HP Slate Tablet to be Cheaper than the iPad?

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Remember HP’s Slate? You know, the tablet Steve Ballmer presented at the beginning of the year at CES instead of the much anticipated Microsoft Courier? Well it looks like HP is trying to figure out a way of offering a cheaper 3G-enabled tablet to fight against the iPad.

Neither Steve Ballmer nor HP officials really told us what the Slate is going to be like. Instead everyone waited to see what Cupertino was doing. Apple launched the iPad at the end of January and since then we’ve seen a lot of tablets surface. But the HP Slate is yet to be officially unveiled and we might be in for a longer wait than anticipated.

Nothing is official just yet but it’s being reported that HP will meet its U.S. and Tawianese partners in order to “tweak prices and features” of the Slate. The word on the street is that the 3G Slate will cost less than the cheapest 3G-enabled iPad. The 16GB iPad 3G is supposed to retail at the end of April for $629. Is HP ready to beat that price?

Will HP have the same content universe waiting patiently to be discovered by tablet users? The iPad will offer you access to iTunes, the App Store and the iBook Store. What will the Slate offer in terms of content?

From a different point of view we expect the Slate to be everything that the iPad isn’t. We will probably have multitasking support since the device will Microsoft’s Windows 7. Flash support, webcam, USB, card support and maybe even a HDMI port might be found on the upcoming Slate although at this point we really have no idea how it will look and feel like in the end.

And the word on the street is that the Courier still lives and Microsoft is working on it. That doesn’t mean it will be released to the masses in the near future but maybe Redmond is prepared to offer us a home-made tablet after all.