The HP Slate Tablet 500 is definitely one of those iPad competitors out on the market. At $800 the price is on par with the 64GB iPad with 3G and wifi. The machine runs on an Intel Atom Z540 processor with 1.86 GHz and you get 2GB of RAM and a nice spacious 64GB SSD. HD videos play well on this machine supporting up to 1080p videos thanks to the Broadcom Crystal HD accelerator. At 8.9 inches the capacitive touch screen runs well and is very responsive in comparison to other machines.
The one thing that sets this machine apart from the iPad is the fact that it runs a fully functioning operating system. Don’t get me wrong, Apple’s operating system is great but in the end of the day some users need to be able to use their main desktop applications. The great thing is you are not limited to sitting on a desk anymore and you have the freedom to work virtually anywhere. The machine comes with an N-Trig active digitizer which works well with Windows 7 allowing for touch input as well as hand writing recognition.
The machine has a nice three megapixel back facing camera as well as a VGA front facing camera. This makes it great for Skype calls on the sofa. The slates metal edges and rubberized back gives the machine a nice elegant yet durable feel. It weighs 1.5 pounds which is a reasonable weight for a tablet of its size.
The only thing that holds this tablet back is the fact that it runs on an Atom processor. The words Atom processors and speed are not synonymous and I am pretty sure it won’t be for a while. However this machine is anything but sluggish. It is great for most people and will definitely be a great instant messaging or even web browsing device. When comparing the price to others this is definitely worth the buy.
Wanda Fisher, January 25, 2011
Thanks for the information.