Updated Information for HP Slate 500 Order Delay
It looks like quite a few GottaBeMobile readers had ordered the HP Slate 500 and had offered comments on the delay of the device’s shipment in our blog post yesterday. The good news is that my friend from the Genghis Khent blog had pinged me to give me some updates to the situation–you can also visit his blog for more information and compare your order status to his.
Updated information found at the end of this article.
With the delay shipment notification, SlashGear had ran a piece yesterday with a conspiracy theory, speculating that HP had received a large order from an enterprise customer and had postponed shipments of consumer orders for the enterprise-geared tablets in order to fulfill the large order. Speculation has it that HP is building the HP Slate 500 on demand rather than sitting on unsold inventory, which would add to the delay as well if a large order came through.
My friend notes on his personal blog that he did call an HP representative and was told that the discrepancy in shipment time notification is that the HP order tracking page isn’t updated regularly. That said, Slate 500 orders are expected to ship four weeks after they are ordered at this point, so most people are looking at the end of the month to receive their units if they were ordered when the devices were first made available for sale.
Regarding the conspiracy theory, the rep said that she had no information on that.
Update: Roger, one of our readers on GottaBeMobile, left a comment that says that the delay is in place to give HP time to fix some last minute bugs:
Have learned from [reliable] source that hp is having problem with slate 500. It freezes and has to be restarted each time. They are trying to correct this problem prior to shipping the units to avoid massive returns during the 30 day period.
Hp needs to respond and [clarify] the situation
Errr… what do you mean ‘it’s no longer available for sale’? It’s still up at HP’s site. Nothing’s changed – still the 6 week backlog and call for availability…
Sidenote – the latest TX line tablet has replaced the nTrig screen with a Wacom one… I’m wondering if this is what’s caused the delay? That they’re replacing the nTrig screens on the Slates with Wacom ones? That would be fairly awesome…
I don’t think there’s any chance at all they changed it to Wacom. There is a post 10/22 update on HP support page that showed up a couple days ago. I think it’s the software for handling the keyboard button. That is most likely the software issue that was rumored. Last rumor of numbers I head was 12000. I wonder how many world have been ordered if they actually tried Go sell them?.
How did you find that page? When I go to the HP site, I find this page:http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF05a/321957-321957-64295-3841267-3955550-4332585.html?jumpid=re_r602_slate_body_psg_oct10_product
Clicking on buying options tells you in nice big bold letters “The product you selected is not available in HP’s online store.”
Is anyone surprised about getting an inconsistent story from HP still? They seem to be trying real hard to fail.
I just went to http://www.hp.com, opened the SMB tab on the left side, clicked on laptops, tablets and netbooks and it’s the top-left item in the grid it shows.
http://www.hp.com/sbso/busproducts_notebooks.html
The page I looked at can be found by going to hp.com/slate and clicking through to the product page. Yeah, the ifanbois have been running scared at this thing, running it down sight unseen. The digs at the ctl-alt-del have been especially insane. You know a reboot anymore, but is used for domain logins. I haven’t seen a blue screen for years now. And that was due to a hard drive failure.
I just point out that the “advantages” of the iPad are that it’s simpler, easier to use, doesn’t require a pen and the ability to write with one, doesn’t have too many confusing buttons, only runs one app at a time so you’re not distracted or bewildered, doesn’t let you do complex painting or drawing… in other words – the iPad is the tablet of the proudly mentally challenged.
But it is available and you can actually touch one in a store.
Fess up HP! What its going on?
This is true – but clearly the fact that 12,000+ people have ordered the HP Slate and have been waiting in a holding pattern for over four weeks now for a product that so far doesn’t exist says a lot. The Slate has what is, unfortunately, a unique combination: a slate with capacitive touch AND a wacom-style digitiser pen running full Windows 7.
None of the existing slates – iPad included – can do what we think the HP Slate will be able do.
Were: To the best of my knowledge, the Slate 500 digitizer is N-trig, not Wacom. However, it’s gen 2 digital components and N-trig’s Digital Pencil, so it’s different hardware than that used on the tx2…
I too am very concerned as to what is really going on at “HP”….!!! What are you really up to “HP”…!!! I want what I ordered. Without issue.
I don’t think I really care about integrated 3G. It’s too expensive to pay separately for every device. When I need to go online while on the go, I’ll just run wmwifirouter on my phone. The advantage of having real applictions instead of toy apps is I can do most of my work with it offline anyway. Logos4, OneNote, Word, a little Photoshop, maybe some FrameMaker. What I wish is it had the integreated GPS. Hopefully they’ll support adding that in later.
There are several *very* small external Bluetooth GPSes you can use with the slate. And as for 3G, you can connect most smartphones to the slate over BT as well.
HP’s order status page just changed. The old link I’ve been using to jump directly to my order no longer works and they’ve changed the Order Status request page for SMB to require different information.
VERY frustrating.
You can get to an order status page? I just get page not found even from hp.com’s links.
I couldn’t get to my order from the new page – but this morning it reverted back to the original order page and Im’ getting the usual ‘expected delivery date’ is today thing… *sigh* Still, Santino said he’s gotten an actually shipment notification today.
6 weeks from 22 Oct is this Friday… so hopefully we’ll all start getting shipment notifications.
I received a shipment notifcation this morning, appears to be droped shipped from far east. Ordered 10/22
did they provide any tracking information?
I just received e.mail from hp confirming shipdate of Dec.7th. Lets see what happens.
I ordered my slate on Oct.23rd
Did it ship today? I ordered on 22nd and they tell me they have no idea when it’ll ship.
The SLT500 is indeed shipping (from Shanghai, CN) – some folks will see their’s Friday, but it appears that a larger group will hit the ground next Monday (12/6). Expect first reviews over the weekend and a lot of activity next week.
They arrived today for me. The first thing I noticed is the win 7 interface needs some work to make it pad ready, you’ll need the pen to set the time correctly. Other then that I just patched it out today. I have to see if there is a usb to wired ethernet device so I can join to to the domain and load up software.
hp has no clue when my order will be shipped. I ordered it on oct.23rd. Each time i call they give me a different ship date. Now they are assuring me the ship date of end of dec.
Lets See.
I ordered Oct 22. Friday, I was told my ship date is Jan.7. So much for getting to play with mine over Christmas.
Friday the 17th, I was told mine would ship on December 20th. I ordered Oct 24th, so Jeff, I wonder which date is correct and if HP call center even knows or are just being told to give random dates. Really not cool, out of principle I will cancel if not available by the end of the year. I’m sick of this crap from a giant computer company like HP, and I’m a physician, and will tell the major arizona health system I work with that HP is completely unreliable. HP should at least be honest with us as to what exactly the delay is from!!
does this thing support mobile calling