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HP Slate 500 Heading to Enterprise

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Word is bouncing around the Internet this afternoon that the still mysterious, still largely unconfirmed but getting closer to being confirmed HP Slate 500 is not going to be a consumer device but instead (wait for it…) heading to the Enterprise channel.

Todd Bradley, HP’s Personal Systems Group Vice President, apparently spilled the beans at a Fortune Brainstorm session that the HP Slate 500 running Windows 7 is jumping away from consumers and heading towards the Enterprise market. Now, let’s see where have we heard this before? Some sources are also reporting that Mr. Bradley is saying we should be on the lookout for WebOS Tablets, and those WebOS printers as well. (I still can’t figure that one out, but hey, I’m not in their business.)  Word is that we’ll be seeing WebOS 2.0 christened as well.

No word on much else like when, how much, etc… beyond the usual this autumn time frame. None of this is really surprising news beyond the Enterprise target for that Windows 7 HP Slate. That’s a head scratcher.

Via Slashgear and about a bazillion other sources.

24 Comments

24 Comments

  1. Tim

    07/22/2010 at 4:22 pm

    What?!? A tablet that will be targeted at enterprise?!? Oh HP you crazy revolutionaries!

  2. acerbic

    07/22/2010 at 4:37 pm

    Who cares whether they just call it “enterprise” or “consumer” but the reason to worry is if “enterprise” = “baseless $1000 markup”.

    • ChrisRS

      07/22/2010 at 5:04 pm

      Yes, That is concerning.

    • GoodThings2Life

      07/22/2010 at 5:11 pm

      Yeah, that’s the concern I have, but we’ll see… I buy enterprise-grade HP laptops for $750, so we’ll see how many of these they want to push.

    • Sumocat

      07/22/2010 at 7:06 pm

      I think price is a good reason to care. The base price on the 2740p is twice that of the tm2. Also pulls it out of the Touchsmart line. Not sure what that means for the software. (Not that I’m necessarily a fan of Touchsmart, but I appreciate their efforts here.)

  3. GoodThings2Life

    07/22/2010 at 4:59 pm

    Sweet!! :) Just give me one of these with OneNote, and I will be the happiest system administrator on Earth! Carry this around for my meeting notes and jot down ideas… and perform some administrative tasks from time to time. I can finally go back to a high-end desktop for my primary needs.

    • ChrisRS

      07/22/2010 at 5:07 pm

      If it capable of Remote Desktop, you may even have access to that high end desktop!

      • GoodThings2Life

        07/22/2010 at 5:09 pm

        Oh I’m sure it wouldn’t take much to install/upgrade to Win7 Professional or Ultimate.

    • Jeff Jackson

      07/23/2010 at 5:06 am

      Yeah, installing Logos4, OneNote, and maybe a word processor (Word and/or FrameMaker) are all I want on it. As long as I can buy one for c. 500 and it has a real stylus, I’ll be happy. I have a fealing though that it isn’t going to be a Wacom pen. Probably some strange combination of capacitive touch for fingers and resistive touch for stylus.

      • Nameless

        07/25/2010 at 10:01 am

        “I have a fealing though that it isn’t going to be a Wacom pen. Probably some strange combination of capacitive touch for fingers and resistive touch for stylus.”

        That’s technologically impossible. Resistive and capacitive digitizers are both located in front of the screen and require direct contact of some sort or another.

        The reason a Wacom EMR pen (and whatever variant N-Trig uses) can coexist with resistive or capacitive digitizer technology is that the EMR layer sits BEHIND the screen and does not need direct contact. Any “contact” registered is really just the pen nib being depressed.

        In any case, if it’s not Wacom, I’ll be surprised…and disappointed since the seven-year-old TC1100 had it.

    • Nameless

      07/25/2010 at 10:07 am

      May I ask what’s stopping you from going with the old HP TC1100, a Motion Computing slate, or a Fujitsu Stylistic? The older ones can be had for dirt cheap nowadays…

      And as for the high-end desktop and Remote Desktop bits, that is EXACTLY what I do away from home, though I may not be as likely to do it nowadays since my E-295C is a great deal more powerful than the old TC1100 I had. (That, and my likely uses for continuing to use Remote Desktop may be better served by StreamMyGame so the GPU doesn’t go to waste, but that means only 640×480 unless I’m going to be paying for a premium account…)

  4. ChrisRS

    07/22/2010 at 5:18 pm

    Here is a possible scenerio:

    If this product is released as a consumer tablet, it will be immediatley compred to the iPad and found lacking in that it is Win 7. “There is not a perfect, magic touch interface.” The lack of apps will be a major issue. And so on….

