You hear the term ‘iPad Killer’ an awful lot, don’t you? Well, like, I guess you would if you read tech blogs with any regularity. If you’ve trickled all the way down to Techi, I’ll assume you do, and I’ll also assume ergo that you have, in fact, heard the term ‘iPad Killer’ an awful lot. So we’ll start with that. Anyway, I’m not going to talk about an iPad Killer today. Good grief, am I ever not. Today, I will regale you with a tale of the HP Slate, the real goddamned expensive tablet that sucks out loud – for the price, anyway. To be fair, the Slate isn’t the worst machine in the world; this is, of course, presuming…

Mikio Katayama, Sharp’s president, is a man not in the business of making weak-assed claims, touting Sharp’s upcoming e-reader as a rival for the iPad. Considering the iPad is much more than an e-reader (okay, not that much more), such a claim would seem ludicrous. But Katayama’s bold as hell. Katayama likes things extra-spicy. Likes shaking things up. But while we puzzle over Katayama’s confidence, the Sharp e-reader is still turning out to be a pretty interesting device. Out later this year, the device will employ a colour display and utilize the new XMDF file format for e-books, which allows…