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One thing that i find about this iPad craze or news fetish that we are getting now is, WHERE THE HECK IS THE COMPETTION!

Is it their strategy to let Apple walk away with this Scot-free?  Perhaps its the case they don’t want to clash with the release of iPad so that consumers have a clearer visibility.

Today we got announcement of the specification for HP’s Slate:

This is basically a PC, or a Netbook, or whatever HP wants to call it.

It runs on Windows 7. Great OS, but its not an OS that runs on ROM. Can you imagine every time you want to take notes or minutes on this you have to wait 10 seconds for it to come out of sleep or hibernation??

It goes for USD 549.  I don’t think its expensive. Certainly its got more to offer hardware wise. Its netbook pricing.

1.6 GHz Atom Z530 with UMA graphics and  an accelerator for 1080 video playback. 1GB of RAM which cannot be changed. Now how does this  add up on Windows 7? I can tell you OS is good, but this combination will not own the iPad. iPad is optimize such that the software you run on it will be fast. you will be trading fast softwares for a wider range that you are using currently.

32GB flash storage. This is ok i feel. heck i survived on 80 GB home pc for a long time. Its all about optimization sometimes.USD 50 more and you get 64 GB.

5 hour battery. I dunno about battery life but i see this HP Slates battery dying earlier than iPad.

8.9-inch 1024 x 600 capacitive multitouch display. Almost same here. But i’m telling you, Firefox or IE on a 600 height can be pretty irritating. Your viewing range is drastically limited.

an SDHC slot, two camera, a USB port, a SIM card slot for the optional 3G modem, and a dock connector for power, audio, and HDMI out. basically PC peripherals but the SIM card slot is a bonus.

You can see that this aims to be more of a multimedia movie watching device. My overall feel is that this thing is not for me.

For the financial trader who wants to trade on the go:

I have used the Atom with Windows 7 and largely the performance is OK. The plus side is that all your web brokerage and financial charting softwares will work on this baby.

For the gamer:

If you are looking for a nice gaming experience this ain’t gonna cut it. The iPad will be much better.

For the professional looking to be more productive in note-taking, calendaring and task management:

Stick to the iPad. If you need to wait for it to boot up or come out of hibernation or sleep, that hinders you. You think you can live with it but sooner or later that precious second will tick you off.

The productivity apps on the App Store does a much better job. But one thing going for it on the slate is Microsoft OneNote