HP Reportedly Cancels Plans for Windows 7 Tablet 181
A recent post up at TechCrunch claims that HP's "Slate" tablet has been canceled. Officials details for the tablet were limited, though a leaked internal presentation indicated it had an 8.9" screen, a 1.6GHz Atom processor, and ran on Windows 7. Some are now speculating that HP may experiment with porting WebOS to a similar device. Quoting: "Will WebOS emerge as a successful operating system for tablet devices? That seems very unlikely given the dominance of the closed Apple OS and the likely success of the open Android and Chrome operating systems from Google. To get traction from third-party developers with WebOS, HP will need to sell a lot of units. And it's not clear what they'd gain from all that effort, anyway. HP knows how to build and sell hardware, not operating systems."
The real story... (Score:5, Interesting)
The real story about HP's purchase of of Palm is that now they have access to versions of Linux that run on everything from their SuperDome Supercomputer all the way down to cell phones. It's been the dream of HP for a long time to have one operating system that runs across the whole range of hardware that HP sells.
So I can see they would cancel the Windows 7 based Slate, and will probably replace it with a WebOS based Slate. Contrary to the obviously less than clued in article says, it's all Linux, be it Android, Chrome or WebOS.
ttyl
Farrell
Dell coming out with Android Tablets (Score:5, Interesting)
Not So Sure (Score:5, Interesting)
I asked someone at HP about this on Friday, and this was her answer...
Heads up on your Slate post to me this morning. I had to delete it! I flagged the rumor to our team and they asked me not to comment on it at all. Not that I said anything either way about the status of the slate, personally I thought it was laughable, but they said they wanted to manage the rumors and not want anyone to address it. I should hear something back soon and when I do, I'll share it.
If the PR team is planning to "manage the rumors", I'm hesitant to believe that the rumor is accurate. After all, if HP was really killing the Slate, why wouldn't they want word out as soon as possible, or why would they care about managing what's said?
One of the other rumors going around is that they're ditching Win7 for WebOS on the tablet, but the hardware will stay mostly the same. That's possible, but I'm wondering what the benefit would be to them if they already had a Slate ready to go with Win7, but opting to ditch it just because of the software. Personally, I've been hoping for a Win7 tablet for some time now, and there's been plenty of other positive feedback from the idea on HP's Facebook page. I'd rather see them put two SKUs out whereby the software was basically the only difference. The WebOS one would be cheaper and likely have better battery life, but the Win7 version could run desktop apps. It'd be trivial to do, but I guess we'll have to wait for the official word.
Re:Who writes this crap? (Score:3, Interesting)
There hardware slipped a lot in the 90s. I new a guy who started to work for them as an engineer and we talked about how their pcs at the time were utter sh*t. I don't expect much has changed as of late. They generally score pretty low in the reliability ratings. Yeah, this tablet had me about as excited as an enema. Compaq/HP laptops generally seem to do the worst, so what does that tell you. I know my Acer isn't far behind (and it is pretty crappy and cheap to be honest), but it still is running just fine. Anymore these days it seems like everything is made so cheaply in china with subpar surface mounting that I really don't expect hardly anything to last more than a year or two. A far cry from the 5-10 years you could eek out of 90s gear. I went through 3 mp3 players before I realized that they are all built so cheaply that they can't take any sort of abuse at all. My last sandisk fuze lasted me about 3 months before the surface mounts failed. Sure I dropped it about 3-4 times and even knocked the metal case off the back, but that sure doesn't say a lot about a device when it can't take a couple of 3-4 foot drops. My old powershot 590IS was a lot more sturdy than that, and it was a freaking plastic camera!
Re:Who writes this crap? (Score:4, Interesting)
MP/E and HP-UX are what? Chopped Liver?
Both are very well established and stable OS's (I've worked with both), but they aren't "consumer" products (unless you happened to buy the "like new" HP-3000 from Prof. Frink's garage sale).
Over the last several years the people at Palm created good software that was delivered on marginal hardware and sold via substandard marketing. HP has the hardware & manufacturing and marketing know-how to re-establish Palm's software lines. The real question is going to be "can HP bring the Palm name and/or technology back to the marketplace in time to be successful?"
Re:Not So Sure (Score:3, Interesting)
I could see how they'd want to manage it in the sense of "let us put it off until we have the slicky material for what we're doing in two years time" from the PR team.
Yeah, right (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Not So Sure (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, I'm reading this exactly the opposite way - if HP were not killing the Slate a simple response would be sufficient, something like - "Of course no. That rumor is ludicrous. We are still shipping the Slate in the already announced timeframe."
On the other hand, if they are "killing" the Slate and, say, replacing it with the same hardware but running WebOS, they probably need time to assess how much time will that take, or whatever, so they can come out and say - "We are killing the current Slate device if favor of releasing so-and-so in six months."
I may, too, be reading it wrongly, though. Probably it's best if we don't assume either way until HP comment on the matter or release the device.
Re:Who writes this crap? (Score:3, Interesting)
50% bigger screen than Apple's next-gen iPhone [androidcentral.com] that was leaked, (4.3"), and yet it's still a smartphone, Small enough to fit comfortably in one hand, unlike the iPad.
HDMI out, runs flash, works as a hotspot for up to 8 other devices, Yes, it even does pinch-to-zoom. And at 4.3", it's got 50% more surface area than the current iPhone (and the leaked iPhone's screen is even smaller).
A tablet's too big to just shove in your pocket or purse. The iPhone's screen is too small to really share. This is "just right". It's a tablet-killer. So maybe HP sees that the tablet market, after more than a decade of trying to take flight, is going to nosedive, and will come out with something Palm-ish in a 4.3" format?
Re:Who writes this crap? (Score:2, Interesting)
I know you were going for funny and got it, so I get the joke and I'm not hateful. You had to dig back a quarter century for that.
For those who don't remember: Once upon a time IBM owned computing. They owned the datacenter and the IBM PC was the only PC. It was not until their dominance in the field was threatened by challengers that the phrase "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM" became common. It's an '80's reference. It was the end of IBM's dominance in the datacenter. Once the salespeople had to say that the game was over.
Incidentally, the IBM PC was an accidental rogue engineering program that got out of control and managed to release product before Corporate understood what was happening. By the time the suits understood what was going on it was all over. There's a lesson there.
If the salesman has to resort to telling you that you won't get fired for buying his product, then he lied. You boss pays you to think about what's best for your organization, not to avoid unemployment.