The long-awaited HP Slate is finally here. And it’s not that it’s being announced now and will be out in a few months—it’s here, here.
The problem is that it costs $799. That shouldn’t concern us, though, because this Windows 7 tablet “is designed specifically for business, enterprise and vertical customers.” Consumers will get the Palm-infused webOS Slate early next year, which is probably a better idea.
Says HP:
“The first videos of the slate showed a consumer product with functions like e-reading, video calling and media creation. And we talked about how it fit snuggly into a new category between cell phones and netbooks. We were bullish about the direction we were taking at the time, but an unanticipated development gave us an opportunity to refine our plans.
When HP acquired Palm this year, we saw huge potential in webOS as the foundation for a whole ecosystem of connected consumer devices. We quickly realized that we had to include the slate in that equation. Imagine the slate connecting to the cloud and working in concert across all your devices. We adjusted our approach, shared our new vision and confirmed that a webOS slate will reach the market in 2011.”
For enterprise customers, the Windows 7 HP Slate features an 8.9-inch capacitive touchscreen, weighs 1.5 pounds, dual cameras (VGA front, 3-megapixel rear), digital pen input with Evernote software, Wi-Fi, 64GB of storage, 2GB of RAM, Atom Z540 CPU, and Windows 7 Professional.
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There’s also an included dock with HDMI output and two additional USB ports.
More on Techland:
They Should Make It: HP Slate Dual Booting Win7 and WebOS
HP: Phones with Palm’s webOS Interface Due ‘Early Next Year’
More HP Slate Details: $549 Starting Price, Five Hour Battery