HP to Reenter Tablet Market with Windows 8

KnightWRX said:
Yeah, throw all those nice Integrity and Proliant servers away, those SAN solutions and storage arrays, all that software and consulting that's worth billions. Just make stupid printers.

Some people sure don't have a clue what HP even does and it shows. :rolleyes:
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HP used to be a test equipment and desktop calculator company. They were cool then. They created the HP35 and the HP65 scientific calculators.

Later they became a company that made most of its profits from printer ink, and spun off all of their legacy as Agilent.

So now they are a company not unlike IBM, but they also want to cater to the consumer.

Again.

yawn.
 
BRLawyer said:
Meg's limited IQ is gonna lead HP to yet another disaster...as if Fiorina wasn't bad enough. Re-entry? Only if it's to crash and burn...
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Sadly she does showcase limited iq, how the eff did they manage to burn webos? Why the heck did they have to rush it to market? Takes a lot of stupidity to burn such a great piece of software, and webos had a lot going for it. I don't agree though that it's crush and burn again though,ms has put everything behind the new windows for tablets, and a lot of users are waiting for them.
 
HP Tablet Again, Windows 8 == Epic Fail

Even the Windows lovers I know have bought into iPad and Android.
most of the folks I know are buying iPads at a blinding clip.

The refurb iPad2 (16GB) at $319 pretty much ensures that no other tablets make entry into the market.
 
techwhiz said:
Even the Windows lovers I know have bought into iPad and Android.
most of the folks I know are buying iPads at a blinding clip.

The refurb iPad2 (16GB) at $319 pretty much ensures that no other tablets make entry into the market.
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Dont be so sure of that.
 
HP is notorious for jumping on a bandwagon and then jumping off while the horse is still running.....

I wouldnt take this thing for free....ever since the days of the Jordana, they have lacked in their support and upgrades. I gave them way too many chances, and now will just stick with other companies that take pride in their products.
 
timlopez said:
This article is wording it like HP was entering the tablet market to compete with Apple. Truthfully, they had the concept announced a few weeks prior to Apple announcing the iPad when HP announced the HP Slate. Sure it wasn't that great of a device, but HP did show interest in this market back before the original iPad was announced.
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I had a tc1000 slate back in the day so they had a tablet far before an iPad. Too bad xp tablet edition wasn't a complete product.
 
NAG said:
So how do you explain this?
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Uh ? I meant the tablet wasn't aimed at Enterprise at all.

NAG said:
Because yeah, my midsized business revolves around reading Twilight (as you stated their sales pitch consisted of business being their exclusive market...or you could read the quote as aimed at another market).
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And again, consumers are free to buy the Slate if they want it. It's not because it's up on the small & medium business that it can't be used by consumers. It's not an enterprise product though, that would be on HP's "Large business and Enterprise" sub site (I know, I shop there for hardware for my work).
 
blow45 said:
Sadly she does showcase limited iq, how the eff did they manage to burn webos? Why the heck did they have to rush it to market? Takes a lot of stupidity to burn such a great piece of software, and webos had a lot going for it. I don't agree though that it's crush and burn again though,ms has put everything behind the new windows for tablets, and a lot of users are waiting for them.
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The previous CEO killed WebOS, not Whitman. She did open source it though. I also think Microsoft was behind the decision. They pushed HP to dump WebOS to get favorable terms for Windows 8.
 
Man I have a Touchpad and that thing is so.. meh. D: Thank god it was only $100 but other than that, I am not a fan haha. My iPhone just makes me wish I had an iPad (though I have no need for it so I can't justify the cost..)
 
MS Office will be just whats puts Windows 8 tablets on the map. IPad users, including myself, could only wish for office.
 
r.j.s said:
When talking about consumer products UI = OS, and sorry, but no. The grid of icons is the ancient UI ...

