HP could bury TouchPad fiasco with $169 Slate 7 tablet

• The Slate 7 is the company’s first product for the consumer tablet market since the spectacular failure of the WebOS-based TouchPad in 2011.
• Buyers will be able to order Slate 7 by the end of April, an HP spokeswoman confirmed in an email. The tablet has a 7-inch screen and Google’s Android 4.1 OS, which is code-named Jelly Bean. HP had said on its website last month that the tablet would not ship until June.
  

HP’s website lists two models: the Slate 7 2800 and the Slate 7 2801. This is HP’s first Android tablet. The company also offers Windows 8 business tablets such as the ElitePad 900.
HP’s first consumer tablet, the TouchPad, ran on WebOS, a mobile OS platform that was sold to LG Electronics in February.
SPECIFICATION

The Slate 7 weighs just under 13 ounces, has a dual-core Cortex-A9 processor running at 1.4GHz, 1GB of DDR3 RAM, a 3-megapixel back camera, a VGA front camera, and Wi-Fi connectivity. Other features include Beats audio and a micro-SD slot. HP said it would not offer mobile broadband connectivity.
HP hopes the $169 price will attract buyers—competitive 7-inch Android tablets from big-name device makers are priced higher, with Google’s Nexus 7, Amazon’s Kindle Fire HD and Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 starting at $199.