re:Bust

[UnknowingFool]

The confusion is that there will be two Win 8 tablet versions. One for ARM and one for x86. And of course desktop and server versions as well. They'll all be named Win 8 just to make sure you know that MS sells Windows.

Re:Bust

[Grishnakh]

Here in Arizona, you could get along just fine for most of the year with a vehicle that had no windshield wipers. Of course, the first time you have an unexpected rainfall, you'd be in trouble, but then again, the way it is now, we frequently don't have working wipers when that rainfall comes, because after going unused for 9+ months in the hot, dry air, the rubber in the wipers has dried up and cracked, and no longer works effectively at cleaning the windshield. You generally see a big rush of people going to the auto parts stores for new wiper blades when the short rainy season arrives.

Re:Bust

[Anonymous Coward]

As someone who supports lots of iPads (only a few Andriods), I can't wait for it to get here. There are lots of business things (drop downs in Excel, context menus, FLASH, websites with lots of different plugins, that I'm hoping some tablet vendor will support. The current situation sucks for business. Not to mention being able to centrally manage the devices, back them up, and encrypt their drives. iPads are awesome (I have two) but they're not really designed for a corporate environment. I bet someone could really make a killing with the right corporate management product for them.

Re:Bust

[Grishnakh]

What happened the courier tablet?

The courier tablet is a classic example of how broken Microsoft's corporate culture and management is. It seemed like a pretty nice idea, but then, after spending tons of money on it and having a whole team working on it, the CEO finally decides that it doesn't align with the company's interests? Wouldn't it have made more sense to make sure of that before spending so much time and effort developing it? MS's corporate culture is utterly broken; there was an in-depth article recently about the Courier and how everything went down. The problem with MS is that it tries to act like a bunch of separate companies, and they're always fighting each other. It doesn't behave as a cohesive whole. Some moron (probably Bill) thought that "competition is good for innovation!", which is frequently true in a competitive market of multiple companies, and got the bright idea to apply that inside his company, which is an utterly stupid idea, by making all the divisions act as separate little companies all following their own agendas, rather than working for the overall corporation. So the divisions are always fighting each other, wasting resources and money trying to one-up each other, and end up not doing anything really useful, so after all this time, the only things that MS is successful in is Windows, Office, and (after tons of time and investment) Xbox, the first two being its monopoly cash cows. This is no way to run a company, and I've never heard of another company that works this way.

Re:Bust

[Grishnakh]

Assuming what you say is true (Android tablets are underpowered, overpriced, or both), how on Earth does MS think they can jump into that market and do any better? Windows isn't exactly light on resources, and MS doesn't make hardware (they'd basically be stuck with the same hardware the Android tablets use), so they're not going to be able to do anything about the underpowered part. And since Windows's license fees are much higher than Android's, there's no way they're going to beat them on price. The only thing they could beat them on is apps, but that's not going to happen: tablets can't run on Core2 Quad processors, and there's no existing Windows tablet apps (and you can't run current Windows apps on ARM CPUs; you could use emulation, but that'll make "underpowered" tablets seem super-fast), whereas Android (and of course Apple) already have app stores and apps.

This seems like a typical MS move: wait until others have already established a dominant presence in a new market, and then try to unseat them, instead of getting in early, summed up by the phrase "me too".

Re:Bust

[Grishnakh]

You can't run classic Windows apps on a tablet; tablets have ARM cpus, not Intel x86 ones. You could run them through emulators, but that would be dog-slow.

Re:Bust

[PhrstBrn]

Okay, so you're saying, you don't need a full word processor, you need a document reader that can read your documents you prepared somewhere else. Two different things. You saying you don't need the entire Office suit to be able to run, just something that can open and display your prepared documents.

So, having a word processor really isn't a necessity.

Re:Bust

[Amouth]

look at Lenovo you can get decent screens - including IPS screens..

Re:Bust

[brantondaveperson]

Develop a world class, well engineered budget tablet to take the low ground away from Apple

If this is so easy, why has no-one quite managed to do it?

Re:Bust

[ckaminski]

i think it had more to do with best buy than hp....

Re:Bust

[Wyatt Earp]

Since the vast majority of projectors don't use HDMI yet, why is HDMI a requirement?

Although, I had my iPad 2 hooked up via HDMI to a TV yesterday.

Re:Bust

[narcc]

Some, but who in their right mind wants to run Word on a tablet?

The overzealous Apple fans seem to think that using a word-processor on a tablet is a great idea.

Oh, you said "in their right mind".

Re:Bust

[Anonymous Coward]

That's good advice. Two years ago when I bought my last laptop, Lenovo didn't have anything to offer me. I looked again today since you mentioned it, and under Thinkpad T series every model is 1600x900 standard, and the 15" model is upgradeable to 1920x1080. Fuck yes. Dell and HP can both go die in a fire now, I know what my next laptop will be.

Re:Bust

[Anonymous Coward]

It sold very well the single weekend it was on sale at only 'some' Staples stores for $300. You might not buy it for that, but there are plenty of others who did. As a discontinued product with no future whatsoever and little hope of support they sell regularly for $250 on ebay.

Re:Bust

[symbolset]

It is actually 0.6% of daily sales this week, having declined from a peak of about 1.8 in February.

Re:Bust

[narcc]

serious marketing people have switched to iPads quite a while ago

+5 Funny

Re:Bust

[transami]

You don't know? All those android tablets are not keeping their manufactures "afloat" either.

The death of TouchPad boils down to one single factor: Microsoft. If M$ says, "kill it or we'll pull your Windows licenses". What else is their to do? Leo, had an idea: Give up and focus on enterprise. Of course, that got him fired.

Re:Bust

[oakgrove]

Who makes more money on their computers?

Re:Bust

[enrevanche]

That analysis is useless because there are two different markets being compared. The first is a dead one where the product is not being produced and has already set a consumer expectation of a much lower value. The hypothetical one would be viable market where the product is still being produced with expectations of upgrades and at least the potential of a viable app market.

