The HP Slate is Finally Official; It Costs $800!

If I had plenty of money I would buy it if I needed something of that form-factor. But for less money you can have a netbook with keyboard and same (or more) functionality.
This is for executives so they can show off their new toy, just like iPhone was at the time (now its a war)

HYPOCRISY

Too darn expensive!!! You are not APPLE, you are HP!

That damn thing looks ridiculous. No one in their right mind would agree with using a fully featured OS on a MOBILE DEVICE. It's like putting a Yugo motor in a Chevy Suburban.

YEEEEEEEEEEEEEOUCH!

HP has never been a good experience with me. Their software is like a parasite; its there doing something worthless and very annoying to remove. I removed their software a month ago, but i found out last week that it was still in the kernal program hogging cpu performance. After removing it my computer, it runs as fast as it was new. Sorry guys, but i just don't like HP at all, software and hardware.

...yet an iPad 64GB with WiFi & 3G cost over $900. Why are people comparing the iPad and the Slate? The Slate is a tablet PC with a real OS that you can install real software on. The iPad is a color e-reader that runs itunes aps. The iPad 64GB with WiFi cost $800...what would you rather have? I'll be buying the BlackBerry Playbook when it comes out but when tablet PCs come down to the $600 range I'll be getting one.

Business execs will get Apple ipads for much cheaper..

Looks like a semi-decent value proposition from my end. Come on, Atom Z540 (dual core!) @ 1.86 GHz VS A4 single-core ARM 1 GHz, 2 GB RAM VS 512 MB, Broadcom HD video chip @1080p VS PowerVR SGX 535 @720p. Beats the living crap outta iTampon 64GB for 100 bux more, that's for sure. iTampon's stand + case + stylus would run for more than $200 from the fruity-themed toymaker, so there is your price difference. I'd guesstimate the power of the cpu to be about 3-4 that of A4, 4 times the RAM, similar screen size. However, this tablet is an actual computer (capable of compiling its own programs), something an iTampon is most definitely NOT. And if I can get the refund for Windows, then it will be even cheaper than that too. I could run Ubuntu 10.10 (with touchscreen support) and/or compile Android for it from git (come on Intel, make that x86 Android!). Just hoping that Broadcom put out a good driver for their chip for linux... However, it does nothing useful to me that my Aspire One 8.9" (with Ubuntu) doesn't do already, touchscreen is useless when editing documents for school but can be fun for the web, and lack of included keyboard is a put-off for me, so you got some work cut out for you HP!

For half that price, my EeePC 1215N can do more.
I will wait for competition to arrive and let's see if HP keeps that price.

Wow that $599 iPad is so overpriced. Apple is always overpriced. I'm gonna buy an $800 HP tablet instead so I can save money and get better value.

when it do the zoom thing it seems kinda slow ~
lack of juice ?

Huh? So you belittle the product by saying it's an overpriced toy for executives..... but in the same sentence, you admit that you'd buy one if you had the money. Sorry, but you are a joke.

this would be a great tool for inventory management in any business (among other things), right now a lot of company's use the symbol scanners that sell for over $1200 a pop. and all they do is scan an item, print a label, add/remove form inventory and look up stock. i can see a employee walking though a store with one of these printing new sineage to the printer in the office, scanning bar codes (camera can scan bar codes with the correct software), making lists of what they need (invintory, to-do lists, etc), can email quickly from the floor with pictures. really there is a TON these can do, for a business. granted for $800 i would not buy one for personal use.

and using full win7 over a modified OS for a tablet is the way to go for a business it keeps the development costs of new software down as much as possible).

Why would anyone want this instead of an iPad? iPad has a better operating system (anything is better than Windows moved to a device it wasn't intended for), is larger, and has much greater market presence and acceptance.

HP needed to price this lower to gain traction in the market. I guess they don't really care about this piece of crap. It shouldn't have been released. It sounds like they'll get serious when they release then WebOS version next year.

Jobs is probably laughing at this junk from HP. But, next year, he might be crying.

dammit!!!

when is Archos 10 1 pad gonna come out???!?!?

I like it.

Hey you psychotic Apple haters, can you now see what a marvelous piece of engineering the iPad is? It's cheaper, thinner, lighter, uses less power and has a larger screen.

But it doesn't run a REAL operating system.

Well I was hoping the Slate would be something that would directly try to challenge the iPad, but I guess it won't be. As the article states, this device is clearly aimed at the business market. I can't see an average every-day home consumer spending $800 to buy this product, just business people and gadget gurus with too much money. But then again, I couldn't see an every-day consumer buying a $500 16gb iPad, but they did.

On a side note, their commercial is crap. Super boring and a part that showcased the tablets inability to zoom in on an xray image without looking jumpy? I don't get it.

It's not a real computer so it doesn't need a real operating system.

Trueno07, you wouldn't be that much wrong if you had told us 'But it doesn't do anything REAL.'
Apple fanboy, is that iPad of yours capable of doing 30-40% of the things shown in the commercial? (and this is a very limited set of things the slate would do..) Now please.. go sit in the corner and think about what you wrote..
Cheaper, thinner, lighter, uses less power and has a larger screen, but.. is pretty much useless.. just an accessory to match your clothes..

What a daft commercial. Really, I tried to come up with something insightful to say about this tablet, but man... What a daft commercial. It only misses golf clubs and a yacht to completely fill out white upper-class civilised impotence.

too expensive, they can't compete against Apple unless they are priced lower. At best they will find a niche market with corporations that need to use windows-based software.

I don't see why it couldn't. It can connect to the web and web applications can do everything I can think of.

the ipad is suddenly looking pretty... somethings wrong

I think the iPad caught a lot of companies by surprise. So when it turned out to be such a success (why, I don't get myself, but oh well), they started investing like maniacs into research and development to churn out something tablet-like. This first generation of tablets will therefore be a lot more expensive as companies try to recuperate some of that frantic spending in this new device category. If tablets are here to stay (as a mainstream, general purpose computing device and not an appliance with a specific limited purpose), prices will come down soon enough when the market is swamped and true market competition takes off.

I guess they expect businesses to be willing to pay these prices, but I'm not so sure companies are all that willing – in this difficult economy – to massively jump into something as new and unproven as tablets. In this case the Apple approach probably makes more sense: entice the consumer with a fancy gadget and hope they take it with them into the workplace. Tablets seem more entertaining than productive to me...

Still waiting for the ASUS Eeepad here. The $500 price tag sounds far more pleasing.

This is exactly what I've wanted. I bought a convertible tablet a few years ago and have been very happy about it. I'm a PC guy, but I did look into the iPad when it came out, because this segment of the market has never gotten the attention it deserves. The lack of a stylus (call me old fashioned) and an inability to run full versions Microsoft's Excel and Intuit's Quickbooks were deal breakers for me, period.

One thing I've never understood, though, is constantly seeing comments about how Win7 won't work with touch from people who've likely never used it for touch. I'm not sure what gave them that idea that it's won't work. I can navigate around my older convertible tablet with the stylus just fine.

Lets see, I paid $113 for a iBook G3 and this is almost 8 of those. I know that tablets are more expensive to make but however the touch screens have been cheaper to make since the days of the compaq TC1100. To be honest I would like to know why besides greed why they are charging so much. I could go buy a used Fujitsu Stylistic for like $150~ ish or a Compaq TC1100 for less than one fourth the price. Cheap laptops are next in line. This will only make the under powered and still overpriced iPad more popular along with those Android tablets due to their lower final cost. More pressure on the second hand market.

at this price... i'll wait for teh ultra-slim oak trail version.