AfterDawn: News

HP Slate sees unexpectedly high demand

The HP Slate 500 tablet is seeing stronger demand than expected, say multiple sources, with HP having trouble keeping up.

HP showed off the Slate at CES in January, and even shelved plans to release it before reviving it late in the summer.



The tablet sells for $800 and is dubbed as an "enterprise-only" device.

HP wanted to launch the tablet on November 12th but all pre-orderers are now seeing a two-week delay. The company says they do not have "on-hand stock" to complete orders.

"Due to high demand on the portable system you have selected we will not be able to fulfill the order from on hand stock, therefore we have routed your order to manufacturing for your product to be built. The average lead time to get these portables ready to ship may vary from 10 to 15 business days," reads the note.

One source says the company only had 5000 in supply but received over 9000 pre-orders. Angry customers are even being offered up to $100 off of the device for waiting.

Written by: Andre Yoskowitz @ 15 Nov 2010 23:36

• Previous article

• Google shows off Nexus S with NFC features

• Next article

• Kinect hits 1 million units sold

• 7 comments

• KillerBug

  If they think the customers are angry now, just wait until they find out that it does not have android!
  

  16.11.2010 00:19 #1

• biglo30

  lol I think a lot of people just want to have windows 7 in a tablet form for some reason. Honestly I can see a lot of cons probably outweighing the pros on this one. Only time will tell, when the unit is FINALLY released is when all the complaints will start pouring in.

  16.11.2010 02:39 #2

• KillerBug

  If that is the case, then they will be furious when their new $800 tablet is slower than a $400 netbook!
  

  16.11.2010 05:36 #3

• Ben79

  More than likely, it's HP's netbook with a touch interface. Would still be neat to have one though. If not just to contradict the rampant Apple iDogma.

  16.11.2010 10:08 #4

• dirtyash

  Originally posted by biglo30: lol I think a lot of people just want to have windows 7 in a tablet form for some reason. Honestly I can see a lot of cons probably outweighing the pros on this one. Only time will tell, when the unit is FINALLY released is when all the complaints will start pouring in. Well, the tablet features in win 7 are very impressive. With that being said, you really need an active digitizer to take full advantage of them. I don't see why people don't look at the convertible tablets that are already offered if they want win 7. These things are very powerful; more so than netbooks. And the touch input is getting better and better (more responsive). If microsoft will work on getting their os's footprint smaller and smaller (come on already) then this will help with the responsiveness as well.

  17.11.2010 10:58 #5

• KillerBug

  Part of the issue with the "convertibles" is that they tend to have short battery life. They are also more fragile, and they cost a lot more. Also, they tend to be setup with 4GB or more memory and windows 7 x64...these are both great for performance and capabilities, but they make the wake-up-from-hibernate time about twice as long as it is on a x86 machine with 2GB ram.
  

  17.11.2010 23:04 #6

• dirtyash

  Originally posted by KillerBug: Part of the issue with the "convertibles" is that they tend to have short battery life. They are also more fragile, and they cost a lot more. Also, they tend to be setup with 4GB or more memory and windows 7 x64...these are both great for performance and capabilities, but they make the wake-up-from-hibernate time about twice as long as it is on a x86 machine with 2GB ram. I don't know if your speaking from experience or not, but I am and there is not that much difference in startup from hibernate b/t a 64-bit and 32-bit system. Hibernate is essentially a complete boot-up process plus the loading of any of the previous stuff you were working on. So therefore it is going to take some (a lot of) time, depending on how many things you were working on before you put it into hibernate. I personally never use hibernate; if I want my laptop to open up where I left off (like moving from class to class or meeting to desk) I use the sleep function. The return from sleep is an extremely fast process (almost instantaneous) on my 64-bit, win 7 machine and I don't see the point in using the hibernate. It's either, I need my stuff in a few minutes so I use sleep or I don't need my stuff right away and use a complete shutdown.
  
  My battery life when I first got my battery (8-cell) was almost 5 hours on maximum settings, now that it's 3 years old it lasts about 2.5 hours. So, I don't see that being a factor (although a 1 ghz atom processor w/ 2 gigs of ram would give you a lot more).
  
  They are definitely not more fragile, I have a lenovo and they are known for being really tuff. I personally have had mine fall from a ~2 ft high bench onto a hard tile floor and didn't experience any problems, but try that with any of the new slate tabs and I don't think that shiny bezel would hold up as well.
  
  As far as price, you are definitely correct. They are more expensive, but that's b/c they do more and have the guts to do so.
  
  In the end, it's all about what you’re going to use it for. If you want a tablet to read emails and surf the web or play cool motion sensitive games on, then get an ipad or equivalent. If you need your carry around pc to run light CAD and other demanding programs, as well as take notes on, then you should get a convertible with the full sized processor and ram capabilities. This was the point of my first post, if you really want a win 7 capable tablet, then you should just go ahead and get the one with the processor and ram that will run it efficiently. If you just want a tablet to have the new cool thing and read emails on, then get one of the ipad equivalents (don't get an ipad, they suck).
  
  Honestly, that's why I feel these new ipad-esque tablets are just a fad. When people realize that all they’re good for is playing games, reading books and surfing the web and the coolness factor dies off, then these things won’t sell as much. That being said, 90% of the people only use their pc to do these things so maybe I’m wrong about that.

  18.11.2010 12:47 #7