Looks like there’s plenty going on lately at Hewlett Packard; with the spotlights being on Palm and the HP Slate. HP has recently mentioned that the HP Slate (which runs Windows 7) will not be targeting the mass market but more on the corporate/enterprise sector instead. Essentially, you could say the HP Slate is going to be aimed at companies wanting a “super-lite” keyboard-less, Intel Atom-ized version of the pricey Elitebook 2740p. But then what of regular consumers? Is HP gonna just let them run off to Apple stores to buy iPads?
Well, that’s the thing. HP has been strangely quiet about their consumer version of the Slate, which will likely be a Palm WebOS powered tablet. So far, the only hints they’ve dropped are the trademark application for the PalmPad name (though I won’t be surprised if they went for “PalmSlate” next) and to a lesser extent, talking about WebOS 2.0 being on track for an end-of-the-year (presumably before the holidays, if HP wants to capitalize on Black Friday and Christmas sales).
It seems that we’re hearing about Palm almost everyday lately, which is a good sign. Fortune has just confirmed that Jon Rubinstein (Palm’s CEO, and of course Palm is now part of HP) talked about WebOS 2.0 coming later this year (2010). Hopefully it’ll be as great for productivity as it will be awesome for handheld gaming (as HP’s Rahul Sood implied in a blog post just two days ago).
In other Palm-related news, it was also mentioned today that Palm will become a sub-brand under HP (just like what happened to other companies that HP bought over, such as Rahul’s Voodoo PC gaming computer company). While this move is not unexpected, I cannot help but wonder about the fate of the iPAQ brand. Perhaps this is a sign that WebOS devices will be sold under the “HP Palm” name while they will revive the iPAQ line sometime down the road to run Windows Phone 7? Afterall, Microsoft did include HP as one of the companies during the announcement of Windows Phone 7 earlier this year…
Well, well, well… what’s this we have here? Just as we were discussing the HP PalmPad yesterday and talking about the potential demise of the HP Slate, with the large possibility that the PalmPad was going to take its place as competitor to Apple’s iPad. Apparently HP wants to compete on both operating system fronts when it comes to offering iPad equivalent alternatives; with a mobile, more content-consumption friendly Web OS for the PalmPad as well as full-fledged (but touch optimized) Windows 7 OS on their not-so-dead-anymore Slate. The HP Slate has appeared on HP’s official website, now officially known as the HP Slate 500 (so there’s room for both higher end and more basic ‘budget’ tablets…), which you can check out right here and here. So far, specifications haven’t changed from HP’s initial announcement of the Slate with Microsoft earlier this year, as the Slate 500 maintains the use of a 1.6 GHz Intel Atom processor, Windows 7 OS and 8.9 inch touchscreen. Pricing remains a mystery though, as well as other specifications and a release date, but we’ll let you know whenever the news breaks. Those hoping for a Windows 7 running tablet, I can see all of you heaving a big sigh of relief….
As if the iPad name wasn’t/isn’t bad enough (remember the jokes about the name when Apple first announced the iPad?), now it seems everyone’s following the suit! Today, Lenovo unveiled their plans to release their Android-running LePad tablet by the end of this year (the name LePad is probably “Lenovo Pad” for short, but could easily be mistaken and confused for something else by the French, due to its French-sounding name). Anyway, there could be no better a time for such news from Lenovo to break – coming less than 24 hours after it was discovered HP filed for a trademark for the name PalmPad.
And on we go to the name “Palm Pad”, which we can say with almost 100% certainty will be a tablet form-factor device running WebOS (and most likely an HP-tweaked and HP-design-sprinkled version of WebOS). The question is when? And will the Palm Pad take the place of the planned Windows-running HP Slate as a direct competitor to Apple’s iPad? No details there either, but I have a good feeling that the answer for the latter question will be YES, since Windows 7 can be a potentially clunky OS on a low-powered, slim tablet device and everyone’s been screaming for a WebOS so much, that I’m pretty sure someone at HP would have taken note.
HP ProBook 5320m
Earlier this month, HP quietly announced the ProBook 5320m in some of their region-specific websites (such as HP Singapore), successor to last year’s ‘thin and light’ ProBook 5310m business notebook. The HP ProBook 5320m is a fairly minor refresh, with the changes being a new body color (now in gold-silvery tone, versus the all-black 5310m) with new 2010 Core i-series processors dropped into its 0.93 inch thin aluminum + magnesium alloy chassis (the ProBook 5310m measures the exact same dimensions and weighs the same 3.8 lbs/1.72 kg as its predecessor). While the ProBook 5310m had “medium voltage” SP-series Core 2 Duo processors (with 25W TDP), the new ProBook 5320m uses “standard voltage” Core i3/i5 processors (with 35W TDP)… I wonder how this will impact battery life. Currently there are just three i-series processor options available: the 2.26 GHz Core i3-350M, 2.40 GHz Core i3-370M and 2.40 GHz i5-450M (whose advantage over Core i3 being its ability to ‘overclock’ itself up to 2.66 GHz via Turbo Boost). Seeing they probably share the same motherboard, I’m wondering why HP doesn’t list options for higher-spec Core i5 processors or even the powerful 2.66 GHz Core i7-620M for the ProBook 5320m (perhaps HP will offer such options in the future, but for those daring enough to ‘dig in’ to their notebook, you could probably try to order a ‘replacement part’ Core i7-620M and install it at your own risk!). There’s also a low-end 1.06 GHz Celeron ultra-low voltage U2300 processor option available for those willing to sacrifice power for better battery life.
Two other noteworthy additions to the ProBook 5320m is the multi-touch, gesture enabled touchpad (which the 2009 ProBook 5310m can probably do too, via this magical Synaptics touchpad driver from HP’s website) and new VGA port alongside the Display Port option (the 5310m has Display Port only, hence requiring an adapter to connect to most projectors and VGA-cabled monitors). I’m a bit surprised that HP decided to continue using a more traditional ‘touchpad with physical buttons’ setup here on the ProBook 5320m (versus the button-less huge trackpad they’ve outfitted on the other 5000-series ProBook and consumer Pavilion/Envy models).
While the ProBook 5320m has appeared on HP’s websites for certain countries, there’s no word so far on pricing or availability in North America.
