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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."
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.
Is it an iPad? Because people won't buy it unless it's an iPad.
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.
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.
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.
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
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.
The pursuit of absolute tolerance leads to the most rigorous and ludicrous intolerance. - REX MURPHY
Meg Whitman is just continuing her drive to make eBay successful.
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.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
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
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
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.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
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.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
....for the next HP sell-off, after which someone jailbreaks the product and makes it actually useful.
-Styopa
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.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
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?
Windows 8 has the same hardware requirements as Windows 7 and is said to be slightly smaller and faster.
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.
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.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
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."
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
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.
This space for rent.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
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.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
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!
Their test equipment was also Good Stuff.
Their test equipment is still good stuff. It's just that HP is called Agilent nowadays.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
"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.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
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?
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.
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.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
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?
This space for rent.
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.
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?
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!
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
The new one has an even slower processor, is almost twice as thick, and weighs almost twice as much.
Help stamp out iliturcy.