Re:Bust

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right, consumers don't want a Windows 7 tablet, but Businesses DO and they have a LOT of money. Windows 8 is being written to be as much a tablet OS as a desktop/laptop OS. When Microsoft launch this on the market, business will embrace this and the consumer market will follow. Remember home computers????? Where are they now, everyone uses PCs instead.

Re:Bust

[narcc]

Resistive sucks

Nonsense! For many uses, resistive touch screens are much better than capacitive.

Re:Bust

[Anonymous Coward]

the HP Slate 500 was meant for a target market for uses such as myself who need to be able to use stuff like cisco vpn that is not supported on android and use windows apps that are not available on apple. Considering nobody I've ever heard of has an apple based server environment, and vpn is the only way into the network, that leaves a shocking realization... if you can't see the benefits of win 7 on a tablet, then its not for you! It's for the IT crowd who are too cool for laptops, or in my case corporate bought it, why would I say no?

Now why would I ever use my single core tablet over my m15x? Portability, but I don't own say the m11, where that would make it a tough choice for me on what to carry. Personally I wouldn't even consider it, professionally it makes a lot of sense. And even though win 7 is lame on a touchscreen, the whole concept / idea is pretty cool and you can always connect a bluetooth keyboard and mouse into it. It does everything ipad and android based tablets do, in some cases not as good, but it DOES stuff neither one of the aforementioned does, such as run mmc, if you don't know what mmc is, refer to first paragraph.

Who let the astroturfer out of his cage?

Re:Bust

[wisty]

There's nothing wrong with competition.

The problem is, the CEO of Office, Inc. shouldn't be allowed to tell the founders of Courier to disband their startup just because it would be too hard to port Office's product to their new machine.

Re:Bust

[angel'o'sphere]

How would more touchscreens make PCs and laptops better? Touchscreens are sucky interfaces for devices that do (n't) have a keyboard and mouse.

I assume, you ment do have a keyboard and mouse, as I can not see how you want to interact with a device that has no mouse, no keyboard and no touchscreen ... ah I see, you wan't to do bee dances in front of it ... my bad.

Re:Bust

[tehcyder]

Couldn't Windows 8 tablets run windows applications?

Some, but who in their right mind wants to run Word on a tablet?

Oh, I dunno, someone who used Word at work and wanted to be able to read/write Word documents easily? Just a wild guess of course.

Re:Bust

[tehcyder]

How does the cost entry get lower than free? Android dev has no cost entry at all, assuming you already own some sort of computer.

Wah wah, Google didn't give me a free phone and computer, how am I expected to afford to develop my world-changing fart app idea? Also, they should pay for me to do a Computer Science degree.

Re:Bust

[wed128]

People who use tablets for more than fart apps and Angry Birds?

Those people exist?

Re:Bust

[VIPERsssss]

That's funny, when we did our last physical inventory our Slate 500s ran our ERP system and USB scanner just fine.
Probably saved us a half a day or more of data entry.

The apps already exist.

Re:Bust

[Synerg1y]

Name one

iPad

[sexconker]

Is it an iPad? Because people won't buy it unless it's an iPad.

Re:iPad

[Talderas]

It's a HumancentiPad.

Re:iPad

[Kenja]

Yea, all those Kindles people are buying is just to make book burning more efficient.

Re:iPad

[Anonymous Coward]

DRM. Whoops, we don't want you to have that book anymore.

Re:iPad

[Anonymous Coward]

A Kindle is not a tablet, it's a book reader. They're different devices for different purposes. A Kindle will not replace an iPad, and an iPad isn't as good as a Kindle for reading books.

Inconceivable

[Anonymous Coward]

So yea, I'm willing to admit I was wrong when I said the Whitman hire was a good move. I don't even know what to say to this. They are literally rereleasing the exact same product that failed a year ago, in a market that has grown in leaps and bounds over that year. It doesn't even require knowledge of technology or marketing to know that there is no chance this can succeed.

Need to be in the tablet business

[Anonymous Coward]

After being introduced in September, HP's new CEO Meg Whitman announced Oct. 27 that the company 'needs to be in the tablet business.'

Maybe they should buy WebOS - I heard that the company that owns it wants to get out of the tablet business.

Re:Need to be in the tablet business

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe they should buy WebOS - I heard that the company that owns it wants to get out of the tablet business.

They've got a chance to make a great deal because I heard that that company have decided that they really want to be in the desktop PC business - and of course HP put their desktop PC business up for sale. Maybe they can swap.

Re:Need to be in the tablet business

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe they should buy WebOS - I heard that the company that owns it wants to get out of the tablet business.

Ha ha, using webos would make to much sense folks.
This is XXI st century HP we're talking about here.

Re:Need to be in the tablet business

[jseale]

WebOS? That operating system wasn't really intended for mobile PCs IMHO. It's for appliances, home entertainment systems, electronic toys, etc.

Stockpile?

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought these touchpads sold out within weeks after the cut....?
Is best buy refusing to sell them at the discounted price, or am I misreading this?

Re:Stockpile?

[MrEricSir]

Remember what prompted the price cut in the first place? It was Best Buy (and presumably other retailers) unhappy about their big stockpile of WebOS tablets that weren't selling.

That's what the story is referring to.

Re:Stockpile?

[Andy Dodd]

It appears HP still had committments with suppliers to purchase parts - so there was one final production run as it was likely more profitable to build the parts into firesale TouchPads than to just write them off.

Re:Stockpile?

[Anonymous Coward]

The article is vacuous, and the submitter a troll.

The comment about Best Buy was probably intended to be a reference to the companies earlier rant prior to the first fire-sale. The new tablets are designed to run MicroSoft's Windows:
http://www.reghardware.com/2011/10/28/hp_tablet_market_run/
http://www.reghardware.com/2011/11/03/hp_introduces_slate_2_windows_tablet/

Re:Stockpile?

