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LAS VEGAS — If 2011 is truly going to usher in the long-awaited Tablet Wars, then Lenovo has just fired the first shot of the year.

The IdeaPad Slate, one of just a few dozen tablet PCs that are expected to be introduced at CES this week, marks a respectable entry into a marketplace poised to see more than 50 million units sold over the coming year. With a 10.1-inch, high-resolution screen that boasts true 1080p HD, the IdeaPad certainly has the visual chops to make it in what is expected to be a heated competition against Samsung, Toshiba, and other PC makers in the fight to counter Apple’s wildly successful iPad.

What may ultimately separate the IdeaPad Slate, for better or for worse, from its closest rivals is its all-in embrace of a truly native Windows 7 OS, rather than, say, Honeycomb, the eagerly awaited Android rev expected to power tablets ranging from Toshiba to Motorola. Lenovo has also customized the user interface so that apps may be separated into distinct “work” and “play” tabbed areas via the homescreen, so those devotees who have embraced Windows’ latest desktop OS and haven’t yet jumped aboard the Android express may ultimately find themselves gravitating toward this sleek Lenovo offering.

And they’d getting a pretty decent tablet for their buck, too. The first-gen IdeaPad Slate will boast a 32GB solid-state drive (expandable through a side-memory card slot), along with 2GB of RAM and built-in 3G connectivity. (No carriers have been locked down as of yet.)

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Running this machine, which boasted a decent response time that would beat out Samsung’s Galaxy Tab, is Intel’s Oak Trail chip set, optimized specifically for tablet PCs. Lenovo reps estimate some six hours of Web browsing on a single charge — still far less than the iPad — and between four and five hours for video playback. No retail price has been announced, but you can wager the IdeaPad Slate will run somewhere around $500, and it should hit stores sometime in late spring.

Indeed, industry experts are expecting the tablet floodgates to open come that timeframe, when many of the tablets that will be unveiled here at CES should start to hit the marketplace. Other early entries include Motion Computing’s rugged CL900, which is geared toward business users with its durable exterior shell, 2.1-pound weight, and sub-$1,000 price point, as well as Asus’ mammoth Eee Slate EP121, complete with 12.1-inch screen, 64-gig solid-state drive, and Intel Core i5 CPU.

Yes, CES has barely begun, but the Year of the Tablet is officially in full swing.

Images: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Erik is the editor of Playbook, Wired.com’s sports blog. He’s also the managing editor of Longshot and a contributor to Pop-Up Magazine.
Follow @erikmal and @wiredplaybook on Twitter.

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Now that HP has sealed its acquisition of Palm, the PC maker is working hard to get Palm’s webOS mobile operating system onto HP products.

Palm’s webOS will power HP upcoming tablet, says HP CTO Phil McKinney. The tablet known as HP Slate had earlier been designed using Microsoft’s Windows 7 operating system. HP also plans to put webOS on printers, says McKinney.

“There’s a gap for devices that are larger than a smartphone but smaller than a netbook,” he told attendees at the ongoing Mobile Beat conference in San Francisco. “Slates could fit in that category.”

Unlike rival Dell, which chose the Google-designed open source Android OS to create its cellphone and tablet, HP spent $1.2 billion to buy Palm. The transaction closed earlier this month.

HP wants to control all pieces of the mobile ecosystem, says McKinney.

“If you look at success in the market, they are those companies who can control the end user experience and the entire experience stack,” he says.

That sounds more like Apple and less like Google. But it is clearly the direction that HP wants to go. In March, HP seemed poised to launch its Slate tablet offering sneak peeks of the device through carefully edited videos. Leaks of the company’s plans for the Slate pegged the price of the device at $550.

But in a surprise move in April, HP announced its buying Palm and with that it sent the Slate back to the drawing board. McKinney says HP is not yet ready to announce a launch date for the Slate.

“I am not going to pre-announce products but I will say that we are investing money into research & development and marketing at Palm.”

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Palm CEO John Rubinstein will continue to head up his webOS team under new boss HP, and will be working on smartphones, “future slate PCs and netbooks,” according to a statement from HP

The computer giant completed its acquisition of Palm yesterday, and announced that Palm will continue to develop both hardware and software, headed up by former Apple employee Rubinstein.

This will include new phones (the Pre and Pixi lines are now also owned by HP), but most exciting is the confirmation that there will be webOS tablets. After all, apart from iOS, name another operating system that is as suited to a tablet as the webOS (sure, Android is close, but still a little too clunky).

Better still, HP has the deep pockets to go up against Apple, and if Rubinstein and team are left to work on great machines their combined experience (many of them are also Apple alumni) should finally provide an iPad competitor. And even if you are a total, unashamed iPad fanboy, this should still excite you. Competition is good for us buyers. Take a look at the iPhone 4: Do you think it would be this good if Android and Palm weren’t chasing so close behind?

HP Completes Palm Acquisition [Yahoo]

Photo: Lisa Brewster/Flickr

Source:wired.com

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