With phones, cameras and computers packing projectors nowadays, it's only fair for HP to want in on the portable projector scene considering they've conquered the attractive home office projector market. Attractive for PowerPoint professionals, anyway.

According to the Vice President and manager of personal computing systems group at HP Taiwan, Monty Wong, HP's working on a tablet PC and notebook launch for this year, both with integrated pico-projectors.

While they haven't shown off any proper tablet prototypes (like their rival Dell has, with the Mini 5), if you cast your mind back a few years you might remember HP Touchsmart tablet PCs were all the rage for a while. It was certainly fun playing Solitaire on them with a stylus, anyway.

This isn't the first time we've heard whisperings of a tablet stuffed with projector components. Apple's impending tablet/iSlate was rumored to have a projector, but that idea has pretty much been discarded now due to cost repercussions.

Wong claims HP is looking at placing a projector at the top of a laptop screen, similar in location to where a webcam is normally placed. A couple of years ago, ASUS showed off a prototype just like it, though we haven't seen anything since. Raise the PowerPoint flag, children—shit's about to go down! [Digitimes]