14 DAY TRIAL // There are those segments of the IT industry that can be said to be seeing a greater deal of activity and attention compared to others. For this year, the tablet is one of these fields, even though not many such devices have actually show up yet. This hasn't stopped companies from offering previews, however, nor has it put a damper on the stream of rumors and reports related to them. Now, BestBuy came out and used Twitter to unveil the fact that it, too, will supposedly start selling tablets at some point.
BestBuy showed off a slate colored black (mostly), though it hardly gave any other sort of information. There is no mention of the company behind its creation. Also, nothing is said on the insides, which means that Pine Trail and ARM are both possibilities. Needless to say, this also does not shed any sort of light upon the operating system. If the Atom platform is used, Microsoft Windows is the best possibility, though Google's Android is also supported. If the slate is based on the ARM architecture, however, Android or webOS are the best bets.
SlashGear speculates that this may just end up as a re-branded HP slate. HP initially planned on releasing a Windows 7 model, but is now leaning more towards a webOS-enabled one. Granted, it is possible that the outfit may experiment with both. Still, it is just as possible that the product in the photo is a different device altogether. One could also say that the overall design isn't particularly different from all those that have surfaced thus far. Nevertheless, tablets in general don't leave much room for design innovations, since they are meant to be as compact as possible and, thus, not exactly full of decorations.
As end-users probably know, the Apple iPad currently owns the slate segment. Whether or not a real competition erupts when PC makers finally mass produce their own solutions has yet to be decided.