HP slate price, details leak

A Spanish blog reportedly got a close look at HP’s slate device, and also found out its price and release window.

According to Clipset, the HP slate, which still lacks an official name, will launch in June and reach Europe in September. It will reportedly cost 400 Euros, which translates to about $550. If that information is correct, I’m guessing the price will come down to about $500 in the United States — same as the base model of Apple’s iPad.

Clipset’s report also specifies some other details: The HP slate runs on an Intel Atom processor, includes USB ports, a memory card reader and, strangely, a camera on the back. I don’t know what purpose a rear-facing camera would serve on a tablet, compared to a front-facing one for video calls, but hopefully the actual design will be different at launch.

Here’s the most astute observation from Clipset’s report: The HP slate is more like a slimmed-down netbook than an oversized portable media player. That seems obvious given the Atom processor and Windows 7 operating system, but what HP has shown so far doesn’t posture the slate as a full computing experience. So far, we’ve only seen the tablet running Flash applications on the Web, and glimpses of the user interface show an arrangement of big, touchable icons, most of them connected to the Web.

It’s good to know that the slate’s price probably won’t be out of line with Apple’s tablet, but we need to see more of the user interface to really understand what the iPad is up against.