14 DAY TRIAL // Even though there are just two or three media slates currently selling, one of them being the now-infamous iPad, the media-slate market itself has already gained such a high level of attention that most suppliers of PCs or mobile devices have at least considered, if not already decided upon, entering the race. HP is the most obvious challenger of the iPad, as the HP slate was one, if not the first, non-Apple slate to be demonstrated on video. Still, though Hewlett-Packard may manage to bring its tablet out before most others, it won't exactly be long before companies like MSI and ASUS bring out their own.
Just a few days ago, Toshiba delivered a small update on what it planned to do about slates and how far along its own devices had come. The main thing that was disclosed (or confirmed) was that there would be not one, but multiple Toshiba slates coming out by the first quarter of 2011. For all its disclosures, however, the PC maker did not give any real info on the product specifications, leaving end-users to speculate on what the iPad competitor and dual-screen tablets would do, and how they would do it.
To just barely sate consumers' appetite, or stir it even further, Digitmes managed to uncover a small detail regarding the operating systems that the products will feature. Apparently, the iPad challenger, 10-inch, single-screen slate will have support for Google's Android platform, whereas the one built with dual displays will run the Microsoft Windows CE 7 OS. The two still have something in common, however, namely their use of the NVIDIA Tegra system-on-chip.
It is still unclear exactly when the market can expect Toshiba's offspring to debut, but the report at least mentioned that they would both be manufactured by Compal. This suggests that Toshiba's tablet PCs, or at least prototypes, may have been part of Compal's CES 2010 exhibition, which was abundant in Tegra 2 electronics.