HP Slate vs iPad – specs and video

source – alltouchtablet.com/ by John Pope

We’ve talked a few times about the HP Slate tablet, presented by Steve Ballmer during CES 2010, which is supposed to be a direct competitor to the Apple iPad slate tablet. A lot of rumors have appeared during past months about this mysterious product, but not much more than that.

Today it’s time to take a first look at the specs and see also at a short video with the main features, which by the way, seems a direct hit on the iPad’s lack of USB port, webcam/digital camera and memory card expansion slot. As you can see below the HP Slate is essentially a netbook tablet, the only way you can fit a fully operational OS and a long lasting battery into the same case.

But before we get to the video let’s see the main hardware features of the HP slate:

• 1.6GHz Intel Atom Z530 processor
• 32GB of Flash storage (speedy, which is always good)
• 1GB non-upgradable RAM (too bad it doesn’t come with 2GB of RAM)
• SDHC card slot
• 5-hour battery life
• VGA front-facing camera and 3-megapixel camera at the back
• USB port
• 8.9-inch 1024 x 600 capacitive multi-touch display

Price is not yet set but expected to fall right in between 549 and 599$. It’s a little bit more than the entry level iPad, but considering you get a fully fledged computer running Windows 7 (possibly Home Premium) I say is worth the extra cash. What I believe it will be sub par compared to the iPad on the user experience front, as I don’t think the Atom Z CPU is not capable or offering a seamless experiencecompared to the iPhone OS found on the iPad. And I’m not speculating. I’m certain of this as I’ve already tested the Asus EEE PC T101MT with an Atom Pinetrail CPU that was very sluggish on common tasks.

But this it arrives on market (sometime this year, till then here’s the official HP page for Slate) here’s the video presentation below:

And a comparison photo that highlights the strong points of both HP Slate and Apple iPad, as seen by Engadget.