HP Slate: So Long Windows 7, Hiya WebOS?
By Harry McCracken | Wednesday, May 12, 2010 at 12:55 pm
I started out thinking that the rumor that HP was canceling its much-hyped Windows 7 “Slate PC” strained credulity. But it’s been a couple of weeks since the idea surfaced, and HP isn’t denying it. Which isn’t a good sign–if everything was fine, wouldn’t the company say so?
Now GottaBeMobile is reporting that an allegedly excellent source says that HP is ditching Windows 7 and replacing it with the operating system it just bought: Palm’s WebOS, on a slate code-named “Hurricane.” You’d think it would take awhile to reengineer WebOS to work well on a larger device, making a release in the next few months unlikely–or has Palm been secretly tackling that challenge all along?
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Can someone help me locate a power supply cord and battery for my hp laptop? Says:
May 13th, 2010 at 10:51 am[…] HP Slate: So Long Windows 7, Hiya WebOS? […]
May 13th, 2010 at 12:14 am
Good news if Windows is out of the picture.
May 13th, 2010 at 4:56 am
Windows won’t work well on a slate until either Microsoft ports Windows to ARM or Intel comes out with Atoms that are as efficient as ARM soc’s. Neither is in the cards for the next couple of years. Going WebOS and ARM is the smart play here.
Even if the Atom chips were as efficient as ARM Cortex A8 or A9 soc’s, Win7 isn’t good on a slate as a platform. The OS may have all the TabletPC functionality you please, but most of the programs you’ll be running were written with keyboard/mouse in mind. WebOS uses touch with keyboard backup.
It seems likely that Palm already had a prototype slate running WebOS, so the rumors that HP will come out with ‘Hurricane’ this year seem plausible. I’d like to see WebOS survive, and I want Windows Phone to be competitive too. Four platform choices for the ARM-based slates and smartbooks is not too many for me.