Hasta La Gadget!

Samsung didn’t leave its ATIV introductions to just an ARM tablet and a phone. We first saw them as the Series 5 and Series 7 tablets, which will likely be their final US names; to recap, though, the newly branded ATIV Smart PC and ATIV Smart PC Pro both look to capture some of that Transformer-like aura by mating an 11.6-inch tablet with a detachable keyboard dock for a laptop experience. Some of Samsung’s own Galaxy Note vibe rubs off on them, too — both carry an S Pen and a bundled S Note app for some on-the-spot writing. They likewise share support for 3G and 4G as well as micro-HDMI and USB, but there’s a clear difference depending on what you buy. Going for the regular Smart PC loads in a modest Clover Trail-based Intel Atom processor and a 1,366 x 768 display, but offers a lengthy 13.5-hour battery life, 2GB of RAM, up to a 128GB flash drive, a rear 8-megapixel camera and a 2-megapixel front camera. Slap that “Pro” moniker on the front and you have to drop to eight hours of battery life and a 5-megapixel rear camera, but you’ll get a much faster Core i5 processor, a 1080p display, 4GB of RAM and as much as a 256GB SSD. Unlike the ATIV Tab, we do know the Smart PCs will be available in the US on October 26th at $649 for a base Smart PC/Series 5, $749 for a bundle with the keyboard and $1,119 for a Smart PC Pro/Series 7 with a 128GB SSD built-in.

Continue reading Samsung calling its dockable Windows 8 tablets ATIV Smart PC and Smart PC Pro outside the US

Filed under: Tablets

Samsung calling its dockable Windows 8 tablets ATIV Smart PC and Smart PC Pro outside the US originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 29 Aug 2012 14:25:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sony just threw itself fully into the touchscreen Windows 8 arena — it’s introducing the VAIO Duo 11 slider tablet and the Tap 20 combination desktop and tablet design at its IFA 2012 press conference. The Duo 11 is a noticeably amped-up realization of the Hybrid concept we saw at CES. Its 11.6-inch, 1080p touchscreen is joined by a proper digitizer stylus for low-lag handwriting as well as some seriously powerful innards for a convertible PC its size: we’re talking an Ultrabook-level Core i3, i5 or i7 as well as a 128GB or 256GB SSD, NFC wireless, GPS, and HD-capable cameras at the front and back. Sony is hoping for a late October release for this beast of a slate, although we haven’t been given that all-important price.

The VAIO Tap 20, meanwhile, is more than just a tilting all-in-one desktop in the vein of Lenovo’s IdeaCentre A720. Despite carrying a 20-inch, 1,600 x 900 touchscreen, it’s still very much battery-powered — you can lug the 11.4-pound PC into the living room and treat it like a tiny multi-touch table, if that’s your inclination. It’s sharing the same processor picks as the Duo 11, but it turns to more conventional 750GB or 1TB hard drives and puts the emphasis on shareable apps like Family Paint and the Fingertapps Organizer calendar. Not surprisingly, there’s only one, front-facing 1.3-megapixel camera here, although NFC does make the cut. The Tap 20 is due to arrive at about the same time as its smaller Duo 11 sibling, although we’re once again without details of how much it will cost.

Continue reading Sony unveils VAIO Duo 11 slide-out tablet, Tap 20 portable touchscreen all-in-one

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops, Tablets

Sony unveils VAIO Duo 11 slide-out tablet, Tap 20 portable touchscreen all-in-one originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 29 Aug 2012 10:45:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Lenovo floated the ThinkPad X1 Carbon past us in May without so much as a whisper of what the lightweight Ultrabook’s price would be. The company doesn’t mind shouting it out in what looks to be a Hong Kong back-to-school promo flyer, though. As long as the Newsmth.net post represents the final pricing, local residents can normally expect to pay about HK$12,880 ($1,660 US) for an X1 Carbon with a 1.7GHz Core i5, 4GB of RAM and a 128GB SSD. That’s quite the premium if you compare it directly to what we see in the US for a PC like the Samsung Series 9, although it’s tricky to tell if prices will be comparable on the other side of the Pacific: there’s no sales tax in Hong Kong, among other factors. Even if the price varies by the time of the US launch later this summer, students in the city are already getting a discount to HK$9,180 ($1,184) that suggests at least some wiggle room if competition among Ultrabooks grows especially fierce.

[Thanks, Sam]

Filed under: Laptops

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon pricing spotted in Hong Kong originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 02 Aug 2012 02:04:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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