News

New tablet PC, new HP, new manager, all wireless

First glimpses of HP-Compaq's Evo Tablet PC were revealed to the audience at the Mobile Convergence seminar in Monaco today, by New HP's new manager of portable business, Ingo Gassmann.

Gassman said HP wouldn't be launching the Evo Tablet PC before Microsoft did (probably in October, before Compaq) - but he did show some "lifestyle" pictures of the device, and revealed some of its features.

The pictures reveal a silver-framed A4 size colour display with a detachable keyboard, and a touch screen.

It will be based on a Transmeta Crusoe processor, which Gassman predicts will achieve at least five hours of battery life, and maybe six hours. It will have a keyboard, and it will be wirelessly equipped, with both Bluetooth personal area network and WiFi WLAN technology.

"This will be targeted at the mobile corporate or business user, and it will be their primary PC, not a secondary pocket PC replacement," predicted Gassman, whose appointment as head of portable business for HP's Compaq subsidiary in Europe was confirmed today.

Development of the Evo Tablet is not complete yet. It will run the new version of Windows XP, tablet PC edition, which requires normal XP software to be adapted to make it "inkable" - able to take advantage of pen-based scribbles, handwriting recognition, and speech recognition, which the tablet hardware is designed to perform.

Microsoft itself is showing Tablet PC prototypes to selected analysts under non-disclosure, with review samples handed out to delegates to a special "reviewer's guide" session in Seattle last week under conditions of extreme secrecy.

Gassman told delegates in Monaco that Bill Gates himself had endorsed the Compaq Evo design, describing Compaq as "the best partner possible". Returning the compliment, Gassman said that the new tablet PC design was being done properly this time.

"Ten years ago, when I was working on the original tablet design with Toshiba, we had a problem; it wasn't properly integrated with the operating system. This one is different; today, Microsoft is fully committed to supporting the new platform."