Virtualization Track at Cloud Expo

Sometime this year the slate HP demo'd at the Consumer Electronics Show is going to go into competition with Apple's newfangled iPad.

HP is kinda ticked that Apple is stealing its thunder. It's been working on the dingus for five years and says it could have put it out two years ago but it would have cost $1,500.

Now it's got a cheap Atom processor, touch-aware Windows 7 and the idea that iPad is too limited.

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What people want, HP CTO Phil McKinney says, is a whole multimedia-capable widget so, unlike iPad, the slate will have Adobe's Apple-scorned Flash as well as AIR so Flash can run outside the browser. It'll also be able to run multiple applications at the same time, another thing iPad can't do.

The New York Times figures the HP device will have a lot shorter battery life than the ARM-based iPad.

Meanwhile, iPad availability, reported to have run into some production snags, has been shifted from March to April 3.

Watchers are now trying to assess Apple's production capabilities and the demand environment. Gartner figures Apple's going sell 4.2 million iPads this year; Apple's supposedly hoping more like 10 million.

The numbers game is complicated since nobody knows what they'll be used for.

There are maybe 50 or more tablets underway including a Dell entry that Engadget says may be called the Streak unless that's the code name. The blog says the Dell device will have an e-book content deal with Amazon, a five-inch WVGA touchscreen, a 5 megapixel camera with auto-focus and flash and a 30-pin docking connector.

• Journey to the iPad Launch: Day #1 - T minus 5