[Anonymous Coward]

The article is in no way vacuous, to an extent that I don't think you know what that word means. And while TFS may imply to an extent that Best Buy complained about a stockpile of Slate tablets, TFA does not make the same insinuation. Also, you seem to be unaware that HP already released a tablet that ran MicroSoft [sic] Windows. It was called the Slate, and it was pretty much exact same thing as this piece of shit they just announced, and it also failed just as epically, albeit with less fanfare, as the TouchPad.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_Slate

Bust

[yog]

The WebOS-based TouchPad was innovative, but it was over-priced. HP proved that by lowering the price to fire-sale levels and it took off. Maybe they should have priced it at about $300 as a loss leader, to build up a market for apps. Amazon's losing money on their Fire tablet, for example. Seems like a smart strategy, and they're big enough to pull it off. Just fire a few of these over-paid execs like Whitman and presto! you have plenty of money for R&D.

Regarding this Slate: at $699 no one's going to buy this moldy old thing. They'll go with Apple or a Fire for $200 or some of the other up and coming budget Android offerings. Come on. Motorola proved that there's no market for a premium priced tablet that under performs compared to an iPad.

And Windows 7--excuse me? Do they really pay these executives millions of dollars to make these kinds of decisions? Heck, I'll take the CEO job for about $250K (with about a $100K golden parachute) and I'll set that house in order. Re-hire the WebOS team that they just fired, develop a world class, well engineered budget tablet to take the low ground away from Apple, and stay in the market for LONGER THAN SIX WEEKS. Offer an Android tablet, too. Come on, you're a $100 billion corporation and you can afford to develop two different platforms.

Oh, and I would keep making PC's and laptops, only make them better. More touch screens, maybe a best-in-class ultra light laptop, etc. Listen to the customers, HP. Corporate America is not dropping out of the desktop and laptop markets any time soon. Consumers don't want a Windows 7 tablet (as far as I know); they want an Apple or an Android.

outdated?

[Synerg1y]

However, by creating a lackluster product in the Slate 2 that runs on a soon-to-be-outdated operating system

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Mobile-and-Wireless/HP-Slate-2-Tablet-PC-Offers-Windows-at-a-Touch-676841/

it'll run windows 8...

That's what submitter gets for reading an article about HP on IBM's website. P.S. they're competitors.

Re:outdated?

[0123456]

it'll run windows 8...

Exactly. Not even released yet and it's already outdated.

Re:outdated?

[shutdown -p now]

It'll run Win8 when it'll be available. Right now it runs Win7. Which, for most users, would equal to "no thanks".

Right now, it may be a decent device for someone who's looking for hardware to test their Win8 Metro apps on in advance, especially for the price (compared to most other Windows tablets, it's cheap). But that's a very narrow niche.

Re:outdated?

[ackthpt]

it'll run windows 8...

Exactly. Not even released yet and it's already outdated.

Very cautious about Windows on a tablet. When XP for tablets came out it was extremely clunky and far to large for the humble resources of a device loaded with low power chips and a slow (by desktop standards) HDD. Perhaps the greatest reason tablets didn't catch on until iPad.

As Win 8 is probably still going to be a Be-All, Do-All OS and crammed with everything, including the kitchen sink, it'll probably not compare to iPad or Android. But that's my speculation.

Re:outdated?

[Shadyman]

It's also not aimed at the consumer market, so it won't likely ever be seen at Best Buy.

Mod article -1 Troll, please.

Re:outdated?

[Missing.Matter]

Do you know much about Windows 8? It runs on ARM, uses less resources than Windows 7, and is designed specifically for touch. I think it will be amazing on tablets (in fact I'm already running the developer preview on my latitude XT and it's a pleasure to use).

Actually, it seems that most people are worried about how Windows 8 will run on desktops rather than tablets!

Re:outdated?

[bolthole]

When XP for tablets came out it was extremely clunky and far to large for the humble resources of a device loaded with low power chips and a slow (by desktop standards) HDD

It ran quite nice on the fujitsu stylistic. very pricy though, comparatively speaking.

Re:outdated?

[UnknowingFool]

How would he know about the performance of a future product from MS that hasn't been released yet? If you have Win 8 beta for ARM, you can enlighten us but you have Win 8 for x86. Other than that all we have is the promises of MS. And MS has already contradicted itself on Win 8 for ARM once. If he is cautious, he has a right to be.

Re:outdated?

[symbolset]

It's Windows on a tablet. Those things go together like cyanide and peanut butter.

Out of touch

[Jerry Rivers]

Most voters in California could see that Whitman is out of touch with reality, but apparently the board of HP is equally out of touch. She is yesterday's player and proves it with this product.

Re:Out of touch

[Archangel Michael]

Most voters in California could see that Whitman is out of touch with reality

That is not what happened. The voters of California chose between two people out of touch with reality. proving that most of California is out of touch with reality, because the (R) party gave us Whitman and the (D) party gave us Moonbeam.

California is after all, the land of fruits and nuts.

Re:Out of touch

[ackthpt]

Most voters in California could see that Whitman is out of touch with reality

That is not what happened. The voters of California chose between two people out of touch with reality. proving that most of California is out of touch with reality, because the (R) party gave us Whitman and the (D) party gave us Moonbeam.

California is after all, the land of fruits and nuts.

How you talk.

Meg was fortunately outed as poor manager. Sitting at the helm of eBay was a cake walk, they hold a dominant position in online auctions, pretty much everyone else threw in the towel and left it to them. So they never really got better and she was collecting a lot of money for being there.

Put her in a company which is struggling to keep pace with the technology market, which was once a leader, and she's a fish out of water. Super poor choice. She'll be out in a year.

