We’ve been discussing Android smartbooks for years on UMPCPortal. It started four years ago when we got the Compaq Airlife 100 and has been an interesting possibility ever-since. The latest Android book is from HP and offers a Full-HD 14-inch screen – something you’d consider as part of a fully productive laptop. This is the HP Slatebook 14, a product which leaked at HP.com this week and has subsequently been removed.
HP already have the Slatebook 10 X2 which I had some hands-on with last year. It’s actually a very interesting product considering price and capability. With Tegra 4 you’ve got a fast Chrome browser and lots of lovely battery life. Traditional productivity apps are slowly getting better but new productivity apps are there too. Some of these you just can’t get under Windows 8 yet. The same features apply to the Slatebook 14 which could offer better keyboard functionality than the Slatebook 10 X2. Price could be attractive too but we don’t know much about that yet.
Looking at some of the known features I’d hazard a guess at the HP Slatebook 14 being a premium product. There’s three USB ports for a start. The device doesn’t look particularly thin (leaving the possibility of it having a nice big battery inside,) Beats audio and the 3G option means it won’t be the cheapest laptop on the market. There’s no word on RAM and storage though so we won’t know until we get full specifications.
The main question we have to ask is…who want’s a device like this? If you consider this as a portable games machine that can also be used for social networking you might be in the right area in my opinion. That Full-HD screen will be great for video streaming services and if it supports Miracast, which it probably will, it could make one of the best living room PCs out there. Combined with Chromecast and a new processing plafrom you’ve got something special.
The HP Slatebook 14 is going to be a product that many will watch for sales, pricing and reviews. Recent processors on a Full HD screen aren’t that cheap (the Transformer Pad with keyboard dock is well over $400) and Lenovo’s Ideapad A10 runs at about $200 so we’d expect a $350 entry point which puts it up against Windows PCs running Baytrail-M. It will also go up against Chromebooks too and given that it’s a more thrilling OS, maybe it could knock a few Chromebooks off their perch as it climbs sales charts.
Source: NotebookItalia. where you’ll find some more images.
From the vending materials I’ve seen, 2015 or “Windows 9″ is when MS separates the modern environment from the desktop environment. So my guess is the reason Google approved this device is that they will want to have Android competitors on the market to compete. A big clue is that in some form-factors, like 8” tablets, the desktop environment won’t be allowed at all anymore with “Windows 9” (not even Intel versions).
Obviously the traditional Windows laptops with desktop UI’s will still be around but they will compete directly with ChromeOS laptops.
Uh, I don’t see that happening… If anything, MS is integrating and not separating… The new Start Menu for example supports Live Tiles! So the UI will just better adjust to what device form factor you’re using instead of a all or nothing paradigm…
While Google is likely to just merge Android and Chrome as well… Android doesn’t have a desktop mode and Ubuntu is presently out of the running for that job… leaving just Chrome, which is probably Google’s plan as they’re already working on giving Android Chrome as much functionality as Chrome OS… being able to run Chrome apps, etc. and basically let Google leverage both their OS platforms on the same device…
In any case, it’s hardly the first Android laptop ever released… Maybe the first 14″ but there have been a few 13.3″ and plenty of 10″ and smaller models… Not counting expensive dual boots models like the few models Asus released that run on Core processors and switch between Windows 8 and Android…
Though, we’d likely no longer see any new dual boot or similar solutions releases any time soon with both Google and MS against it and pressuring system makers to no longer make them…
Integrating bits of Metro into the desktop is not the samething as having 2 separate environments. The 2 environments are going to be completely separated next year. The desktop version will not be allowed on sub 10″ screens.
The leaks are already starting to happen because OEMs/vendors are already being made aware, the devs/public will be informed later this year.
No, the desktop will be allowed… It’s still going to be one OS… They’re just changing what the defaults will be and how well integrated it’ll all be to better allow it to adjust to the form factor of your system/device…
They only had to separate environments because they couldn’t just integrate the two right away, so this is really just the next step…
While users will still be able to override and customize the way they prefer it… Never mind, you’re forgetting many devices will be able to dock and change their form factor and the OS will have to adjust for that as well…
But they’re not only going to need to make the OS more integrated and flexible but developers also have to do the same with all the apps and that will take time…
Couple problems James, you have no actual information but just speculation based on an idea that MS had several years ago before the failure of W8 too take off like they initially predicted. Everything MS is doing now is a compromise of their original vision just like they did with the XB1.
Even mainstream bloggers like Paul Thurrott (who gets his info much later) have already stated that MS will be killing the desktop on small tablet devices. There is no debate, it is a fact. It’s just harder for people that visit a site like this to accept because they are the few who actually like it.
MS cannot compete with Apple/Google in the consumer tablet market (AKA mass market) with a device that has a desktop/control panel/windows updates & so on, it’s just ridiculous. The hardest part is getting the computer nerds to understand this, our era is coming to an end, the new era emerging is going to be based on radical simplification & the cloud. No matter how many CD’s you rip or HDD’s you stuff massive amounts of local files on (that you never look at) will change anything.
Sorry but you’re very mistake… First, they can’t have Windows adjust itself to the device you install it on if they cut off anything!
You and others are confusing auto customizing with eliminations… It doesn’t work that way!
And as long as everything is still there then users can override the customization and set it up the way they want!
Second, MS made it official from the start that they were putting W8 on a annual updates cycle instead of traditional SP releases… Incremental OS updates are by design to allow rapid changes and advancing of the OS without needing to wait for the next full version release…
And MS made it clear from the start they were eventually going to merge and integrate the environments… Pretty soon they’re going to merge the WP App Store with the RT App store as another step in that direction and they’re already working on providing developers the tools needed to make completely cross platform apps that’ll run on all version of Windows…
While every XP and Windows 7 clearly show a pattern with MS in releasing a new OS before it’s fully ready and doing additional development after release…
And there’s a lot of limitations to the Apple/Google in the tablet market and that gives MS an actual opportunity to provide convenience and flexibility that is simply not being provided yet… So, I strongly disagree that MS can’t compete with Apple/Google…
And the cloud is still not ready to replace anything… and even then, MS got that covered too…