HP Slate 8

[excalibur1814]

...Businesses aren't very impressed with the changes Redmond is cooking.

Have you spoken to all of them? I for one and going to embrace the new UI and can see that it'll make my job a small bit easier w

[e-schreiber]

I'm sure many business will adopt Win8, especially those that require the use of tablets and "kiosks". But I believe the majority of businesses will stick with the maturity of Win7 and the solidity of its first Service Pack. I don't care for the iPad or Win8, but it's clear that both have become necessary catalysts for the expansion of the TabletPC market. A market that was wandering in a state of quasi-coma for almost a decade. A recent news piece claimed that there will be 32 Win8 tablets models coming in the holidays! Wow!

[aaronb1138]

I think not on the N-Trig. I've used a second generation N-Trig pen on a Dell XT-3 w/a Sandy Bridge I5-2520M cpu and HD3000 graphics. If it wasn't for the pen, I would probably own an XT-3, purchaseld at a deep discount from the Outlet. I actually like N-Trig's touch drivers but feel that the pen is a failed design. I have to admit that I have not tried cleaning the contacts as others have done. That might change my mind a bit, but I dislike the feel of the pen while writing and despise the tip clicks when taking notes, so much so, that I won't use it in a courtroom, which was my primary reason for getting a digitizer pen in the first place. Most importantly, I feel that N-Trig has failed to support its customers. Those of us who have 1st gen pens are told sorry, nothing we can do for you. I don't believe it and hear the manufacturer saying, simply, there is nothing we are going to do for you, buy an updated version. I think, short of a monumental change in corpotate attitude from N-Trig, I've purchased my last N-Trig device and suspect that I'm not alone.



A more plausable scenario might be W8-Arm undocked and W8-pro x64 when docked.

I frankly hope not on the Arm undocked / x64 docked. I would rather Intel sort their sh*t out with the Atom and have x86 only (or x64 Atom).

Bronsky, you've tried the Fujitsu Stylus, right? Still not perfect but 100% better in every respect than the HP.

I also hope that HP will get the thermal management a little better. I have noticed that temperature at the back of the Slate 500 is a strong indicator for the so called "vectoring" with the stylus. I get the feeling the touchscreen controller is near the CPU or similar.

As for the pen, I really hope HP takes a look at the tech Kupa is using. They claim specifically they are not using Wacom or N-trig, but the stylus looks ripped off from Wacom, so I would guess no moving parts to be all clicky-clicky. They also claim 1024 levels of pressure, something again more in line with Wacom technological maturity levels.

The leaked picture actually looks a lot like the Kupa. Both designs go with a generous amount of below the screen bezel space, likely to accommodate the motherboard, allowing the device to be thinner.

The thinner tablet movement is a bit bleh, whatever to me. The Slate 500 is a great thickness, and I really don't understand what kind of ignorance promotes consumers to think a thinner tablet is superior in form factor. I have used iPads and a few other tablets, and my mind was only ever preoccupied with weight, not girth. I find it really annoying when reviewers refer to a 1.29 lb tablet as seeming to weight more than a 1.44 lb iPad because of the thickness.

Frankly, as long as it's a nice margin under 2 lbs (max of 1.6-1.8) I'm quite fine if they increased just about any given tablet's thickness by 50% if the battery life doubled, but I also fall into the give me a swappable battery camp. I would also prefer thicker over excessive non-screen facade. Part of what makes the current HP models nice.

As far as other design considerations, I like the various rubberized / traction back panels, but would completely welcome something with exposed strips of textured or corrugated aluminum to act as a heat sink. Perhaps just the rubbery finish wrapped an inch or so in on all sides to increase tactile feel and grip.

[e-schreiber]

The thinner tablet movement is a bit bleh, whatever to me. The Slate 500 is a great thickness, and I really don't understand what kind of ignorance promotes consumers to think a thinner tablet is superior in form factor.

I agree. There's too much focus on that nowadays. What will people do with their slim phones and tablets? Slice a cake? Shave their legs? Stab someone? People are buying into a gimmick without realizing. The day Samsung made the Galaxy Tab "a whole 1 millimeter" thinner than the iPad, Apple stopped bragging about the coolness of being thin. People forsake replaceable batteries, full USB and full HDMI ports, SD card slots and more speed; just to get something 1 millimeter thinner....

In the 80's, mobile phones were huge machines and many people saw in those "inconspicuous" devices an opportunity to project wealth and status. Anyone holding those big bricks would be easily spotted in a crowd! There was a guy in my neighborhood who carried his cordless phone with him just to make people think he owned a cellphone. In early 2000, to look like a cool cat, one had to own a tiny cellphone. The smaller the device, the cooler the owner! So much so that Will Ferrell performed a funny skit on Saturday Night Live poking fun of that bizarre social trend (watch the video below). Then comes the smartphone era and, again, to be cool, one has to own a big cellphone. Some phones nowadays are 4.5 inches! We're entering the Time Tunnel and heading back to Gordon Gekko's 80's.

Gordon Gekko (Wall Street, 1987)




Will Ferrel (SNL, 2001)
Video clip (forward to 2:10)

People will crave for whatever features their peers (or marketing departments) tell them to.

[Bronsky]

Slice a cake? Shave their legs? Stab someone?

I'm not a big cake eater. I don't shave my legs. But, I do run into a dozen people a day who I would like to stab. Maybe a Stiletto Slate is not such a bad idea.

[dceggert]

I'm sure many business will adopt Win8, especially those that require the use of tablets and "kiosks". But I believe the majority of businesses will stick with the maturity of Win7 and the solidity of its first Service Pack. I don't care for the iPad or Win8, but it's clear that both have become necessary catalysts for the expansion of the TabletPC market. A market that was wandering in a state of quasi-coma for almost a decade. A recent news piece claimed that there will be 32 Win8 tablets models coming in the holidays! Wow!

'We' are just getting W7 rolled out at work now. Finally, bye bye to XP. The delay was due to the Vista fiasco. When I say that businesses will not adopt W8 I am not thinking 100 kiosks here or 200 sales floor units there; I am talking about 25,000 desktops and 30,000 laptops.

W8 is radical enough different that it will cause a significant burdon on the IT department handling 'where the heck is...' types of calls. This is going to be a non-starter in that market.

The proof is in the presentations that MS itself is broadcasting; it is showing how connected it is to social media, how it plays streaming video, how it handles email ('oh look, John is at the coffee shop and he wants me to go to a concert with him tonight, how thoughtful'), how to sort your vacation pictures, how to listen to music....all the things you are not supposed to be doing at work. I stick with my assessment; MS has taken its flagship OS and is trying to compete with the iPad.

So what? Well, that now leaves real OS duty only to Linux and Mac. Think about that for just a moment...if there was ever a time to push hard for Apple to be adopted in the workplace it is this Fall when W8 launches. While MS chases the socially connected fun-tablet with its full OS, Mac can walk in to the wide open, undefended territory now vacated by MS.

Good luck to them and, personally, knowing what I know right now I would be waiting for the launch day of W8 not to purchase a new 'puter but to sell all my MS stock...if I had any.