The HP Slate Device

[Jason Dunn]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/06/the-hp-slate/' target='_blank'>http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/06/the-hp-slate/</a><br /><br /></div><p><object width="600" height="360" data="http://www.youtube.com/v/IIIjTDnX2Y0&amp;ap=%26fmt=18" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"><param name="src" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/IIIjTDnX2Y0&amp;ap=%26fmt=18" /></object></p><p>Engadget has a <a href="http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/06/the-hp-slate/" target="_blank">brief post about the forthcoming HP slate</a> - notice how "slate" is the buzz-word this year at CES - but no one knows much about it yet. HP didn't have it out for display at the press conference event I attended last night (yeah, I'm at CES!), but we know that it's going to be running Windows. The question, as always, is how well can Windows 7 work on a small-screen device? Windows doesn't have a very flexible UI - there are assumptions about the screen size of the device being a certain size, and once you get below the 9 inch range, you start to get into problems being able to hit touch targets. Windows 7 is the best of all Microsoft OS' in terms of having reasonably-sized UI elements - the new taskbar area for instance has nice, big icons. Windows isn't designed for touch though, so how well will a device like this work? What do you think?</p>

[doogald]

This is just a guess, but I'm thinking that these products were the result of decisions made to rush something out to counter what everyone is expecting Apple to do later this month (supposedly). I hate to talk rumor, but supposedly Apple has been working on this coming tablet for about three years; I'm guessing that these devices did not see that much design work.

I guess that we'll see for sure later on...

[Macguy59]

As a touch device it should work as well as one of the touch screen AIO's currently out. Which is to say some UI elements work well within a touch based environment while others don't seem to work at all. I wonder though how much of that is MS fault and how much is due to the hardware technology being used.

[Nurhisham Hussein]

When the beta came out I slapped Win7 on a variety of devices, including a Sony U8G, which is a 5" slate with an SVGA screen. Apart from some driver problems, it worked real well.

There <i>are</i> some UI issues with a screen that small, but I find this (http://blogs.msdn.com/vikrammadan/archive/2007/04/05/dead-see-scroll-bar.aspx) helps a <i>lot</i>.