HP's Apple tablet killer and Android netbook

Thursday 07 January

HP Slate – one of our CES favourites so far...

It’s gadgets galore at CES this week, and one of the major events of the tech extravaganza is the Microsoft keynote.

It was widely rumoured that we’d see a Microsoft-branded tablet, named Courier, making an Apple-spoiling appearance. While that didn’t happen, we did get to feast our eyes on the HP Slate – a beautiful, svelte, touchscreen tablet that has broken cover before Apple’s much-hyped iTablet.

Little is known at this stage about the release date or pricing, as this was merely a prototype, but we saw Kindle books running on its screen in colour and it looked stunning. With Apple’s release just around the corner, HP better hurry up and give us more info.

Elsewhere an HP Mini Android netbook was spotted. Again, this is billed as a prototype, but it came toting a touchscreen for flicking through the new carousel software for Android, as well as packing a Snapdragon processor under the bonnet, which run on a lower charge, making it much less noisy and potentially able to run for 12 hours on a single charge.

Come on HP, we want to get these in our hands immediately!