Click on the image to see full size

On Engadget (who else) we have a leak of the new HP Slate.  And the specs look great. We have been hearing rumors for awhile, but this is first with some teeth. Its going for $549, an 8.9′ 1024×600 mutli-touch display.  We have a 1.6 g processor and UMA with accelerator for 1080p video playback. Nice.

Now, look what new weapons this HP brings to the battle.  TWO.. count them TWO cameras!  A SDHC slot, USB port, Sim slot for the 3G.  GPS! (why?) Dock connector of course. The battery is 5 hours, 1/2 of the ‘claimed’ 10 hr ipad – now really… 1o hours?  Anyway,  we have windows7 installed.  That a big point because that mean pen support, AND that means you can write as an input.  For anyone who has used a windows7 tablet/slate, the handwriting recognition is action pretty good, so but win there.

Now for those of you questioning running Windows7 on a 1.6g processor, I have an old HP TC1100 with 1.2g and 2 g of ram with a SSD and its runs great!!  I’m sure the Atom will hold up as well if not better.  The real key here will be the graphics card and the speed of processing touch screen response.  It has to equal if not exceed the glossy feel that I get with the ipad.  Had to be THAT fast. Anything less, and this could be a short battle indeed.   So let the clash of titans begin!!

Now check out this video…

A few days back we heard how TechCrunch’s Arrington announced how the group he was working with to design a simple slate (NetTablet) decided to go on with the product without him now calling it JooJoo priced at $500.  I do note expect it to be anything more then yet-another-netTablet given that its a custom OS tablet that must compete with Apple, many Andriod/Chrome and MS versions coming out, makes no sense.

So now are down to three.  And if you are thinking; ‘this seems a lot like the PC wars of old’ you would be correct. Although we have 3 major players instead of two.  And this time, MicroSoft is looking to go the Apple way by building married OS/hardware systems.  So you have MS and Apple building married devices and Android as the ‘open’ platform.  So who is going to win?  Well, lets have a look at the battlefield shall we?

First off, we have a brave new world of ‘Cloud’ computing returning. This is not your fathers cloud computing, where the device is useless without a connection, but close.  The NetTablets will be VERY thin devices that will only perform the basic tasks on their own.  A sort of compromise between the Personal Computer (PC) and the Terminal Computer.  With 128gig USB devices floating around out there, storage will not be an issue and we will find the graphics cards will be more powerful then the CPU.   These NetTablets will focus on two things.  Running a browser and displaying media.  Also, we are entering a new age starting with HTML5 where browsers can operate application even if they are offline.  Its almost as if you download an application that runs through the browser and that application is updated each time you refresh. Cache not withstanding.

We also are in the ‘iPhone’ age.  Not the best name I know, but you have to admit that the iphone completely changed how we think about mobile keyboard-less devices. {Update: just heard the term AppPhone.  Love it.} Between the iPhone and App store, we can see a platform that can perform a large number of tasks that before were relegated to PC (not just windows) only.  Android is simply another expression of this new understanding of mobile computing

And finally, we are FAR more connected then we have ever been before.  With 3G and unlimited plans, most users can connect to the web anywhere and at anytime.  The stage is set.  We can finally explore ‘Slate’ computing as it was invisioned almost 10 years ago.