Again, have you even used a WP device?
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I disagree on that bit. I've been using a WP7 device for a few months now and it's really just a grid of icons with a few twists, such as the "live" icons and some icons being two columns wide. But the live view isn't that useful outside the weather icon (at least for me) and two column icons are also a bit questionable in their utility.

In fact I often think the WP7 grid view is actually more inefficient than the regular grid of icons because it only displays two icons per row. If they made the icons slightly smaller and got rid of that useless next page arrow, they could've easily fit three icons per row.

At first I was impressed by the minimalistic look, but after been using it a while I'm actually starting to think Metro is a weak link in the WP7, not a strength.


mertyz said:
Believe me, I do. Their servers rock. Most of their consumer products however, do not and we are all talking about their consumer products here.
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Exactly. How reliable and IT-friendly HP enterprise products are mean very little for the consumer types yet that's often the defense used to prop up HP's chance in the consumer space.
 
fertilized-egg said:
I disagree on that bit. I've been using a WP7 device for a few months now and it's really just a grid of icons with a few twists, such as the "live" icons and some icons being two columns wide. But the live view isn't that useful outside the weather icon (at least for me) and two column icons are also a bit questionable in their utility.

In fact I often think the WP7 grid view is actually more inefficient than the regular grid of icons because it only displays two icons per row. If they made the icons slightly smaller and got rid of that useless next page arrow, they could've easily fit three icons per row.

At first I was impressed by the minimalistic look, but after been using it a while I'm actually starting to think Metro is a weak link in the WP7, not a strength.
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Except it is not a grid of icons. You can have as many, or as few, tiles as you like - and (depending on the app) it can be much more than a straight link to open the app, e.g. I have an iheartradio station pinned to the menu (instead of the app tile), so when I tap that tile, that station starts playing.

I can have tiles that take me to my Twitter messages or replies, rather than just opening the app. My calender tile shows my next appointment.

I can go on and on, but the tiles are far from just a grid of icons which open an app. If you don't like a tile, remove it. Try removing an icon from iOS.

----------
foodog said:
Windows 8 is not familiar to anyone... yet
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I didn't say Windows 8 ...
 
That is partially true. Because of HP's huge presence in Enterprise, they get more favorable terms from Intel and Microsoft for their consumer PC products. Of course, this hasn't helped them in the tablet space as MS/Intel were caught napping by Apple and ARM.
 
Being a PC person myself it's not easy saying this but HP is very optimistic if they think people are just going to flock to support their new device. Their previous WebOS tablet had a lot of promise and when they abruptly pulled out they burned a lot of developers, corporations who invested in their devices and a lot of retailers.

The only thing that merits a look at their product is because of Windows 8 RT. When it comes to products, you could have the best stuff out there but if the people have little confidence in you as a company...
 
I can tell you right now there are a lot of Enterprises lined up to buy Windows 8 tablets only because of MS Office. It will sell well for that feature alone. Will HP make the best Win8 tablet is another question.
 
r.j.s said:
Except it is not a grid of icons. You can have as many, or as few, tiles as you like - and (depending on the app) it can be much more than a straight link to open the app, ...

I can go on and on, but the tiles are far from just a grid of icons which open an app. If you don't like a tile, remove it. Try removing an icon from iOS.
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In iOS I can arrange icons so that I have either a few icons or a full set of icons in the first few pages of iOS to get the same effect. Or I can dump icons into folders and have a page full of folders, etc, so in use the ability to remove tile from the front page isn't really an advantage.

The short cuts aren't really part of Metro UI per se. I can make a short cut icon to a webpage in iOS Springboard and pinning icon is just that. On the good side WP7 does have a very nice assortment of pinning possibilities so it'll be good if Apple allows those short cut icons to be expanded for, say, contacts like WP7 does. But UI-wise, there's no reason why Apple cannot implement such thing through shortcut icons.
 
It better be ARM based. Atom has been stagnant since launch in 2008 and Brazos still needs some low power teething. Maybe low power AMD Hondo will be out by then but you are still looking at really poor x86 performance.