Re:Out of touch

[nine-times]

Yeah, as much as anything, the question is "What was HP's board thinking?" Why did they hire Whitman in the first place? I haven't heard anything to indicate that she's qualified.

I don't object to the idea that HP should get into tablets per se, but that doesn't mean that they should put out a tablet just for the sake of putting out a tablet. It's as though they've learned nothing from the past several years.

I think I'm giving up on HP altogether.

Re:Out of touch

[nine-times]

I'm reading more about it, and it looks like their Slate 1 is doing ok in business markets-- so maybe it's not a completely stupid move.

Re:Out of touch

[saleenS281]

If you think that product was brought from design to release in the time she's been CEO, you're nuts. If you think it would be in HP's best interests to cancel a product that they've already bought parts for and manufactured, you're also nuts. Why would they take what is likely a tens of millions of dollar hit on a product that will sell just fine to its target market? Just because YOU are not its target market doesn't mean that nobody wants it.

Re:Out of touch

[saleenS281]

They brought Whitman onto their board because eBay bought a shit-ton of HP gear while she was CEO.

Re:Out of touch

[Archangel Michael]

And Moonbeam couldn't even run Oakland, let alone California the first time. People voted for him because he was the devil we knew. Of course you probably think (R) bad (D) good, I don't suffer that delusion. (R) bad, (D) bad, more so in CA than anywhere else.

Re:Out of touch

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, like Jerry Brown is in touch with reality ...

Brilliant business decision

[sunderland56]

Meg Whitman is just continuing her drive to make eBay successful.

Re:Brilliant business decision

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. In six months time, she's gonna list HP on Ebay.

This

[ackthpt]

This is the sort of brilliance the people of California were very nearly exposed to as a follow up to Governor Ahnold.

Sad to see she's being clueless for millions at HP, but better than clueless for billions in Sacramento.

I think HP should buddy-up with Google.

Re:This

[Anonymous Coward]

actually HP and the state of california have almost identical revenue, HP at 126 Billion, and California at 120, so she can fuck up a roughly equal amount of money.

Re:This

[Anonymous Coward]

Sad to see she's being clueless for tens of thousands at HP, but better than clueless for the hundreds of thousands in Sacramento.

Fixed that for you. Unless you mean for the population of California and not just Sacremento, then it'd be millions. But yeah, there are no where near millions working at HP and there definitely aren't billions in Sacramento, let alone California as a whole.

Re:This

[ackthpt]

actually HP and the state of california have almost identical revenue, HP at 126 Billion, and California at 120, so she can fuck up a roughly equal amount of money.

Have you looked at the California budget in the past couple of years? It's not quite 120 billion anymore. 2011-12 is projected at about 85 billion.

Though I expect post-2008 HP looks a bit lower, too.

Re:This

[Zontar The Mindless]

Poster was referring to dollars, not people.

Re:This

[Anonymous Coward]

Sad to see she's being clueless for millions at HP, but better than clueless for billions in Sacramento.

I believe her salary as CEO is $1.

Sure, she's probably getting huge bonuses and stock options, but the salary is a nice symbolic gesture.

Best Buy was returning TouchPads, not Slates

[WillAdams]

Apparently the Slate has been selling pretty steadily since its announcement --- mostly to business, but Amazon is listing just 4 in stock at the moment.

More positive and informative article here:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-33200_3-57317842-290/surprise-hps-slate-pc-is-a-success/

There aren't that many competitors in the Windows Tablet PC slate-format since Fujitsu quit. I really wish HP would revive the form-factor of the critically-acclaimed Compaq TC-1x00 though:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_Compaq_TC1100

which truly offered the best of all possible worlds.

William

Re:Best Buy was returning TouchPads, not Slates

[transami]

Show me some hard figures. Doing a 9,000 unit run and claiming success b/c you sold 10,000 doesn't fly.

Re:Best Buy was returning TouchPads, not Slates

[Anonymous Coward]

This is why Lenovo is slated to become the #1 PC vendor. Interesting that under IBM's leadership the now-Lenovo products were a loss leader.

Has HP sold off Touchpad?

[unixisc]

Has HP sold of Touchpad to Amazon or B&N or anyone else, or have they just canned the product? The touchpad would have been a lot more acceptable. Who would buy a Windows 7 tablet for $800 when one can buy a better laptop for less, or a better tablet - iPad, Xoom, TouchPad or even PlayBook for less?

crosses fingers

[argStyopa]

....for the next HP sell-off, after which someone jailbreaks the product and makes it actually useful.

Re:crosses fingers

[Shadyman]

But... how do you jailbreak Windows 7?

Re:crosses fingers

[Bradmont]

Jailbreaking is not a thing on the Touchpad (or other WebOS devices). WebOS was meant to be hackable, and all you need to do is enable developer mode by typing in a certain (very widely published) string in the main search box to unhide the dev mode toggle application. If only all mobile device manufacturers were that willing to let users control their own gadgets...

Not a consumer device

[Anonymous Coward]

Granted that the Slate 2's specs are anemic but the article submitter's editorializing is just brain-dead. Best Buy won't be demanding anything since the Slate 2, like its predecessor, is positioned as a business and enterprise product. The requirements and lifecycle are considerably different from consumer products that get updated every season and are built as cheaply as possible.

Re:Not a consumer device

[tverbeek]

Right, and you don't put a pair of cameras (front and back) on a "business and enterprise product". Those are gimmicks aimed squarely at the consumer market.

Re:Not a consumer device

[h4rr4r]

So teleconferencing is not something enterprise folks do?
News to me.

They can suck my nuts

[dcherryholmes]

After what they did to webOS, and after dangling that one last run for late October, then selling them exclusively to employees and then to Best Buy who decided we had to buy another PC to get one, well.... see the subject line. The can go to hell. /butthurt

No company "Needs" to be in tablets

[Anonymous Coward]

Tablets are an emerging market to be sure. But not every hardware company needs to be making tablets - just as not every one of them needs to have it's own phone. It just isn't a great fit for HP - they do desktops and laptops well. They do Netbooks well enough. But they just don't seem to get tablets. Perhaps if they stopped being so much in a hurry to get a tablet on the market and focused on getting a good tablet out the door, they could change that. Instead they are just tossing out more and more shovel-ware.

