
HP Slate to cost $549, have 1.6GHz Atom Z530, 5 hour battery? - SamAtt
http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/05/hp-slate-to-cost-549-have-1-6ghz-atom-z530-5-hour-battery/
======
colonelxc
Even being an anti-apple person, I'm not sure I would give the advantage to HP
for the 1.6Ghz Atom over the 1Ghz A4 without some real benchmarks. Also, how
lightweight (or not) the OS is will probably determine more than their
relative speeds.

~~~
veemjeem
You can already buy a normal windows tablet today... it doesn't make sense why
manufacturers would try to "re-release" products they already have. You can
probably buy a fast dual core tablet PC today that would blow the socks off
the 1.6Ghz Atom.

------
orangecat
1024x600? Ewwww. I am not a fan of this recent trend of stretching displays as
wide and short as possible. Especially for tablets which will often be
rotated, the iPad's 4:3 ratio is much better.

~~~
sireat
HP should have gone for a higher resolution display, as 1024x600 is the
current standard for netbooks, which is lacking at times.

At $549 and similar specs to a netbook(of course not counting touchscreen) HP
may have a harder time positioning their slate than Apple.

------
JMiao
fairly telling how the slide sells the device in the fashion of a traditional
pc and not a personal appliance.

------
jsz0
The hardware is a bit mediocre as you'd expect from a low end tablet but the
big liability is software. Besides HP's launcher and a few of their bundled
apps you'll mostly be using traditional Windows software designed for a
keyboard & mouse. It's the uncanny valley of computing: Not quite a tablet,
not quite a laptop. This is why Windows tablets have always failed in the
market. I suppose it would be possible to put x86 Android on here but you'll
be stuck mostly with software designed for a SmartPhone sized screen. As we
see with the iPad running resolution doubled iPhone apps this is really not a
very good experience. ChromeOS is an option but you give up the power and
flexibility of a full blown OS -- even in comparison to the iPhone OS.

------
icefox
Yah, but why in the world would you ship Windows7 on it? What about chrome OS?

~~~
izendejas
have you used windows 7? also, this thing can run chrome, so close enough,
maybe?

what about the ability to multi-task, install hulu desktop, etc?

also, if one needs more than 5 hours of battery life, it's probably a good
sign that one should get a laptop or, dare I say, a netbook. why? because
you're probably going to end up buying the docks anyway. no one can sit
through 10 hrs of facing down and typing on a screen. i promise you that.

~~~
CrazedGeek
Chrome OS has these wonderful little things called "tabs". They do a bangup
job of multi-tasking.

(Sorry, your comment just really struck a nerve)

~~~
izendejas
i should clarify, my comment about the mult-tasking was in response to your
question of why use windows 7. i should have started a new line. anyway,
chrome os to me doesn't make sense, unless such machines are priced well below
$200. web apps only? bleh.

------
Groxx
/me watches video

So, one of their advertising points on UI is that _Cover Flow_ stutters like
Porky Pig? Cover Flow in particular is smooth as silk on almost any laptop
I've tried it on, and I'll _guarantee_ that the iPad will handle however many
thousands of covers you may have without the slightest pause.

And I find it kind of strange that it could handle 1080p without a problem,
but be slow with scrolling images.

~~~
jsolson
Predictive caching is hard. Let's go shopping!

~~~
rbanffy
How predictive you need to be to scroll over an ordered list?

~~~
jsolson
You'd like to know how fast they're scrolling and in which direction so you
can decide which resources to cache given finite disk and memory bandwidth as
well as finite texture memory.

Apple's implementation doesn't bother loading the cover if the album in
question is going to be past the edge of the screen before the load would
complete. Instead it loads covers further down the line and renders a
placeholder image.

Deciding which covers to load without knowing what the user is going to do
next (stop the flow, go backwards, speed up) is a classic example of an online
scheduling problem.

~~~
Groxx
Did you actually watch the video? They're stepping through covers
_individually_ ~3 times (not watching it again) and getting only a few frames
of transition each time.

Caching the next and previous covers that are currently off-screen isn't just
easy, it's _highly_ likely that it'll be a frequent operation, and should be
optimized. If they had scrolled a few dozen in either direction a bit of lag
would be expected, but not when iterating.

To make matters worse, this is in an _advertisement_ , and can be expected to
perform _worse_ IRL because everyone optimizes for their ads.

------
samratjp
Let's not forget Apple gets more footprints into their little tent than HP's
retail stores (oh wait, they don't have that kind of success on land).

As iTunes is to iPod, App Store is to iPad. Apple succeeds because of the
combo punch, not because its consumers care whether HP has more Ghz or not.

Too bad Compaq didn't make better iPaq's (oh that's right, HP bought them :-p
)

------
davidedicillo
5 hour batter. Said enough.

~~~
rufugee
Agreed. The only reason I'm even considering the iPad at this point is for its
battery life. 5 hours is a deal killer.

------
rbanffy
A device with an ARM-based with a tablet-targeted OS and an x86-based Windows
7 device... Why would anyone think they compete?

How long does it take for Windows 7 to start up on that thing? 30 seconds? Yoy
have to log-in every time you resume the device like a notebook?

------
sh1mmer
Is it me or is that a really terrible info-graphic.

I can't read the writing, and instead of linking to a larger version it just
seems to link back to the page itself.

------
l0nwlf
price, battery life and brand name are three most selling points. If I need to
buy tablet why exactly will I buy HP tablet :-/

