The HP Slate, the on again, off again, on again iPad killer, has finally made its way to market. With very little fanfare, the tablet device is selling on Hewlett-Packard’s web site for $799, but analysts aren’t bullish on its fate.
When HP first marketed the device in March, it launched an attack against Apple with a message that promised no watered-down Internet and no sacrifices. The iPad competitor, for example, offers Adobe Flash where Apple CEO Steve Jobs has shunned Adobe.
The Slate comes to market with the Windows 7 operating system. With an 8.9-inch screen, it’s smaller than the iPad. Resolutions are about the same, but the smaller Slate is about as heavy as the 9.7-inch iPad and offers only about half the battery life as an iPad.
Better Than an iPad?
“HP itself went back and forth on whether or not they were going to release this. Initially, the Slate was going to be HP’s big tablet play for 2010. Then they bought Palm and decided webOS was the way to go,” said Avi Greengart, an analyst at Current Analysis. “HP chose to release the Windows 7-based Slate anyway, realizing that a Windows 7 Slate, especially in a environment where you have mobile OS-based tablets, was not going to be fully competitive with consumers.”
HP’s Slate comes equipped with a 1.86-GHz Intel Atom processor and 2GB of RAM. The heavy RAM spec is required to run Windows 7, which is much bigger than the mobile operating systems other tablets are running.
The Slate also comes with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, but it lacks a 3G processor and doesn’t offer GPS. There’s 64GB of storage. Unlike the iPad, the Slate offers a USB port and two cameras — one in the front and one in the back — for video calling. The Slate can…