Riiiight

[unassimilatible]

But career politician Jerry "Governor Moonbeam" Brown and his 5 or 6 government pensions, owned by the unions, and who created the CA public employee collective bargaining mess in the first place, he's "in touch?"

Re:Riiiight

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realize that being close to unions, which are literally a union of regular Joe Schmoe workers, is pretty much exactly the definition of being 'in touch'?

Much, much, much more so than an executive like Whitman would be.

Re:Riiiight

[Jerry Rivers]

But career politician Jerry "Governor Moonbeam" Brown and his 5 or 6 government pensions, owned by the unions, and who created the CA public employee collective bargaining mess in the first place, he's "in touch?"

Did I say Brown was better? Show me where I said that.

Will not work

[inhuman_4]

Windows tablets suck, period. I don't know anyone who wants one, and I can think of a reason anyone should buy one. Windows is not a low power OS, it doesn't work on low power CPU's, and it's interface was not designed for touch.

Most people want an iPad, the poor and geeks go for Android. There is no room in the market for Windows based tablets.

Re:Will not work

[Anonymous Coward]

People who want the iPad have one and are waiting for the 3. People who want tablets at a sensible price will be using Android versions.

Re:Will not work

[Missing.Matter]

I want one... well, I have one, and I want a Windows 8 tablet bad.

Let me back up. I've owned Windows Tablets since the HP TC1100. It was a pretty good machine for its day, but it was a little large. Then I owned a couple of convertibles, including the Dell Latitude XT with multitouch screen. This was a great computer, due in no small part to windows 7. The larger task bar is a perfect size for fingers, jump lists can be accessed by flicking, adjusting DPI allows for larger buttons, and there are a number of touch and pen features that most people don't even know about (flick shortcuts, single touch gestures, multitouch gestures, and bounce feedback) built right into the OS.

Sure not a lot of apps were built specifically for touch, but I got through my day to day activities using pen/touch in windows 7 without a huge amount of compromise. What's more, I got actual work done. I do research in robotics, and having a full PC + pen was absolutely crucial for my work. I used that computer for everything from taking notes (in meetings and in the field), writing technical reports (both in tablet and laptop mode), giving presentations and annotating the screen, and even reading technical papers and marking them up.

Contrast this with the iPad (I own the iPad 1) and similar modern tablets. I use my iPad for exactly 3 things: internet, email, and reading. I find it great for these tasks (maybe not the best internet machine, but still pretty good) but otherwise I can't do anything useful with it. I can't take notes on it mostly because they all lack styluses, I can't type documents because of the lack of a full-featured word processor (Pages mobile doesn't cut it) and likewise Powerpoint is much better than the mobile keynote, especially in terms of presenter features and annotation (although I'll admit I haven't tried it since it first came out so maybe they improved this).

In all, I can't wait for Windows 8 tablets because they promise to be very touch friendly but still offer power users like me the ability to actually get my work done, rather than simply entertain myself. As for this current tablet HP Slate 2, I think it looks like a great machine and am certainly considering buying it.

Re:Will not work

[inhuman_4]

You certainly provide some good reasons why you use it, sounds a lot like how I use my netbook. Have you considered Asus Transformer? It would provide stylus, keyboard, better touch, better battery, and probably lower price. I've never used the Transformer, and obviously I don't know how well it would fit your needs, but you sound like it's target audience.

Re:Will not work

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know anyone who wants one,

Try getting out of your mom's basement. I know a lot of people that the only reason they don't have a tablet is because they don't run Windows.

Re:Will not work

[Missing.Matter]

Yes I was very close to getting an Asus Transformer... only thing holding me back really was waiting to see what ICS will offer and I'm unsure if the apps will fit my needs. Most important is the ability to take notes and the ability to give presentations. There is one real killer app for Tablet PCs called OneNote, developed by Microsoft. It's pretty much the best note taking app out there, and I've tried them all including Evernote. So it would be hard to give up any of the features I'm used to in OneNote. As for presentations I really need a presenter view that I can ink on. Aside from that I'm really open to what platform I use.

Re:Will not work

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong, I am waiting for the Windows 8 tablets, about a year out.

Re:Will not work

[babywhiz]

Amen. I would love to be able to deploy these things out to the shop floor...it would help, IT, and supervisors, heck, even the regular Joe running a CNC machine. We have several applications that only have Windows versions. I was working on a DesignJet 4000 printer in the Eng office yesterday. Even on my jailbroken iPhone, the pdf file was hard to read, and didn't allow me to make notes in the pdf file, so I ended up printing a copy of the service tech pdf so I could make notes about which step in the instructions that the printer failed/gave errors. Tablets still have a ways to go, in order to meet every business need. Having a decently priced, non-neutered version of Windows is one step.

Re:Will not work

[Voyager529]

There is no room in the market for Windows based tablets.

Also, there is a market for maybe six computers, and 640KBytes of RAM should be enough for anybody.

Yes, iOS and Android based tablets are sufficient for the overwhelming amount of consumer usage cases, but that doesn't mean that there is no room for a Windows tablet.

One thing that always irked me was the fact that there is no such thing as a true desktop replacement tablet. Overkill for OneNote, but I'm sure that I could find more than a few die-hard Mac-based graphic designers who would begrudgingly eyeball a Windows tablet if it had the guts to run Photoshop and drawing was possible on a 15" convertible screen. They'd be expensive no doubt, but consider that Wacom has an entire industry built around a stylus-based input peripheral. Half the graphic design majors I went to school with had one, and the other half did their best to bum one during final project week. Clearly it's not a machine that would appeal to everyone, but if IBM saw a market for a laptop with two screens and an integrated Wacom pen input, then I believe it's safe to say that more than a few people who make a lot more money than me saw a niche worth filling.

