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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.
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.
Meg Whitman is just continuing her drive to make eBay successful.
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.
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 Not even released yet and it's already outdated.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 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.