HP's Slate 500 tablet goes on sale for $800
Posted on by Agam Shah, IDG News Service
Hewlett-Packard on Friday stated its extremely expected Slate 500 tablet—the company’s first these kinds of device—is now offered for buy.
Targeted at corporations, the tablet will come with an 8.9-inch screen and operate Microsoft’s Windows 7 Specialist OS. It charges $799 and it is immediately available from the U.S. by means of HP’s internet site and channel partners.
The Slate 500 was initial developed as a client products when HP announced it in January, but the company reassessed its ideas for that device right after obtaining Palm for $1.2 billion in April. HP is now targeting the Slate 500 at organization customers who want a handheld device and so are familiar with the Windows OS and office productivity applications, mentioned Carol Hess-Nickels, director of worldwide enterprise notebook advertising and marketing at HP’s Personal Methods Group.
HP plans to release a individual tablet for consumers with the WebOS cellular software, which was acquired from Palm. The WebOS tablet,
Windows 7 HTC me, which is nevertheless unnamed, is going to be intended for actions like browsing the net, observing videos, taking part in video games and looking at e-books, HP has mentioned. It will likely be introduced in 2011, an HP spokesman explained.
The Slate 500 offers people abilities but additionally is designed to link to servers to document and pull info in true time, Hess-Nickels explained. Several enterprises use Windows seven, as well as the gadget matches simply into IT infrastructures,
Office Standard Key, she mentioned.
“As we chat to organization consumers … they’ve advised us they want to own a common image all across their gadgets,” Hess-Nickels said.
The tablet weighs about 1.5 pounds (0.68 kilograms), so end users can simply have it to report transactions or get stock. With VPN (virtual personal network) support, employees can securely connect to company networks.
Designed for “moderate subject material creation,” the Slate 500 comes with multitouch and pen-input capabilities, and includes a software program keyboard for data input, Hess-Nickels stated.
The tablet has two cameras—a 3-megapixel camera at the back again and a VGA camera in the front—which might be utilised for videoconferencing. A Broadcom graphics accelerator offers 720p video playback.
The Slate has an Intel Atom Z540 processor, which runs at a clock pace of 1.68GHz. It comes using a 64GB solid-state generate and 2GB of RAM. A USB port aids connect external storage for the unit.
The tablet offers about five hours of battery existence and recharges in the dock. The dock incorporates USB and HDMI (high-definition multimedia interface) ports and a headphone jack.
HP’s Slate 500 will only be available in the U.S. for now, an HP spokeswoman said. HP didn't announce throughout the world availability but will examine expanding into other markets, she said.
The unit will compete with other company tablets like Cisco’s Cius, which was announced in June but hasn't nevertheless delivered. Cius includes a 7-inch screen and runs on Google’s Android OS. Apple’s iPad tablet has also been adopted by some organizations.