Leaked Specs Put HP Slate Up Against Apple iPad

That's the way the two devices line up, according to a presentation slide reportedly leaked by someone at Hewlett-Packard which wound up in the hands of the Website Engadget.

That product comparison slide, confirms many of the details already known about the HP slate device while supposedly filling in many of the specification blanks.

HP has been slowly leaking details about its slate device via video teasers, the latest of which went viral on Monday.

In that video, several key details about the slate device are seen, including separate cameras on the front and back of the device and the ability to connect to USB or SD storage device, all of which the Apple iPad lacks.

While no date has yet been set for release of the HP slate device, the Apple iPad was released Saturday with the typical Apple flair for marketing new products.

In the alleged HP presentation slide, HP highlighted its support of a pen and digitizer as an advantage to help offset the higher resolution of the Apple iPad display, which measures 9.7 inches diagonally compared to 8.9 inches for the HP display.

HP seems to be using a 1.6-GHz Intel Atom processor compared to the proprietary 1-GHz Apple A4 processor. However, actual performance of the two cannot be compared as the Atom is a general purpose processor used in many of the netbook PCs on the market, while the Apple A4 processor could have proprietary technology for performance optimization.

The HP slate device has a connector for reading SD, SDHC, and SDXC cards up to 128 GB, as well as a USB 2.0 port and a connector for an optional docking station, of which the Apple iPad has none.

However, the iPad has 802.11a/b/g/n wireless capabilities compared to the 802.11b/g of the HP slate.

The HP slate includes a forward-facing VGA Webcam as well as an outward-facing 3-MP camera, neither of which the iPad have.

However, the iPad boasts a battery life of up to 10 hours compared with about five hours for the HP slate device. The batteries in both devices cannot be replaced by the consumer.

The other big difference is in the operating system. The HP slate devices supposedly come with Windows 7 Home Premium versus the Apple iPad's iPhone OS 3.2, but how they differ in terms of performance will probably be seen only when the HP slate device is released.