News - HP provides a closer look at upcoming Slate PC

[HEXUS]

The world's largest computer manufacturer shows off its latest creation.

Read more.

[MSIC]

"Special Update"???
Desperate and knee-jerk update, more like it.

sporting nothing other than Microsoft's Windows 7 operating system

Agreed - not suitable, even it does do touch. Adding touch to an OS does not make it a 'touch OS'.
That said, it could be a nice device if cheap enough (i might even be interested at approx £350), but right now i reckon that Apple could do it better.

a 5in toushcreen

It looks bigger than 5" to my eye though - is that right?

[Funkstar]

10" slate that you can turn into a netbook by clipping on a keyboard for a bit more than a regular netbook price and you have me very interested.

I've been using my netbook a lot for watching video while offshore recently, and something that size without a keyboard would be perfect for me. Or for light web browsing in bed it would be good too. My convertable tablet PC from a few years ago was just far too heavy for that (also you had to use a stylus, no finger input for that one)

[TheAnimus]

Funk those things have been around for 8+ years.

They are really quite awesome for uni. I sold my Tecra M4 full tablet two weeks ago to a friend who is still in education (lazy PHD!). The ability to make notes so elegantly, write down equations and have them appear in LaTeX is just what they want. Even the linux J'aid are apparently tempted by one.

Downside is since uni I've not needed one at all. And I can't see the need changing.

MSIC, win7 is VERY good on touch screens, have a play with the HP Touchsmart or something, it allows you to do everything you can with keyboard and mouse in a familiar environment, and things like OneNote are truely amazing value for money. The problem is what happens when people want only a limited subset, should they run a whole large multi-purpose OS?

[mikerr]

It so annoys me that tablets have been around so long,
yet apple is releasing a crippled one today (iphone os)
and everyone is raving about it even before release

[Grey M@a]

It so annoys me that tablets have been around so long,
yet apple is releasing a crippled one today (iphone os)
and everyone is raving about it even before release

It's the typical Apple following though. People rave about a crippled Phone OS based tablet and because it's Apple its the best thing since sliced bread when in reality its a crippled bit of over priced tech. Steve Jobs could drop a turd on the stage and polish it and the media would be in a frenzy over it. People hoping for prices of around 300 - 400 might be disappointed if the CNET price leak of $999 is anything to go by.

I use an Apple Mac Mini myself at work for a number of things and it's great at what it does but it isn't the be all and end all for a computer tbh, it fails at a lot of things. I am with you, I just don't get all the hype over Apple products.

[dangel]

I'd consider picking up a keyboardless netbook-based slate for general browsing etc.

How's this sound?

- Atom dual core
- 2gb RAM
- Ion(2?)
- wifi/bluetooth (latter gives you keyboard support effectively)
- Win7
- Smallish SSD
- 300-400 quid max.


I want a 'proper' OS and 7 has enough 'touch' for what i really want to do - especially given you could whack together multitouch apps for it as a front end dead easily. For what I want to do with it I can't see W7 being a problem personally (in fact, given I'd like to run windows apps it's a huge plus).

[Grey M@a]

I'd consider picking up a keyboardless netbook-based slate for general browsing etc.

How's this sound?

- Atom dual core
- 2gb RAM
- Ion(2?)
- wifi/bluetooth (latter gives you keyboard support effectively)
- Win7
- Smallish SSD
- 300-400 quid max.


I want a 'proper' OS and 7 has enough 'touch' for what i really want to do - especially given you could whack together multitouch apps for it as a front end dead easily. For what I want to do with it I can't see W7 being a problem personally (in fact, given I'd like to run windows apps it's a huge plus).

So something like a slate/tablet style archos 5 with the specs above

[mikerr]

Dell do a touchscreen netbook for £399 (maybe less)
Inspiron 2100

Oddly they only sell it to education though.

