The purchase of Palm and access to its much vaunted webOS already seems to be affecting strategy at HP.

The world's largest PC manufacturer is reported to have pulled the plug on its Windows 7-powered Slate tablet that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer unveiled in prototype form at CES 2010.

The reason is apparently due to issues such as the power hungry nature of Intel hardware it was running on, despite it being an mobile-focused Atom CPU, combined with general dissatisfaction with Windows.

HP remains on course to release tablet devices however.

It's already announced machines running Android will be out in 2010, while the announcement of the purchase of Palm has prompted talk about how high the OS will scale within the connected mobile device sector.

[source: TechCrunch]