Hewlett-Packard’s latest fail?

Hewlett-Packard is probably the oldest technology firm on the planet, still trying hard to sell you stuff. The company was established nine months before World War 2 inside a Palo Alto garage with $538 as seed capital by Bill and Dave, who tossed a coin to decide whose name went first on the logo.

The company’s rise was meteoric. By 1940, it had moved out of the garage. By 1957, it had gone public with shares selling for $16 and by 1962, it was on the Fortune 500 list at #460. Then, by 1968, the firm had invented the world’s first ‘personal computer’; brought out the world’s first scientific calculator by 1972 and by 1977 unveiled what would become the world’s first smartwatch (pictured below) a full 37 years before Apple even considered the possibility of wearable tech. In fact, a record 40 innovations came from HP within its first 40 years from 1966 to 2006.

And that’s where it all stops. It would almost seem as if the company’s smartest employees went out for lunch, and never returned. Which is why in 2014, when there are close to a dozen manufacturers of electronic consumer goods, HP has served us with its most bizarre and awkward invention yet, the Slatebook 14 — half laptop, half mobile phone, half made!

Okay, first of all, the laptop is available only in yellow which sort of makes you look juvenile. Then there’s the confounding discovery that the thing runs on Android, an OS that’s currently workable only on phones and tablets. Has HP been successful in porting the OS onto a laptop? No. Is the thing competitively priced? No. Is the device worth buying, when you have so many (and better) options available? Not at all. Also, the display is downright ridiculous under natural light and the combination of touchscreen, trackpad and keyboard is clumsy. Should you type, touch or track... unclear. Another annoyance is the font, filled with inconsistencies around kern and thickness. And the delay in the loading of certain Android apps, despite a Tegra 4 under the hood, is frustrating. Then there’s that long ‘waking up process’ from sleep that some testers have reported.

All of these problems make you wonder — is this the best I can do with money to spare? What HP has basically done is combine two of its biggest present-day failures — its tablet and its laptop business. Both product segments have been suffering and on the Slatebook 14, the shortcomings show. Because when you pay for a device in the markets of today, the feeling of finish must come through. Would you like a device with erratic fonts? No.

The Slatebook 14 is then HP’s just another annual attempt at pushing its Android-is-good-for-laptops policy onto the customer. A few backers have claimed that having Android on your phone and laptop is convenient. But that holds good only if you are okay with half-made gimmicks, which is what HP’s Slatebook is. Why would anyone on Earth decide to fuse still-evolving teenage smartphone software into a workhorse such as a laptop when the latter has evolved enough to woo hard-drinking vice presidents? Strange.

We need to wait and watch how this Android-for-laptop plan will play out for HP. Because, from where we stand... the decision to go ahead with it seems flippant and impulsive, like the toss of a coin. Do watch this space for the full review.