HP Updates Windows Tablet PC for Professionals

Having recently reaffirmed its commitment to the PC side of its business, Hewlett-Packard is poised to launch an updated tablet PC running the professional edition of Microsoft 's Windows 7 operating system. Called the HP Slate 2, the machine will enable business professionals to maintain seamless continuity with the entire range of content residing on the machines used by their managers and fellow workers.

The decision to refresh the original Slate tablet launched by HP last year demonstrates that the company continues to see growth opportunities in the professional segment of the tablet market. About 6 percent of all tablet shipments during the second quarter of 2011 went to commercial users -- up from 3 percent in the prior two quarters of 2010, said IDC Vice President Loren Loverde in an e-mail Thursday. "Apple had about 80 percent of that in the past two quarters," she said.

HP experienced strong growth in the U.S. PC market during this year's third quarter -- when the company's PC shipments increased 15.1 percent year over year and its market leading share totaled 28.9 percent, said Mika Kitagawa, a principal analyst at Gartner .

"Moving to a Windows-based tablet is a good direction for HP," Kitagawa said in an e-mail Thursday. "But I am not sure how the product will help [boost the] overall revenues and profitability [at HP's Personal Systems Group], as the market is expected to be small at this point."

Right Mix of Features

HP's new 1.5-pound tablet will enable mobile workers to create, edit and review business documents, spreadsheets, presentations and other types of Windows-compatible files while on the go. The HP Slate 2 also ships with the requisite mSATA SSM technology for delivering faster Windows 7 boot times.

Slate 2 integrates a 1.5GHz Atom Z670 processor from Intel , 2GB of DDR2 SDRAM, a solid state drive with a maximum capacity of 64GB and an SD expansion card slot. The tablet sports an inward-facing VGA webcam and outward-facing 3-megapixel camera/camcorder.

The device 's 8.9-inch capacitive multi-touch display, which ships with a new Swype-enabled keyboard , offers support for both pen and touch input. According to HP, touch-screen resolution varies between 1024x600p and 1024x768p, depending on the specific application in use. (continued...)

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