HP Slate vs. iPad comparison

red-beard · red-beard's Garage

This is from Wired and is supposed to be a leaked comparison of the HP Slate vs. the iPad. Green is supposed to be an advantage to HP, Red is a threat/advantage on the iPad.

I agree with Wired, that the Slate is a netbook with the keyboard removed. Not that this is a bad thing. Wired isn't convinced. I think all of this will depend on how well the touch interface is setup.

The one serious advantage the Slate will have is the ability to run ANY windows application. OTOH, if you're happy with the Apple Apps, this won't sway you.

Take a look.

HP Slate Details Leaked: $550 Netbook, Minus Keyboard | Gadget Lab | Wired.com

HHI944 · 04-13-2010, 07:48 PM

It looks interesting, but all of those 'advantages' go out the window in the touch UI sucks.

red-beard · red-beard's Garage

There is a German company bringing out a Linux unit, WePad, which is Android compatible. Price is a bit higher than the HP Slate.

German tablet PC dubbed â€˜WePadâ€™ to rival iPad - Wireless- msnbc.com

HHI944 · 04-13-2010, 07:58 PM

Oh my! That looks interesting. Same issues though........

nostatic · nostatic's Garage

The problem is you can't just slap a "touch" UI on an OS and call it good. One reason the iPhone is a hit is because they designed the OS from the ground up to touch-driven, and most every design aspect of the OS plays to that.

The reality is that a typical PC is overkill for 99.9% of the users out there. Even most phones are overkill these days. The iPhone/iPad OS and apps give most users everything they actually need to use. The other small percentage will clearly not be fully served by an iPad, so they need something more.

Give it about another year or two. I think that you'll see iPad apps doing amazing things. Developers haven't had the SDK for very long.

island911 · 04-13-2010, 09:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by nostatic

The problem is you can't just slap a "touch" UI on an OS and call it good. ....

Tablet Edition of Windows has been out (and refined) for years. Msft is far ahead of Apple in alternatives to keyboard input. That said, what I don't like about the HP Slate is that it is a capacitive sensing (multi) touch-screen. --I suppose that there is a chance that it has the hybrid cap-res-sense . .. but iirc that is a Samsung patent.

Anyway, the hand-writing recognition won't really work with just a cap-sense input. IMO,the handwritting recognition really rocks on the Win tablets (and even the WinMobile input)...and we all know how much those on-screen keyboard sucks. I mean, the problem is you can't just slap a GUI keyboard on a touchscreen and call it good.

nostatic · nostatic's Garage

Quote:

Originally Posted by island911

Anyway, the hand-writing recognition won't really work with just a cap-sense input. IMO,the handwritting recognition really rocks on the Win tablets (and even the WinMobile input)...and we all know how much those on-screen keyboard sucks. I mean, the problem is you can't just slap a GUI keyboard on a touchscreen and call it good.

Actually I find the keyboard on the iPhone to be pretty good - at least as good or better than previous Palm or HTC "real" keyboards. The relative size and way it fits being held works well for me. On the iPad however, I hated the keyboard as it is just not right in any configuration. Holding it you have to use your thumbs or one or two fingers (I'm a touch typist) and it is too big. Laying the device down you can do index fingers on each hand but not touch typing, and then the angle is funny. You really need to attach a separate keyboard for any serious typing, but that is the same with a slate. Handwriting recognition has gotten better but there are still issues, and then you have to deal with they stylus, etc.

It'll be interesting to see how it evolves. I still find a laptop to be a near ideal computer for me, but I have specific needs and make a lot of stuff on the computer rather than watch a lot of stuff. I know I'm not a typical consumer...

red-beard · red-beard's Garage

This all comes down to the usual issue: What are you going to use it for? I can see my self getting away with a few days on the road without the full laptop, similar to my Netbook. Anything "serious" work will require a keyboard and mouse. A wireless mouse and keyboard will plug or bluetooth right in. This will really be my replacement for my Palm Lifedrive, and entertainment device, plus!