Low power x86 outside of Intel ULV is just a major failure. Even then you are looking at 17W.
 
r.j.s said:
Why? Windows is familiar to the average person, unlike WebOS was with the TouchPad.
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Windows 8 RT or Arm or whatever is not familiar to most people, and all the windows 8 tablets competing with the iPad in price will be limited to windows rt 8 whatever.

The full blown windows 8 tablets are going to be $700+, not $300-600.

I don't think people are hating on HP to fail as much expecting HP to fail bc their lack of consistent strategy.

HP owned one of the most important things in the technology industry, it's own OS. They gave it away as open source, which is seen as a act of good will, but might have been given away so that they can put categorize it as goodwill on their balance sheet, a real part of corporate accounting.

I think people, at least myself, see HP as a historically innovative company, and we are disappointed that HP didn't keep webOS to develop into a Windows, Mac, Linux competitor.

I think HP saw the calendar q4 sales of the iPad close to matching all of HP consumer PC sales and decided they need to get back in the tablet game. The problem with this is that HP PCs had an asp of a little over $500 with about $50 profit per machine where as the iPad had around the same 15 million sales with an asp of over $600 and about $200 profit margin.

Now HP is hedging their bets on tablets with full windows 8 and the limited windows on arm/rt. HP is still going to be stuck with $50 profit per machine just like in desktops and laptops, competing against Acer, Asus, Samsung etc...

HP open sourced their one unique asset, webOS. They put a stripped down version of Android on some of their printers when they should have been developing webOS to run their printers. And washing machines etc...

I guess my overall opinion is that HP had a chance to choose their own path, be innovative, and do something new, instead they are choosing to relegate themselves to be another windows tablet maker, making tiny margins and leaving innovation behind.

I'm sure future business school students are going to have to read case studies about the HP folies for years to come.

In addition, HP has to do this bc that is where the market is going and where all their same PC competitors are going, so it's a fact of life in the computer industry to follow the trends.

But I pose this question, specifically to the haters of the HP haters ( hater not being the right word but gets the point across )

What would we think if this announcement, instead of being about tablets, was about HP re-entering the PDA or Phone market with the new windows 7 iPaq 2012? Would it be more or less cringe worthy considering the gave up on webOS?
 
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Win8 on a tablet would be a contender if it meant you could run your existing windows software on iPad-like hardware.

But you can't. Windoze applications will be incompatible and need to be rewritten from the ground up to work on win8 arm. Win is starting completely over. Enjoy years of little novelty apps before any truly useful applications comes to this. Hooray.

Nice job MS. As if your vision for tablets didn't suck enough the first time around.

HP thinking this is the path to success. I guess Win8 has brand recognition to piggyback off, otherwise, they might as well have just kept WebOS.
 
You're point about apps is valid. I bet within six months Windows 8 RT will have more apps than WebOS ever did. And that was why HP abandoned WebOS. Developers never saw it as a competitive platform.
 
We live in a new world where bureaucracy will kill your company. Depending on someone else's technology to run your business will bury you. HP doesn't get it. Microsoft doesn't get it. Apple succeeds because they have control of everything.
 
ThunderSkunk said:
Win8 on a tablet would be a contender if it meant you could run your existing windows software on iPad-like hardware.

But you can't. Windoze applications will be incompatible and need to be rewritten from the ground up to work on win8 arm. Win is starting completely over. Enjoy years of little novelty apps before any truly useful applications comes to this. Hooray.

Nice job MS. As if your vision for tablets didn't suck enough the first time around.

HP thinking this is the path to success. I guess Win8 has brand recognition to piggyback off, otherwise, they might as well have just kept WebOS.
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For HP, the path to success is to keep playing the game rather than changing the game.

HP to shareholders, yeah we're still doing well on those $50 margins?

The sad thing is that HP is no longer a premium brand.
 
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