HP slate may ship as late as October
updated 08:35 am EDT, Fri May 21, 2010
HP Win 7 tablet may be pushed back again
HP's Windows 7 slate could now ship as late as October, HP's Taiwan PC group VP Monty Wong said today. Although it has often been pegged for June, the tablet is now only officially set to show by the end of HP's fiscal year five months in the future. Wong didn't mention to DigiTimes if the slate had been delayed or if there had been any firm schedule in the past.
Rumors have been ongoing that HP may have killed the Windows 7 version of the slate in favor of a webOS or possibly Android model, although that has simultaneously been denied in another rumor. A third claim has pointed to a possible Hurricane webOS tablet that would arrive in the summer and could preempt the Windows model.
Wong reiterated HP's view that webOS would be used for smartbooks and tablets but didn't indicate that the company's plans for supporting Microsoft would change.
The Windows 7 hardware as-is would face an uphill battle, as its use of an older Atom chip would give it just five hours of battery life versus 10 for the iPad it now has to compete against; it also has to cost about $50 more, as it needs twice as much storage as an iPad to hold the much larger Microsoft OS.
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