Evolutionary Tablet from HP Slate 500
The Windows 7 HP Slate 500, will be the first true business tablet to ship, considering the Android-powered Cisco Cius and the Avaya Desktop Video Device are video conferencing devices and the BlackBerry PlayBook is still months away from release. The Slate is just a vanilla Windows 7 Professional device with practically no 3rd party applications installed except Evernote and the camera software, but I think that’s actually a good thing as it keeps the unit from being bogged down given its adequate but less than powerful Atom platform.
As you may expect, the Slate’s metal edges and rubberized back give it a fairly durable feel, and its 8.9-inch display makes the 1.5-pound device easier to manage than some of those 10-inch tablets we’ve seen of late. Surrounding the metal edges is a USB port, headphone jacks, keyboard button and that always useful Alt + Ctrl + Delete key. Interestingly the right side is also home to a slide-out Windows license.
HP tells us it had be included, but they didn’t want to muck up the nice contoured back. We only got to spend a short time with the tablet, but the 1024 x600-resolution capacitive screen provided a decently responsive experience within Windows, and the N-Trig stylus, which there oddly isn’t a slot for on the tablet itself, was great for doodling in Paint and writing in WordPad. While the active digitizer does add a bit to the overall price, we think it’s worth it especially for text input as the soft keyboard can be a bit cramped on the smaller screen.
The N-trig Duo Sense digitizer also has a capacitive multi-touch part that supports four touch points. Touch is responsive and works well in most applications, but since Windows is a desktop OS, most of those applications will not have the beautiful and fluid visuals of the iPad. The tradeoff is that one will usually have more functionality with those programs.
The Office 2010 suite of applications are examples that do provide enough touch awareness to be completely functional via only touch, and Office will generally outpace mobile OS equivalents in features. But even in Office, there are still buttons and menus that were obviously not updated or designed with fingers in mind, and not all of the applications work equally well with touch, including PowerPoint and Publisher.
It appears that HP was being honest about the 5 hours of battery life. In standard desktop use, I’m getting a consistent 5 hours until I hit my shutdown level of 5%. Continuous video playback life is considerably lower, ranging from 2.5 hours playing 1080p content over Wi-Fi and using Bluetooth headphones to about 3.5 hours playing 720p content locally from the SSD with all wireless radios turned off. The battery does take a good while to charge fully from empty, about 3.5 hours while the device is in use.
The HP Slate isn’t a revolutionary device nor is it an iPad killer. It is nonetheless very evolutionary. The Slate’s feature set, size and inking capabilities have never before been offered for this price point. There simply isn’t anything like it for the money currently, though with CES around the corner that may change quickly.
