CES 2010: the HP & Microsoft tablet, attractive but we're still waiting for Apple

Tablets are everywhere this week, all the big PC companies are trying to imitate the Apple tablet and the damn thing hasn’t even come out yet. One of the big contenders is from top PC makers Hewlett Packard, HP.

The HP tablet was unveiled today at CES by HP and Microsoft. It runs Windows 7 and it’s a sleek, dark-rimmed touchscreen device. Steve Ballmer head of Microsoft waved it about on a stage in front of massed journalists and technophiles at the CES conference describing it as “almost as portable as a phone as powerful as a PC running Windows 7”.

No-one’s really had any hands-on time with this gadget but the reaction from the blogs is a bit well, muted. Partly because everyone’s eyes are back on Apple, partly because the software isn’t new – Windows 7 is good but we’ve seen it before. See the video above to get a sense of the hardware.

Okay. Back to Apple-watching.