[MSIC]

MSIC, win7 is VERY good on touch screens, have a play with the HP Touchsmart or something, it allows you to do everything you can with keyboard and mouse in a familiar environment, and things like OneNote are truely amazing value for money. The problem is what happens when people want only a limited subset, should they run a whole large multi-purpose OS?

That's fair enough, i dont have experience of touch Win 7, so i'll happily defer to your experience. In general though, the two best touch interfaces that I have used have been iPhone OS3, and (some while before that) PalmOS

It's the typical Apple following though. People rave about a crippled Phone OS based tablet and because it's Apple its the best thing since sliced bread when in reality its a crippled bit of over priced tech.

I'm actually not sure if i'm an Apple 'fan' as such, since i've only ever used Windows or Linux PCs in my whole computing experience (since about 1994) (although actually thats not true, i owned an Atari ST before that, and 2 Spectrum's before that, but the point is i've never owned an Apple PC).
That said, my iphone gives me a generally rewarding experience. From one point of view it could be called a 'crippled' OS, however for me, since i'm not overly familiar with OS X, i dont know or mind what i'm missing. My experience leads me to feel that i have a 'focussed' OS, with all the unnecessary stuff stripped out.

I want a 'proper' OS and 7 has enough 'touch' for what i really want to do - especially given you could whack together multitouch apps for it as a front end dead easily. For what I want to do with it I can't see W7 being a problem personally (in fact, given I'd like to run windows apps it's a huge plus).

Agreed that the ability to run full apps is a real plus, especially if it's stuff that you wouldnt have to buy again, but only if they would also be touch-intuitive.
I can only imagine trying to use Adobe Premiere with my fingertips...

[Funkstar]

Funk those things have been around for 8+ years.

Affordable with decent battery life? How about a nice capacitive multi-touch screen with an OS that can make use of it properly?

No, I didn't think so

[TheAnimus]

That's fair enough, i dont have experience of touch Win 7, so i'll happily defer to your experience. In general though, the two best touch interfaces that I have used have been iPhone OS3, and (some while before that) PalmOS

And this is kinda the problem with the iPhone, its great until you want to do something out of the ordinary.

I find it very interesting (this is in NO way a dig at web devs) that we are seeing people flocking back to monolithic applications, almost a one app per task type thing, away from the google your browser is your OS mentality. The latter I find very wrong because most people really want state, and battling state into HTTP really strikes me as an in-elegant solution.

So the extent of iPhone users embrace of bespoke applications is staggering, right down to a special version of a calculator for splitting the bills at restaurant with tip calculation.... wtf guys? Is the divide button in calc too hard? Does having a version which lacks calculator features improve user experience especially when multi-tasking is impossible?

This goes off slightly, but i'll tie it in to my above posting. Do people want a jack-of-all-trades, or do they want 100+ variations on a theme. Homogenisation is generally good practice in software dev, but the users seam to disagree a bit.

I would love to be able to say "no its never going to work", MS have made so many tablets in the past where in trying to make them useful, they failed to differentiate them from the desktop. This HP will suffer from that.

The question is will the apple version be any different? Will it be a highly limited subset of functions that gets super long battery life on some ARM chip? Would someone want something much larger than an E-Reader with piss poor battery life and certainly a crap screen (all cheap apple products seam to have to have less than par screens these days)?

Its apple, so all bets are off.

[TheAnimus]

Affordable with decent battery life? How about a nice capacitive multi-touch screen with an OS that can make use of it properly?

No, I didn't think so

Back in my day, when i where t'lad.....

They had a premium of about £200. Now with netbooks the low CPU powered note taking laptop is a LOT cheaper, change from £350 is expected, with a 6+ hour battery life.

Back then, the laptops where also VERY expensive, so that £200 premium was marginal. Now I recon the 'tablet' premium will be a higher ratio, but lower absolute (does that make any sense? I've not explained it elegantly...)

