HP has a tablet

THE MAKER OF EXPENSIVE PRINTER INK HP has been showing off a tablet that will ship with its Photosmart Estation printer.

While the tablet browses the web and can be used as an e-reader, it is mostly supposed to be a control panel for the printer.

Vyomesh Joshi, EVP of HP's imaging and printing group, said that the tablet can be used to move and print documents and images from multiple media devices and can also be used to exchange content between the devices.

Most of HP's web-connected printers have 3.5-inch displays but this one has a 7-inch screen.

Apparently the tablet will run customized applications to print specialized content such as weather reports, news, e-books and coupons.

HP said that Yahoo is developing widgets and applications for the tablet. The company's applications will allow users to get sports, news, finance and weather content and choose pages that can be easily printed.

Users will have access to e-mail, weather and news on the tablet and that content can also be printed.

Delta Airlines has apparently already signed up for the system for printing boarding passes and HP said there are more partnerships in the works related to e-books and coupons.

HP would not say which operating system runs on the tablet. HP is trying out almost every operating system on the market at the moment other than Mac OS X. It even has Palm's WebOS to play with. The Times of India seems to think that it is running Android 2.1, but without access to the Android App store. It thinks the tablet will be a bit limited.

The Photosmart Estation printer that the tablet comes with will be priced at $399 and it is not clear if the tablet will be sold independently of the printer. µ