That's almost the point: Let Apple and Google duke it out for people who are happy with tablets that do Angry Birds and Facebook, because you're right - there's no room for Windows tablets there. Shipping yards, UPS drivers, lawyers, and graphic designers all represent sizeable niches that Apple doesn't appear to care to target, so a Windows based tablet that runs Windows applications and allows for pen-based input is HP's for the taking.

Re:Will not work

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry - Windows 8 will fix all those issues, whether you like it or not.

Re:Will not work

[Flector]

It's pointless to say Windows 8 tablets suck - it's like saying Amazon Fires suck. The great thing about Android is it's (sometimes) rootable. If there's a superuser equivalent in a Windows 8 tablet at a reasonable price, I'd buy one anytime.

Re:Will not work

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong. There are plenty of IT shops that want a decently performing Windows tablet that integrates with their existing security infrastructure.

Re:Will not work

[symbolset]

Or three years, depending...

Re:Will not work

[Anonymous Coward]

Just a wee bit biased then...

Re:Will not work

[Anonymous Coward]

Are most people rich then?

Re:Will not work

[Imbrondir]

You're dreaming. Windows tablets sucks NOW. Much due to no ARM support, which will come in W8. I'm not sure how the ARM w8 kernel will work compared to the linux one, but on laptops w7 seems to do a quite decent job in prolonging battery life. W8 preview seems to be rather create a crappy desktop experience to go all in on Tablet experience, so the touch input seems to be fixed as well. Unlike Android and iPad you can also easily share code written for W8 desktop and tablet (maybe everything)

If you ask me the only hurdle for windows tablets is the price. Here the cheapest home edition costs almost 300$ (50% off on OEM install). Right now I can buy a good quality Chinese Capacitive 10" 1.3GHz Cortex A8 Android tablet in rather low volumes for 160$. When W8 gets out that price may very well be the retail price. Will people pay 100-200% extra to get windows on their tablets? I doubt it. Will MS lower OS costs to WP7 level (15-20$) on their biggest cash cow by far, maybe effectively halving MS revenue or more? I doubt it even more.

Re:Will not work

[Anonymous Coward]

There are plenty of corporate uses for a Windows Slate. If you have internal software that only runs on windows (and don't have the development budget to change that), a slate running win7 pro is great. We have 2 of them at the company I work for and they are humming away wonderfully. The people that use them love them. Are they perfect? No. Windows 7 is not as good at the touch interface as iOS, but it is far far better than XP was.
That being said, I wouldn't buy one of these for home use. I did try it for a bit, and the interface just isn't there, imho. I wasn't real impressed with the iPad, either, but that is just personal preference (I am not a Windows fanboy, either - if I could afford to pay the premium Apple commands, I would have a MacBook in a heartbeat).

But not at boutique prices

[roc97007]

HP, there is a market for a well built tablet that's not an iPAD. But not at the prices you were trying to charge.

Re:But not at boutique prices

[Anonymous Coward]

HP, there is a market for a well built tablet that's not an iPAD. But not at the prices you were trying to charge.

Hey, that is really fucking hard to do.

Re:But not at boutique prices

[roc97007]

If it were easy, everyone would be doing it.

But anyway, there are a pantload of Chinese tablets in the $200 -- $300 range. If they can do it, anyone can, especially since they're all made in China anyway.

Re:But not at boutique prices

[indiechild]

Amazon is soon going to roflstomp and claim that market niche. There'll be no room for a 3rd major contender.

Re:But not at boutique prices

[roc97007]

Amazon made a couple of mistakes; no removable storage, and heavy dependence on the cloud, which means you need a signal to get at your stuff. Until that changes, there's room for another platform.

Family Guy

[Anonymous Coward]

Shut up Meg....

Too Soon

[Gyorg_Lavode]

Personally, I'm semi-excited about the idea of a Windows 8 transformer tablet (similar to the other asus transformers) running on an ivy bridge CPU. It could be a solid daily driver when paired with a remotely accessable desktop for the heavy lifting.

That said, a windows 7 tablet running an atom CPU with no keyboard is rediculious. It's not a computer and it's not a tablet. It's a still-born bastard.

Ultimately though, I'm not convinced that an iPad plus a solid Windows 8 ivy bridge laptop next year won't be the best of all worlds.

Re:Too Soon

[symbolset]

I love my Transformer. Asus did kick off the netbok fad with Linux and convert it to Windows to die. Maybe they've learned from this. Or maybe this is a feint to grab up the Android tablet market and try to convert it to W8 later. I dunno. But I'm going to get me a Transformer Prime before it's too late.

Re:Bust: ARM vs Intel

[neurocutie]

Don't forget that Windows 8 is supposedly moving to ARM CPUs for mobile/low power devices. So it won't run x86 binaries, though presumably MS Windows apps like Office could be ported...

the problem with the HP Touchpad:

[Thud457]

People aren't going to drink RC when they can get Coca-Cola for the same price.
Note I didn't use the canonical hamburger/steak analogy since branding is a big part of this equation.
I see no reason why bogging down the hardware with Windows is going to improve their situation. Oh, wait, there's that branding again. Of course, many would see Windows as being a negative brand for something that's specifically intended to not be a desktop.

Re:the problem with the HP Touchpad:

[Zontar The Mindless]

People aren't going to drink RC when they can get Coca-Cola for the same price.

I would consider selling my own mother right now for an RC Cola and a Moon Pie. Do you have any idea how hard those are to find in Stockholm?

Re:the problem with the HP Touchpad:

[tehcyder]

Microsoft and Windows are much more familiar to the public than Android in terms of brand recognition.

