Putting Win7 Starter on a slate would just seem idiotic to me. Not when you have to run Win7 Home Premium at least in order to get all of the Tablet and inking functionality.
Workdone techcrunch windows 7#
I personally do not feel Windows 7 runs all that great on the current crop of Atom processors. I am guessing that is the reason it has not been done to date because it could not be offered at a price point that would allow sufficient sales. I am thinking that getting an active digitizer on a screen-size smaller, for a 7″ or 10″ device, would increase the cost. Not sure who the “rubbish” was directed at, but I’ll indicate my disagreement regardless. I still entertain the thought of a UNMPC with a passive screen, but I consider it something that I will not do serious work on mostly a web-surfing and doodling pad, and doodling not so much since it will not reject my palm.Īgain, I was all for the slate, but I did not think that most of our non-nerd air-breathing brethren were going to accept it with sufficient market gain to warrant the cost to HP of deploying it for sale. Does not seem like we will see such a device in a 10″ or less form-factor without it costing a gazillion dollars. Even for me, despite the fact that I have owned three UMPCs, from now on if I plan on getting serious work done with it, it needs to have an active digitizer. I think HP has made the right move not because I did not want the slate, but because the market was not going to accept the HP slate into the same use-space that the mass market wanted it, which, good or bad, is the one that the iPad currently occupies. That is not to say I would not personally welcome a WinCE-based device, even one geared more towards productivity than media consumption. This new market of 10″ and below devices, the successful ones anyway, will run lighter OS’ and have capacitive screens or resistive w/o active digitizers. I’ve decided that a 12″ TabletPC with an active digitizer is as good as I am going to get, and I should be happy with that platform for doing my serious work. I say a lot of this having recently given up on a hope of ever being able to be reasonably productive on any tablet that runs Windows 7 that does not have an active digitizer. The simple need to boot and lack of “instant on” capability were going to make it hard for them to compete out of the gate. Believe me, I am all for UMPCs and slate-style TabletPCs, but I never had hopes that “tablets” running Windows 7 Home Premium were going to take off. Rather than taking the risk that UMPCs that have been re-badged as “tablets” are going to take off with the mass public.
This only makes sense to me capitalize on the 1.2 bil.
And I concur that HP is likely killing this slate in order to replace it with a model running webOS.
I think that this is a good move and the right move for HP.