December 17, 2010

coal in my stocking

The status update email I got from HP three weeks ago said that if they hadn't shipped my Slate 500 by December 27, they would cancel my order. Ten days and counting, and I no longer have any hope that they'll ship before that deadline.

The order status page continues to be a sick joke, saying each day that delivery is scheduled for that day, and shipment for two days previously. I have received no further communications, and any kind of news about it all is not to be found, at least by me.

So at this point the only real question is whether they really do cancel my order, or make it so I have a choice of doing so. If they do cancel, it leaves me to either give up, or to order again and go to the back of the shipment queue.

Merry Christmas to me, from the bastards at HP.

UPDATE: I reread their email and it said:

If we do not hear from you and we have not shipped the specified products prior to 12/27/2010, your order will be cancelled with a full refund.

So I responded to it and told them I didn't want my order being cancelled. I wonder if that will make any difference.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Computers at 02:55 PM | Comments (9) | Add Comment
Post contains 216 words, total size 1 kb.

1 If HP falls through, you may be able to get a different pad, like CTL or Viliv. Your post made me to do some research. I was going to install Linux on it right away, of course, but I want something fully programmable, and Android devices are notoriously closed. So I was looking at Windows pads and found some decent variety. Of course I am not going to push any suggestions, and also our missions are different because I need smaller format, to be used in flight in a rental airplane where I cannot modify the dash. Still, poor performance of HP may be a blessing in disguise.

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at December 17, 2010 03:59 PM (9KseV)

2

Maybe I'll consider that, if HP does fall through. I took a look at the specs for the Viliv, and it doesn't look as good (e.g. only half as much RAM, an HD instead of an SSD, WinXP instead of Win7, not as good of a touch panel). But it's not completely out of the playing field, and a computer you can get is better than one you cannot no matter the price or the features.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at December 17, 2010 04:36 PM (+rSRq)

3 I hear that MS is going after iPad come CES, so hopefully there'll be something better available by spring.

Posted by: BigD at December 18, 2010 12:42 PM (LjWr8)

4

It's said that one of the mantras of the X-Windows project was, "The hardware will catch up." (They weren't wrong, either.)

Microsoft has been working on various approaches to tablet computers for more than ten years. There's nothing new about this. The reason the Slate is possible, for example, is all the support that's in Win7 (and earlier versions of Windows) for tablet computers.

And there was  the entire Windows Compact Edition effort. (Did that just die, or did it evolve into WinPhone?)

It may, however, have been the case that what Microsoft was doing was too advanced for the hardware of the time, and now the hardware has caught up.

Not that this means Microsoft was wasting time and money. If they hadn't done all that work, the hardware may not have appeared at all.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at December 18, 2010 02:28 PM (+rSRq)

5 Another Win7 tablet, the ExoPC Slate is apparently actually shipping, and is in stock in some of the new Microsoft Stores. I should see if they've got it at the company store in Mountain View.

-j

Posted by: J Greely at December 18, 2010 03:21 PM (a8YWB)

6 That is certainly interesting looking. It's got a bigger display, too. No indication on that page that it's available yet, though. Looks like we're right on the edge of a flood of products from a lot of different sources.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at December 18, 2010 04:14 PM (+rSRq)

7 Looks like Exo has linux-compatible graphics too (GMA, not Poulsbo).

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at December 18, 2010 05:31 PM (9KseV)

8 I think it was a combination of bad timing, Apple's wildly successful marketing blitz, and a botched OS generation.  The whole XP->Vista transition went over with the customers even worse than 98SE2->ME, and somewhere in there, CE and Windows Mobile died, when they should have been merging into a rapidly-evolving smartphone OS like iOS or Android.  The field was therefore open for 4-5 critical years, right as Apple was eying the smartphone market.

Anybody remember when, back in the good ol' days when Bill Gates was accused of everything (including causing sunspots), he made the claim that no company had ever stayed on top of an industry through two major shifts in that industry, and that his (horrible, evil!) efforts were just *trying* to become the first?  Looks a tad prescient now, doesn't it?

I kinda hope that, when all of this is done, somebody writes an updated history of the industry akin to the old "Triumph of the Nerds" documentary.  I fear that any such effort would be hard-pressed to remain unbiased, however.

Posted by: BigD at December 18, 2010 05:41 PM (LjWr8)

9 Nominally speaking, Windows CE is not dead.  WinMo is CE with a stripped-down shell.  WinMo 6.x is based on CE 5, and CE6 came out a year or two ago.  Windows Phone 7 is probably based on CE6, but I don't know that for certain; I haven't really looked.

Posted by: RickC at December 20, 2010 12:54 PM (Oub9n)

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