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Announced in Japan early June and known as the Let’s Note SX2, Panasonic announced today in North America the Toughbook SX2 will come basically with the same spec as its Japanese counterpart and will come powered with an Intel Core i5-3320M vPro, a nice 12.1″ 16:9 LED Backlight HD+ display and a 14.5h battery life !
Panasonic, an industry leader in rugged, reliable mobile computers since 1996, today announced the next generation of its business-rugged notebook PC line, the …

Keep lurking long enough and you’ll find the unexpected. Even at MobileCon 2012. Exhibit A: the Kupa UltraNote modular tablet running Windows 8. This 0.6-inch (15mm) thick slate is powered by an Intel Core i7 processor (Ivy Bridge) with 4GB of DDR3 RAM and a 64GB SSD. It features a 10.1-inch 1920 x 1200-pixel IPS display with a ten-point capacitive multitouch layer and a Wacom-like digitizer for pen input. Other amenities include WiFi a/b/g/n, Bluetooth 3.0 and 3G/4G (LTE) radios along with dual cameras (2MP in front, 5MP in back), NFC and a fingerprint reader. There’s a SIM slot, headphone jack, mini HDMI output and two USB 3.0 ports on the right side of the device, plus a proprietary power / docking connector on the bottom edge. A 45Wh slide-out Li-Ion battery is located on the left side.

While the specs are pretty much what you’d expect from a decent Windows 8 tablet, it’s the modular design that makes Kupa UltraNote unique. There’s an Asus Transformer-like keyboard dock which boasts an additional battery, power jack, SD card slot, Ethernet connector, VGA output and two USB 3.0 ports. Accessories such as credit card reader can be attached the left or right edge of the slate thanks to a built-in latch mechanism. It’s clear that the company is targeting the enterprise and vertical markets and even positioning itself as an ODM. We spent a few minutes with the device and were impressed with how lightweight it was (760g / 1.67 lbs). Build quality, however, left a lot to be desired, even for a prototype. Still, overall performance was solid, both in terms of speed and responsiveness.

There’s no word yet on pricing and availability, but take a look at our gallery and be sure to peek after the break for our hands-on video.

Brad Molen contributed to this report.

Continue reading Kupa UltraNote Windows 8 modular tablet hands-on (video)

Filed under: Laptops, Tablets

Kupa UltraNote Windows 8 modular tablet hands-on (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 10 Oct 2012 20:58:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Windows 8 is coming folks, and so is an onslaught of new machines featuring Microsoft’s something-for-everyone OS. Dell already showed us some of its fresh consumer Win8 hardware back at IFA 2012, and now it’s the enterprise’s turn to shine. First up is the Latitude 10 tablet, which packs an Intel Atom SoC, a 10.1-inch IPS 1366 x 768 LCD display covered in Gorilla Glass, 8-megapixel primary camera plus an HD front-facing shooter. It’s got 2GB of RAM and up to 128GB of eMMC NAND storage, plus an SD card slot should the integrated storage prove insufficient. Connectivity comes via one full-size USB 2.0 port, a microUSB charging socket, mini-HDMI, a headphone/microphone combo jack, proprietary docking port and a micro-SIM slot for WWAN use. The Latitude 10 packs up to a 60Wh battery, which isn’t remarkable in and of itself, but the fact that it’s removable is. That means road warriors can travel with a spare cell or two to keep their slate in the juice no matter how long they work on it. While the swappable battery can keep the 10 from being tethered to an outlet, the dock Dell built for it ensures it’ll have a stylish place to rest when it is. The dock expands the slate’s connectivity with four USB 2.0 sockets, Gigabit Ethernet, HDMI and audio output.

Next is the Optiplex 9010 all-in-one desktop we saw earlier this year. It still has the same 23-inch, 1920 x 1080 panel on the front and vPro-equipped Ivy Bridge silicon lurking beneath — the only change is the upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 8. The Latitude 6430u is an addition to Dell’s venerable business laptop line, and is the first to bear the Ultrabook moniker. It’s generous to label the 6430u as such, as it’s .82 inches thick and weighs 3.7 lbs, but it’s still a fairly thin and light laptop — plus it has the same solid magnesium chassis construction as its Latitude brethren. The 6430u crams a 14-inch, 1366 x 768 matte display into its 13.3-inch chassis, and users have the option of Ivy Bridge Core i3, i5 and i7 silicon with vPro, up to 8GB of RAM and up to 256GB worth of solid state storage. Naturally, there’s 802.11 b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth and mobile broadband available for wireless connectivity. Unfortunately, we can’t tell you how much Dell’s new business computers will cost, but we do know that they’ll be available when Windows 8 is, which is to say late October.

Continue reading Dell’s Latitude 10 tablet and dock, OptiPlex 9010 AIO, Latitude 6430u laptop arrive to tempt business pros

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops, Tablets

Dell’s Latitude 10 tablet and dock, OptiPlex 9010 AIO, Latitude 6430u laptop arrive to tempt business pros originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 19 Sep 2012 07:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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What’s red or black, 4 x 4 inches and exposes itself shamelessly on the show floor at IDF 2012? If you answered Intel’s Next Unit of Computing (NUC), you’d be right. The diminutive PC was on display at Intel’s Developer Forum along with its motherboard and cooling assembly. It comes in two flavors, a consumer-geared model with a single HDMI connector and Thunderbolt (in red) and a more business-centric version with two HDMI outputs and Ethernet (in black). Both mini-systems feature a third generation (Ivy Bridge) Core i3 CPU, QS77 chipset, two dual-channel DDR3 SoDIMM slots, mSATA and mini-PCIe interfaces (for SSD and WiFi cards), five USB 2.0 ports (two back, one front, two internal) and a socket for an external 19V DC power supply. The company hopes to get the attention of OEMs and DIY-ers alike when it makes this small, light and simple computer design available in October for about $400. Check out the gallery below and our hands-on video after the break.

Continue reading Intel’s Core i3 NUC mini-system bares it all for IDF (hands-on video)

Filed under: Desktops, Misc

Intel’s Core i3 NUC mini-system bares it all for IDF (hands-on video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 14 Sep 2012 06:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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HP’s Envy 14 Spectre hit almost all the right notes when we reviewed it back in March, thanks to its high-res display, sleek metal-and-glass design and brisk performance, but a stiff trackpad and the steep $1,400 price were clear downsides. The new Envy Spectre XT, a 13.3-inch Ivy Bridge-powered Ultrabook, has a thinner, lighter profile than its big brother, and a lower $1,000 price tag to match. That’s still not chump change, though, so does the XT deserve a spot in the top tier of Intel-approved ultraportables? Join us past the break for the full breakdown.

Continue reading HP Envy Spectre XT review: a sleek and speedy Ultrabook with a killer keyboard

Filed under: Laptops

HP Envy Spectre XT review: a sleek and speedy Ultrabook with a killer keyboard originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 13 Sep 2012 12:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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