For note taking, you want a stylus, these where effectively multi-touch as you could use multiple stylus. The question I would have is how does the capacitance screen work when you rest your arm on it? I would guess not very well (it would be hard to tell 'false' rests from touches).

Also, i'm sorry but multitouch is kinda not a big deal. Its a nice to have, but its NO deal breaker imho if its missing. Wow i can pinch to zoom an image.... How come in pocket opera I always double tap zoom because its easier to tell it to zoom intelligibly to what I want, than do the two finger splits.

Tablet PCs with XP sp2 tablet edition 2 where brilliant, everything worked, one note was the 'killer app' I seriously think people who haven't used it should reserve their judgement, it kinda was for a tablet pc the second coming.

So is using your fingers rather than a stylus going to make a huge difference? Maybe for browsing web pages and 'content consumption' but buy a £500 device just for that? I think you and I funk both fall in to the 'A' category that advertisers like, we work silly pay jobs and have a love of gadgetry.

But would you even consider, right now £500 for something that is just a large Archos, that lets you run desktop apps too? Thats all this HP strikes me as. Maybe i'm been presumptuous but if the likes of us don't really want one, why would the great unwashed?

Then again they do listen to coldplay and vote for the Nazis, hell even Nick Griffin.

[MSIC]

That's a number of good point made there TheAnimus.
As for whether the Apple tablet will 'work' (ie enter the public conciousness as a desirable device to own) i think it probably will (heck, it almost has for some people without even being announced yet), however i'd also draw your attention to AppleTV (AKA iTV etc).
There is / was a device which was quite sleek, but never took off in any great capacity, whilst I would argue that the market as a whole is gradually building and developing nicely (look at the Western Dig HD TV's etc). Apple certainly missed the mark there, and i'm still not quite sure why they dont unleash the potential that OS's / shells like Boxee and XBMC demonstrate it having.
Am drifting off-topic here, but the point is that Apple dont always succeed, and the whole premise of slate computing, whilst having potential, has pretty much failed so far.
I think that it is a marketing and (to some extent) a design issue, rather than a tech issue.

[TheAnimus]

Actually AppleTV is a great example that bugs me to this very day

It was a crock of sh!t in a market which had well established contenders, they spent NO real money advertising it, but lets also go a step further.

Apple have users locked in via iTunes, what a great distribution platform, why not let someone buy a film on their TV and have it on both their TV and iPod locked in via the anti-competitive DRM. How on earth could that fail?

The thing is the software was awful, MCE without any plugins gave the thing a kickin, the remote control was stupid, classic apple design, looks strange (to me cheap thermoset plastic reminiscent of plug sockets) was un-comfortable to use even for the 10 seconds it took me to think this isn't going to remove my bordem waiting for a mate on regents street in the cold is better.

However, I would say the failing was marketing. No one cared, the blogtwots hadn't driven a frenzy, the BBC who should really be ignoring it until its been announced have written lots about it in the last few weeks.

As such I think we can say before this has even been announced, let alone hit the shelves, its clearly not going to go the way of the AppleTV. Afterall it wasn't the technical cockups which made it a crap product that stalled it. It was a total lack of buzz and marketing. The original iPhone was a crock of dung, yet people bought it in drones, once the continued development happened it became a useful device. However the buzz ensured the initial sales to turn it into a success.

With the slate we could see that too. Software updates in 12 months time responding to the issues, a good note taking application to rival one note (yes please!) because people might become innovative if there is a large market out there for their software.

I would never use the phrase "too big to fail", but even if this device cost £3k, had 30 mins battery life, the apple friendly press would ensure it survived to at least one refresh.

[Grey M@a]

Must agree with One Note. I have an old (must be 5 years now) HP TC1100 tablet PC and it still gets used daily when I am on the move and needing to do Active Directory, Group Policy and general admin/testing whilst on site.

The tablets have their uses for me during work hours but outside of work. I would have very little use for it. Got a picture of it somewhere but I can't get into my ftp space to double chek atm.