Sounds like Texas Instruments T99/4A of 1982

[G3ckoG33k]

Sounds like Texas Instruments T99/4A of 1982 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TI99/4A

Release date June, 1981 (99/4 in June, 1979)
Discontinued October, 1983
Operating system TI BASIC
CPU TI TMS9900 @ 3.0 MHz
Memory 256 bytes "scratchpad" RAM + 16 KB VDP (graphics RAM)

Good looking but stood no chance against the brand new 'IBM compatibles'

History repeats itself

Meg's a Moron

[r00td00d]

She ruined the 'mom and pop' environment at eBay, and now she's going to take down the monster at HP from inside it's own walls, one brick at a time.

Time to take HP out back behind the shed

[Anonymous Coward]

...and shoot it.

HP, let's get this straight:

You had a potential runner-up, axed it, burned your bridges with retailers and suppliers and customers all at the same time, and then you want to warp back in time to sell an unsuccessful tablet for even more money than the last tablet you over-priced, all while running an OS that will soon be outdated AND unlike its successor isn't designed for tablet form factors?

Apparently the blow being given to HP execs is of the highest quality...as it has rotted their brains, which are now dripping out their nose.

As the owner of a Touchpad, and the user of an iPad, Pre 2, and iPad2, I can say right now that this is less about HP's engineering, and more about HP's complete management clusterfuck. Sure, HP needs to get a toe into the tablet biz if they want to stay in the consumer market, but fuck-all, they already have a tablet-ready OS that works low-power, and doesn't require fucking Windows.

This isn't about how shitty they treated everyone with the Touchpad, It's about how they keep making dumb decisions. If you're smart, I'd start buying options to short HP stock in a few years.

Re:Loss Leaders

[Anonymous Coward]

It's been shown in Apples own quarterly reports that they are NOT losing money on iPad sales. They are making a very nice profit.

Slate 2 is a non-starter out of the gate

[Fallen Kell]

I am sorry, but this device simply won't work. I have to agree 100% with the article. People are not going to buy a device more expensive or even at the same price point of the iPad 2 without something that blows the iPad 2 away. Windows 7 on an atom most certainly WON'T do that (I know since I have attempted to do that for HTPC's). The performance will be abysmal. On top of that, Win 7 is not really designed for tablets. There is no "app store" where users can easily find all the applications they can installed on the device. And priced at the same point as the 32GB iPad 2 with 3G wireless data connectivity, it has no hope of competing. Even at $100 less, people would still buy the 16GB iPad 2 given the choice. It needs either to have twice the performance, or be priced less than the cheapest iPad 2 in order to get market-share.

Here we go again...

[T-Mckenney]

This whole deal trying to shrink a PC into a tablet form factor has been tried, tried, tried again, tried yet again, and ultimately, failed. PC tablets are a joke. The Tablet market needs its own Operating System and its own Platform. I'm very happy that Microsoft is trying its hand in shrinking Windows into a metamorphic interface that can adapt to the form factor (A La Windows 8). But that OS is over a year away. Android and iOS did it right, and others are following. Take the hint, HP. You should have gave your WebOS tablet another chance. Not revert back to a failed product. Morons. -T

Dear HP.....

[Lumpy]

Please pull your head out of your ass and do the following...

Buy a iPad2, take it apart.

Build something better at the same price point.

Put a vanilla tablet android on it and leave the bootloader UNLOCKED.

You will win compared to all other non apple tablets. The techies will love you because they can easily put their favorite flavor of OS tweaks on it, your regular users will love you because it's a non screwed up Android release.

Everyone will be happy, you will make money and dominate the tablet market.

If you pull typical HP tricks by locking the bootloader and modifying the OS to have HP crap in it, you will completely and utterly fail.

Re:Dear HP.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Buy a iPad2, take it apart.

Build something better at the same price point.

Hard to do when apple has locked up the best prices on the essential parts by buying in bulk.

Put a vanilla tablet android on it and leave the bootloader UNLOCKED.

Not as smooth/intuitive as ios. Not even available unless Google likes you.

You will win compared to all other non apple tablets. The techies will love you because they can easily put their favorite flavor of OS tweaks on it, your regular users will love you because it's a non screwed up Android release.

The techies will love you, true...

Everyone will be happy, you will make money and dominate the tablet market.

If you pull typical HP tricks by locking the bootloader and modifying the OS to have HP crap in it, you will completely and utterly fail.

You'll probably fail anyway.

Apple doesn't do loss leaders

[Quila]

Apple makes major profit on each iPad.

HP will also have a problem competing because Apple buys massive supplies and factory capacity well in advance in order to secure the lowest prices and exclusives on the latest tech.

HP used to have the talent and vision to create a vertically integrated product like the iPad. These were the guys behind the PA-RISC and HP-UX, plus the hardware talent to make everything from a fetal monitor to a mainframe. And now they can't pull off a decent tablet?

Re:Apple doesn't do loss leaders

[metrometro]

Fair point on Apple. In that case it's huge, huge volume that's driving the price down. However, I still think that without itunes and related properties, Apple would have priced that higher at launch.

HP has hit the iceberg... Intel isn't helping.

[N!NJA]

Exactly year ago, when HP released the Slate 500 (the predecessor to this Slate 2), there was a lot excitement among Tablet PC enthusiasts regarding the device. the device had been hinted by Ballmer at CES, then touted by HP, then mysteriously killed by the company, then suddenly resurrected by HP. Once released, the device sold out remarkably quick and became a source of frustration to those that awaited months for production to catch up with demand. It was obvious that HP had underestimated the Slate 500's appeal. The device got mostly good reviews from its owners. But at at treat point, HP had already shifted focus to the Touchpad, which got all attention, marketing and resources.

