HP Kills Windows 7 Slate - Techcrunch

[Synaesthesia]

I'm surprised this hasn't been mentioned on the news yet, the HP Slate has been cancelled (or at least the Windows 7 version).
http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/29/hewlett-packard-to-kill-windows-7-tablet-project/

Can't say I'm surprised. It's Atom+Ion platform uses way more power than an ARM tablet, which means you have to make the whole tablet thicker, use a cooling fan and reduce the battery life.

 

[Rudimental]

This is still just a rumour from a single source, which is probably why little has been said about it. HP did just buy Palm, so it could be that they are looking at their own OS, i.e. WebOS.

Also, you don't need active cooling for Atom and Ion. Moorestown would make more sense for an x86 tablet, though, but I'm not sure whether there are problems with it, since the LG phone that was supposed to use it has been canned, or rather 'was only ever a concept'.

 

[Synaesthesia]

Even if you don't need active cooling, it's very difficult for x86 to compete. The entire iPad, screen and all, consumes 1.5W of power. An Atom CPU uses 2-4W alone. Then there's the graphics chip, which probably uses more than that, and the other components, display etc.

They're probably looking at making a WebOS tablet - in fact that's the obvious thing to do. I'm a big fan of WebOS, as it has probably the best implementation of multitasking and notifications on a smartphone, and it's Linux-based and quite a bit more open than iPhone OS. It should scale very nicely to a tablet.

 

[Rudimental]

Moorestown is the SoC version of Atom, and LG said their phone had 5 hours of 3G browsing (1850mAh battery), which is about the same as the iPhone 3G is rated at. So, I would expect it would be quite viable in a tablet. The issue is probably more to do with the OS. Windows 7 is not a good platform because it would chew power compared to a mobile OS. x86 tablets on Moorestown will probably run Moblin, like the one that was demo'ed at CES in Jan.

I would think that the iPad uses more like 2.5W, because its battery is rated at 25W hours, and it lasts around 10 hours on a single charge.

 

[Synaesthesia]

OK my bad 2.5W! Yes but that's still quite little. Moorestown certainly sounds good. Tegra is another excellent platform, in fact quite a lot more powerful than the single core A4 in the iPad.