Hewlett Packard recently acquired Palm Inc. and announced that they plan to double down on Palm’s WebOS. They also said that in the near-term, the company would “scale it across multiple connected devices.” The HP Slate device was also rumored to be canceled shortly after the acquisition announcement was made.

Hewlett Packard has decided to cancel the HP Slate project. The Slate was supposed to be a tablet PC with Windows 7 built in. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer presented the device at the CES 2010 event this past January in Las Vegas. While it is uncertain why they were canceling the project, it is rumored to be because HP was unsatisfied with the project. Perhaps HP’s acquisition of Palm influenced the decision to cancel the project as well. [TechCrunch]

A presentation has been sent over to Engadget that showcases the specs of the HP Slate. It turns out that the base version of the Slate will cost $549 and will include a 32GB storage, 1GB RAM, and 1.6 GHz Atom processor. The screen will be a 8.9″ multi-touch with a 1024×600 resolution.

The 64GB hard drive model will cost $599. The tablet PC will include an SDHC card slot, USB port, two camera, WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, 1080p video playback, audio input, HDMI for the TV, and a SIM card slot for 3G connections. The slate will run on Windows 7 Home Preimum with a custom HP touch interface. Battery life is about 5 hour. [Engadget]

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Above is an infographic design to compare the Apple iPad vs. the JooJoo vs. the Amazon.com Kindle DX vs. the HP Slate.  Since the HP Slate specs have not been released yet, I had to base the information on speculation and rumors.  This infographic and blog post will be updated upon the actual date of the HP Slate.