    If it is released as an enterprize device, the issues become moot. “It is more important fro enterprize user to have a robost sytem even if it interface is not a t elgant.” “Enterprize users are willing to accept a little longer boot time for a more powerful system” “Enterprize user can live with thousands of existing and new windows programs while the apps catch up – Sure it would be nice to have axxes to thousands of iFart apps, but we can wait.”

    I thisnk this would be a great device for studentnote taking. Ink INK ink!

    • Dan

      07/22/2010 at 6:01 pm

      Right on the money! If it’s not a ‘consumer’ device, no ‘consumer content’, app store, or subscriptions expected. Remember, the 2740P is not a consumer tablet either. I don’t want a portable web browser, my old PocketPC does that just fine.

      Thank goodness at least one manufacturer is planning to take care of my needs for a device I can create documents on. For the ‘consumer’ device there will be the WebOS version; no OneNote, Outlook and the rest of the Office programs, Delorme TOPO, PaintShop Pro, PDF Annotator, SeaClear Chartplotter, Windows Live Sync, etc.

      If this rumor is true, Thank You HP! You can expect my vote for your future viability, about 600 votes as a matter of fact, when the time comes!

      Dan

    • Brett Gilbertson

      07/23/2010 at 7:59 am

      Exactly, smart move HP. I am gelting calls every week from IT managers in companies (big ones) who say “I’ve looked at the ipad but we can’t put it onto our corporate network for security reasons, what do you have with windows?”

      Like it or not, that’s the way it is in enterprise and there’s plenty more than 3 million seats to be had there.

      It also allows them to by pass the ineptitude of retail sales (who think that an “app” store is more important than actual functionality than actual functionality) and go straight to the players…

      From there it will find it’s way to the home too.

  5. Feralboy

    07/22/2010 at 7:06 pm

    Sign me up for one too! A full-featured slate, at a hopefully reasonable price…priceless!

  6. Giacomo

    07/23/2010 at 1:59 am

    It means Wacom digitizer? For a consumer device capacitive or resistive is fine, but for a pen & touch business device there is a serious alternative to Wacom?

  7. Mike

    07/23/2010 at 2:38 am

    meh…
    As long as the price is not out of hand.
    My last tablet was from the hp business site.

    On the plus side – they have an outlet.
    Got a great deal on 2710 back a few years ago.
    ;-)

  8. GTaylor

    07/23/2010 at 5:01 am

    In the post “what happened to the HP slate” my response speculated about HP bracketing the iThing tablette with a lower range and then a higher range product. Of course since some system administrators are trying to press the iFad into enterprise service, a three way bracket makes more sense and would require minimal redesign. Capt. Kirk obviously was using a business IBM clunker tablet in his Enterprise.

  9. Eric

    07/23/2010 at 5:48 am

    I feel like HP has been shooting themselves in the foot for years by putting all of their worthwhile tablet devices into the business sales. This is particularly worrisome because it keeps tablets out of the eyes of the demographic I believe is most likely to adopt tablet pcs: Students (all of them, high school, college, and graduate).

    That said, I’m very excited by the prospect of a fully functional content creation slate.

    • Dan

      07/23/2010 at 6:31 am

      Since HP now owns WebOS, that means the consumer model will likely get that application in all it’s consumer oriented applications with their overall ‘touch’ niceness. Since HP owns that OS now, no royalties! The consumer WebOS version will be cheaper, likely by about $100 I would guess.

      One question I have regarding the validity of this rumor is that if it were really true then the Win 7 version should be the ‘professional’ version and not the ‘home premium’ version wouldn’t you think? Still some funnies going on….

      Dan

      • ChrisRS

        07/23/2010 at 11:21 am

        Professional vs home premium is $100 price difference (about 20% of tthe base cost.)

        Professional adds “Domain Join”, “XP mode” and network backup. Not even all business users will neeed these capabilities. Home Premium is OK if a upgrade to professionsl is available.

        If available at the rumored price, there will be demand from the consumer and home business sector tha do not need “Win 7 Professionsal” – at least not at a $100 premium.

      • acerbic

        07/23/2010 at 1:09 pm

        HP is already selling at least all their tablets customizable so that they offer among other things a base OS which you can easily upgrade when ordering if you like.

  10. Pamela

    07/27/2010 at 5:54 am

    This is crazy. Why is Hp not going to use Android. I think this is going to flop.

    • acerbic

      07/27/2010 at 11:10 am

      Because for their cheap tablets, HP is going to use webOS that they just paid a billion for instead of Android.

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