Smudgy screen with the subtlety of a hair dryer - Good Call HP

I have a feeling that HP is trying desperately to stay relevant these days, what with the recent news that it's planning on building an Intel based tablet with the Win8 Professional installed, and hold off on producing an ARM based Windows 8 RT version. 

This is a mixed bag for the following reasons, and I'll break it down with the good/bad/ugly.

The Good:

1) x86 is in HP's wheel house, they have never built on the ARM platform before so it's not unfamiliar territory here.

2) HP is trying, which is more than I can say for some companies (I'm looking at you Dell)

The Bad:

1) Cost - these are going to cost more than the iPad, and for what they are capable of doing it's not going to sell. Additionally Apple owns the supply chain for most tablet parts, so good luck getting a touch panel at a decent price, not to mention flash storage. Lastly, the price of the processor is going to kill any margin that one could hope to expect from it.

2) It's a Version 1 OS - there's an old saying with MS Software that it's usually not enterprise ready until Service Pack 2, so with Windows 8 that puts an install timeline of late 2013, by which time iOS 6 will be fully matured and iOS 7 will be in beta testing. 

3) It's Version 1 Hardware - see 'the bad' item #2 - the hardware might be good until version 2, at which point the iPad will be at #4 or possible #5

The Ugly:

1) It's going to be as quiet as a hairdryer going full blast - Intel procs run hot, thus requiring active cooling, otherwise it might have a core melt down (nobody likes burned palms). I don't know about you, but I enjoy being able to not worry about noise/heat while casually surfing the web. 

2) That power point presentation is going to look cloudy and smudgy with all the wing sauce on it - because you tried to use it after your power lunch and it'll be like trying to watch the most boring episode of law and order through a cellophane encased 10 inch tv. 

3) Nobody cares - Everyone wants an iPad, even the directors that will be making the purchasing decisions at your company

To sum up, I present you the following images (which could have saved you about 5-10 minutes of reading - suckers!)