HP announced their new tablet today, the HP TouchPad. It is the same size and resolution as the iPad, and runs the dual-core 1.2Ghz Snapdragon processor - which should provide plenty of horsepower. The TouchPad has 1Gb of RAM, as opposed to iPad's 256Mb - multitasking on the HP should be smooth and quick. Storage will be in 16Gb and 32Gb flash options - just like the iPad. The TouchPad is WiFi-only, and does have a front-facing camera. It does include wireless charging ("TouchStone"), Micro-USB (for charging and syncing only) and no SD card support. The biggest part of the announcement - the TouchPad will run WebOS, which HP picked up when they acquired Palm - this means Adobe Flash support. Availability is sometime summer - no pricing yet. It sounds like it will be very close in features to iPad 2, and released at the same time - without the huge App Store. The price tag will have to be pretty attractive, or WebOS unbelieveably user-friendly for this to be a horse race.
Finally, TechCrunch has a wild rumor that Apple is readying a "Fall Surprise" - the iPad 3 (or at least 2.5), giving them a chance to refresh and reload prior to the holiday season. Sounds kind of out there, but time will tell...
Does the HP have any kind of stylus support? For graphics apps (drawing comics, in particular) these devices seem like a nice improvement from really expensive and bulkier tablet computers, but they don't seem built for producing stuff. What product, not made by Wacom (so cheaper and more multi-use than a Wacom), would fit this best?
ReplyDeleteThe pen is not in vogue on the tablet front these days, and I have not seen any word of pen support for the TouchPad, but I was playing with an HP Slate running Windows 7 today (http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/hp-slate-500-tablet-pc-yours-for-799/10111), which does sport a pen interface. Even as a former pen addict, I wasn't very impressed with the responsiveness on this one. I have also played around with the Pogo Pen for the iPad - definitely not what you are looking for. I haven't seen any pen-based Android tablets yet, but with so many hitting the market, there may be an option there.
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