Tech moves fast. Like, blink-and-you-missed-the-netbook fast. But if we look back at late 2010, there was this weird, frantic energy in the air because everyone was trying to kill the iPad. Enter the HP Slate 500 tablet. It wasn't just another gadget; it was Hewlett-Packard's big, expensive bet that professionals didn't want a "toy" operating system like iOS. They wanted Windows. Specifically, Windows 7 Professional.
It’s easy to laugh at it now. Honestly, though, the device was a fascinating mess of high-end hardware and an OS that just wasn't ready for fingers.
The Identity Crisis of 2010
Think back to January 2010. Steve Jobs had just stood on a stage and changed everything with the iPad. HP was caught flat-footed. They had originally shown off a "Slate" prototype at CES with Steve Ballmer, but then things got messy. HP bought Palm, flirted with webOS, and for a minute, everyone thought the Windows-based HP Slate 500 tablet was dead.
It wasn't.
HP eventually pushed it out the door in October 2010, but they didn't market it to teenagers or coffee shop loungers. They went straight for the enterprise. Doctors. Lawyers. Insurance adjusters. People who needed to run "real" legacy .exe files. This was a 8.9-inch slab of glass and metal that felt like a tank compared to the plastic tablets of the era. It had a resolution of 1024x600, which felt sharp at the time, even if it seems grainy today.
The internals were... well, they were very 2010. You had an Intel Atom Z540 processor. It clocked in at 1.86GHz. That sounds okay until you realize it was a single-core chip trying to push a full version of Windows 7. Imagine trying to run a marathon while breathing through a cocktail straw. That was the experience of multitasking on this thing.
👉 See also: Weather Radar Portland TX: Why Your Phone App is Probably Lying to You
Hardware That Actually Impressed
If you ignore the software for a second, the HP Slate 500 tablet was actually kind of a beast. It had 2GB of RAM. That was double what many netbooks offered back then. It also came with a 64GB SSD, which made it feel much snappier than the spinning hard drives we were all used to.
- The Screen: A capacitive multi-touch display.
- The Pen: It used N-Trig Digitizer technology. This was huge. You could actually draw or take notes with pressure sensitivity.
- Connectivity: It had a full-size USB 2.0 port. No adapters. No dongle hell. You just plugged in a flash drive and it worked.
- Cameras: A VGA front-facer and a 3MP rear camera. Not great for National Geographic, but fine for a Skype call in a hotel room.
One thing people forget is how heavy it was. It weighed about 1.5 pounds. Hold that for twenty minutes and your wrist starts to remind you that physics is real. But it felt premium. It didn't creak. It didn't flex. It felt like something a CEO would pull out of a leather briefcase.
The Windows 7 Problem
Here is the thing: Windows 7 was a great desktop OS, but it was a nightmare on a tablet.
Everything was too small. The "X" to close a window? Good luck hitting that with a thumb. HP tried to fix this by including their own touch-friendly skin, but you’d inevitably end up back in the standard Windows environment. It felt like using a desktop computer through a peephole.
Then there was the heat. Atom processors weren't exactly cool-running back then. After thirty minutes of browsing, the back of the HP Slate 500 tablet would get noticeably warm. Not "burn your house down" hot, but "maybe I should put this on a table" hot.
Despite this, it had a cult following. Why? Because it did things the iPad couldn't. It ran Flash. (Remember Flash? The internet used to run on it.) It ran full Microsoft Word. It ran specialized medical software that hadn't been updated since 2004. For a specific niche of people, this wasn't a tablet—it was the smallest PC in the world.
What It Cost You
It wasn't cheap. HP launched it at $799. To put that in perspective, the base iPad was $499. You were paying a $300 premium for the privilege of running Windows.
💡 You might also like: Samsung S90D 77 Inch: Why This OLED is Actually the Smart Choice Over the S95D
Because of that price point and the specialized focus, HP didn't even sell it in retail stores at first. You had to order it through their business site. It was the "forbidden fruit" of the tech world for a few months. Supply was so low and demand (surprisingly) so high that shipping times slipped to six or eight weeks almost immediately.
Why We Should Still Care
The HP Slate 500 tablet was the direct ancestor of the Surface Pro.
Microsoft and their partners were failing, but they were failing forward. They realized that the "slate" form factor was the future, even if the software wasn't there yet. It taught the industry that if you want a pro tablet, you need a stylus, you need a real file system, and you need a way to connect peripherals.
If you find one on eBay today, it’s basically a paperweight. Windows 7 is a security risk, and the battery is likely expanded or dead. But as a piece of industrial design? It still looks sleek. It’s a reminder of a time when the tech world was split between "content consumption" and "content creation." HP was firmly in the second camp.
Real-World Use Cases That Worked
While the average person hated it, certain industries loved it.
- Hospitals: Nurses used the N-Trig pen to check boxes on digital charts.
- Field Engineers: They could run diagnostic software that required a serial port (via a USB adapter) right at the machine site.
- Digital Artists: Before the iPad Pro and the Apple Pencil, this was one of the few ways to get a portable Windows machine with a decent digitizer.
It was a bridge. A clunky, expensive, overheating bridge, but a bridge nonetheless.
Assessing the Legacy
Looking back, the HP Slate 500 tablet didn't fail because it was bad hardware. It failed because it was too early. The Intel Atom chips weren't efficient enough. Windows wasn't "touch-first" enough. The battery technology wasn't dense enough.
It’s easy to forget that this came out before the massive pivot to webOS (the TouchPad) and long before HP eventually settled into the Spectre and EliteBook x360 lines we see today. It was a bold experiment.
If you’re a collector, the Slate 500 is a must-have. It represents the "Old Guard" of PC makers trying to figure out a world where the keyboard wasn't king anymore.
Next Steps for Enthusiasts:
If you happen to own one or find one at a garage sale, don't try to use it for modern web browsing; the modern web will choke that Atom processor. Instead, look into installing a lightweight Linux distribution like Lubuntu or a legacy version of CloudReady. These can breathe a tiny bit of life back into the hardware for basic note-taking or as a dedicated digital photo frame. Also, check the battery for any signs of swelling—these units are old enough now that the lithium-ion cells are reaching their end-of-life and can become a safety hazard. If you're looking for a modern equivalent that actually works, look toward the Surface Go series or the HP OmniBook Ultra Flip, which finally realized the dream that the Slate 500 started fifteen years ago.