Scuba Steve · 04-14-2010, 02:14 AM

I'm really surprised that thing does 1080p. Wonder if it'll ship with a dock so the user can take advantage of all those different outputs or if it'll be another $100 or so.

island911 · 04-14-2010, 07:52 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Scuba Steve

I'm really surprised that thing does 1080p. Wonder if it'll ship with a dock so the user can take advantage of all those different outputs or if it'll be another $100 or so.

It shouldn't be any big deal... My old Samsung tablet drives the internal screen plus an additional 1080p w/o screen issue.

...w/ an RGB D-sub to a 46" 1080p set (read: no extra $100 dock)

jyl · jyl's Garage

I tried a English HWR app on the iPhone. It worked well, but I got tired of writing with my finger, and there was no real advantage over the K/B. I use a Chinese HWR app on the iPhone all the time, it works very well although the screen size is a limitation. With the larger screen on the iPad, it is possible that English HWR will be more useful, but AAPL is profoundly disinterested in that input method.

island911 · 01:50 PM

LOL, John ... I had to see what that looked like on the iPhone. ...the words "safety pencil" or Crayon" come to mind.

vs (goto 1:12 in)

I'll add; that transcriber demo above, the guy is using block letters (slow) ...cursive works great with those things, and is fast.

jyl · jyl's Garage

Yeah, I used MSFT's HWR on my Win XP Tablet Edition machines (had a Thinkpad tablet, and before that a Compaq tablet). It worked very well, although HWR wasn't that well integrated into the O/S and apps, perhaps they've improved the integration.

The HWR on the iPhone worked well, in the sense that the recognition was good, but writing with your finger in a small space is just tiresome. You can get conductive stylii for the iPhone, but since AAPL will never embrace HWR, it won't ever be integrated into the O/S, so why bother.

I have to laud the iPhone's built-in Chinese character recognition engine some more. It is damn good. It uses stroke order, direction, and count to do a very accurate HWR. Using it has actually improved my Chinese writing. I have to think that touchscreen type smartphones should eventually be more successful in China than keyboard type.

island911 · 04-14-2010, 10:36 AM

I agree that the tablet integration isn't as good as it could be ... I like the integration on the Win mobile better. (write anywhere on the screen)

anyway, here's a typical tablet input. --no doubt msft designed these for the slop that doctors put down.

jyl · jyl's Garage

You know what I've love to see, is where you can handwrite directly in the document.

So, for example, you're editing a Word document.
- To insert a sentence, you draw an insert mark (like ^) at the desired spot, and start handwriting right there. The existing text moves out of the way to accommodate your writing and that writing turns to text in realtime as your finish each word.
- To delete a sentence, you simply cross it out.
- To add a space, you draw an insert mark. To remove a space, you draw a connection mark (like U).
- And so on. Basically, it is exactly as if you're correcting a hardcopy draft, using the standard editing notations.

The current Win/Tablet system, where you handwrite in a separate input box that floats around, seems very clunky / awkward / bolt-on to me. I don't know if Win/Mobile is different?

island911 · 02:07 PM

Yep. Like I said, I like the integration on the Win mobile better. It does work more like you describe. Although, drawing a line thru, you may (for example) want it to display a strike-thru. For that reason (among others) you high-lite the text of interest (pulling left to right) and with a short right to left, backstroke, it deletes the selected. Else (w/ no backstroke) you can format to bold, strike-thru, font ...

It is soooo much better than thumb-boards. ...with the exception of entering passwords (which often have a strange mix of alpha-numerics)

Oh, and there are Journal note pad programss, where you scribble out all sorts of notes, diagrams ... then select what portions you want converted to text. http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/tabletpc/russel_03january20.mspx

island911 · 04-14-2010, 02:18 PM

fwiw...

MysticLlama · 04-14-2010, 04:10 PM

I think OneNote that came with some tablet and some versions of Office would let you write most anywhere, and use stylus inputs for cut/paste, inserting pictures, etc.

Saw a good demo of it at a conference once, but was definately one of those things that works in some circumstances and would be silly in others.

One nice thing was that it would OCR the handwriting, but only in the background if you wanted. So you could have handwritten notes and sketches that you could decipher just as if they were on paper, but it would OCR it in the background so you could search for words without forcing it to all be recognized and converted, which with how my big yellow notepads look, wouldn't make much sense.