If you needed dual-boot capability, MS Office (or LibreOffice, like me!), Winamp, Notepad++, VirtualBox, Firefox and other Windows apps; and you happened to be into tablet computing; the Slate 500 offered you a platform to both consume media and do real work on the go....with all the amenities of laptops such USB, HDMI, SD Card slot, Bluetooth, etc. Truth be told, not cheap as a netbook, but you'd get a business-grade machine with decent durability, a docking station and a touchscreen.

Fast forward 12 months to this Slate 2. Intel convinced HP to "upgrade" (this word, plus "innovate" have truly lost their meaning) from the original Atom Z540 used on the Slate 500, to the slower Atom Z670. Not only is the CPU inside the "upgraded" Slate 2 quite slower, but its integrated graphics suffers from some crippling driver-induced sickness that prevents the GPU from even performing at the levels of the year-old Slate 500. Not only the new HP Slate 2 got beat by its predecessor from a year ago, but it also arrived too late, as Fujitsu released a slate of similar specs (the Q550) about 6 months ago.

I own 2 Tablet PCs (I'm handwriting this from one of them right now), but if you want to try this platform (this is not a toy), do yourself a favor and get a Tablet PC from someone else (the Samsung Series 7 Slate looks good). HP has lost its way.

Re:HP has hit the iceberg... Intel isn't helping.

[nnnnnnn]

I used to be a fan of the HP convertible tablets, but they managed to even screw that up with a horrendous design of the Tm2t. Now they are out of the consumer convertible tablet biz and only the 2760p convertible product line remains, which is overpriced but decent. Fujitsu Q550 looks nice, Samsung Series 7 breaks the bank.

Mod parent +1 funny

[WiiVault]

I read this on my Touchpad and almost died. Bravo sir!

Windows 8

[symbolset]

How about we worry about Windows 8 when it's an actual operating system shipping in actual products, or at least a RTM version? We had developer previews of Longhorn for about five years as it was repeatedly refactored, and then they shipped Vista. Right now people who are thinking about buying this thing need to consider what it is now, what it can do now. They don't need to be thinking about stuff that someday might - or might not - happen.

Infected link

[Anonymous Coward]

Clicking on the link in the story leads to a website that gives a warning saying your PC is infected and then attemps to run scan64.loknoe.in.a fake antivirus program.

Slate 500

[wideBlueSkies]

I picked up one of the slate 500's in the spring. It's a decent enough little box, runs quick considering the processor/os - well within the expectation of what you'd want from a tablet. It's nice that I can run visio, excel and word on it and at least look at my files.. that were created on other machines.

But, using it for actual productivity has been a problem. The pen / input setup leaves much to be desired in terms of accuracy. And I can't find a decent on screen keyboard anywhere.

Re:Slate 500

[Anonymous Coward]

erm, Windows Vista/7 both have a built in on-screen keyboard. I don't think anyone makes a replacement. It automatically became available on my computer the second it discovered the graphics tablet. And I have a desktop.

Control Panel\Ease of Access\Ease of Access Center\Use the computer without a mouse or keyboard
Tick the "Use On-Screen Keyboard"

Wait for Windows 8

[brainzach]

It would be a smart move if it came with Windows 8 at a price point of $499. HP has an opportunity to create the flagship Windows 8 device if they play it right.

If they release the device more expensive than the iPad with an old OS, it will be a failure.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Not just volume

[Quila]

Apple pays up front for an expansion or upgrading of a company's manufacturing capabilities, to be paid off by low prices and/or exclusivity. Most suppliers have a huge risk in ramping up for more capacity or new technologies to handle a company's needs, but they don't have this risk with Apple. That's quite the incentive.

Last year Apple committed $4 billion to this and prepaying for volume for two years.

I don't know about the iTunes factor. A while back, iTunes was just a way to sell more iPods, and even operated at a loss.

As a developer

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would I invest my time to build an app for an OS that the manufacture just fired everyone?

Re:Bust: ARM vs Intel

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

God.

Windows will ALWAYS suck. It's a universal constant.

Get that NOW.

Look at the "Metro" phone 7. WHAT THE FUCK is that ENORMOUS black bar eating 20% of available screen real estate!!???!

Seriously. I need a fucking, moron GUI control with a tiny arrow on it to know I can swipe sideways?

Hey, Ballmer, YOU WILL NEVER GET A FUCKING CLUE! YOU WILL ALWAYS SUCK! You can't even chase Apple with half the incompetence of Google!

Metro is a turd, and there's no polishing it.

"Furious" Best Buy execs?

[spmkk]

...when furious Best Buy executives demanded HP to take back their thousands of unsold tablets piling up in storage.

This gave me pause. On what planet is it your problem if a stocking distributor voluntarily buys more of the widgets you're manufacturing than he has buyers for? Best Buy (and other retailers) buys stock based on their own projections. HP didn't owe it to them to "take back" a single unit (unless it was defective) - that's like a grocery store demanding that General Mills buy back cases of Lucky Charms because customers turned out to prefer Honey Nut Cheerios.

Re:"Furious" Best Buy execs?

[nedlohs]

They lose faith in your products selling and since they don't want to get burnt twice buy less (or none) of all your other products, and advertise them less, don't put them in prominent locations in the store, etc. So sure HP doesn't have to take them back, but it might do them more financial harm not to.

Or they aren't actually buying them up front but just have them on consignment.

Not the same product

[symbolset]

The new one has an even slower processor, is almost twice as thick, and weighs almost twice as much.

Bust

[kikito]

Bust

Soon-to-be-outdated OS?

[Tomsk70]

Yeah, and I won't use IOS5 because IOS6 will be out late next year. After all, why would people possibly want Win7 on a tablet?

This has to be the dumbest byline on a slashdot article I've ever seen.

uhm... make more Touchpads!

[jerryjnormandin]

If you disable all the logging and performance reporting to HP the touchpad is actually fast. I have one. When I noticed what was running and reporting in the background I killed it. I like my touchpad and the Eclipse development plugin works well!

Frustrating...

[Anonymous Coward]

Give me webOS, you rat bastards!