A Tablet PC for just $299
Always Innovating’s new Notebook PC is the world’s first 3D Touch Screen Netbook with a detachable keyboard. The notebook is available in two variants – Tablet (no keyboard) and with keyboard priced at $299 and $399 USD. It has an 8.9 inch 1024×600 Touch Screen, WiFi (802.11 b/g/n) and BlueTooth support, 3D Accelerometer and 6 USB Ports (internally 3, externally 3). It stands out from the crowd by offering more than 10 hours of battery life on a 3D Touch Screen User Interface. Always Innovating says, “Until now, all netbooks were engineered the same way: Power-hungry Intel Atom, ugly case, and outdated 90’s OS.” It’s goal is to achieve a breakthrough in both architecture and design thus leaving behind a revolutionary device that works as both a netbook and a standalone tablet.”
The Touch Book will be shipped with its OpenSource Touch Book OS by default and you are permitted to install other OSes like Google Android, Ubuntu and Windows CE. Be informed that you can’t install OSes like Windows 98/ME/XP as it doesn’t have support for ARM. There still remains a doubt if Windows 7 will support ARM. So, if you are a Windows User, you’ll only have to use Windows CE and no Windows OSes basically made for desktops. Linux users can use Ubuntu. It comes packed with an 8GB SD card as main storage and you can upgrade it to a higher capacity SDHC.
As stated in Always Innovating’s Official site, the Touch Book OS will include the following applications
- 10+ hours of Battery Life
- Linux 2.6.29 with all the required drivers
- Xfce 4.4 desktop environment
- A unique 3D interface for starting applications with your finger
- Firefox 3.0 and Fennec beta 2
- Youtube and daily motion support
- A video and music player
- Abiword and Gnumeric
- A PDF reader, evince
- A chat manager, Pidgin
- Mypaint 5.1
- An e-book reader, Fbreader
- A printer manager, Cups
- All usual accessories (zip, picture viewer, dictionary…)
- Support for most standard USB accessories
- Java support
The Touch Book OS will also include OpenOffice 3.1 for all your office automation needs, Skype compatible application, complete Adobe Flash support and some 3D accelerometer based iPhone games for fun.
The TouchBook will be shipped to the following countries : Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom (Great Britain), and the United States. Sadly, India isn’t listed.
Specifications
- 8.9 inches 1024×600 A+ screen
- Main storage: 8GB SD card (Expandable)
- Wifi 802.11 b/g/n powered by a Ralink 3070 chipset
- Internal USB bluetooth class 2.1
- 8.9 inches pressure sensitive touch screen
- QWERTY 24cm-large keyboard
- Touchpad
- 3D accelerometer
- High-quality internal stereo speakers
- 7 USB ports: three external, four internal, three of them may be reserved for wifi, bluetooth and keyboard
- FCC, CE, UL-certified, 5V, 3.5A power adapter
With its mid-end features for an affordable price, this Touch Book would be the best bet for Students for its on-the-go Internet over WiFi, FireFox & Pidgin, PDF Reader and OpenOffice for office automation stuffs.
Previews
