In 2001 before an audience of 15,000 people at the Comdex show in Las Vegas Bill Gates held aloft a prototype Microsoft tablet and predicted that within five years it would be the most popular form of PC sold in America.
He was almost right. Apple kick-started the tablet revolution with the launch of the iPad in 2009, closely followed by the Android community and now Microsoft is in hot pursuit with the Surface.
US based NPD Display Search predicted in January; in it is Quarterly Mobile PC Shipment and Forecast Report, that global tablet shipments would eclipse notebook computer sales for the first time in 2013, with shipments of 240 million and 207 million units respectively.
But no matter how much you love your Apple or Android tablet, you have to admit that it does not have PC functionality: it doesn’t run a PC OS won't run PC apps and doesn’t support PC OS file structures. Until now.
The Samsung Series 7 Slate PC can be both tablet and notebook computer. You can use it as a tablet with input via the touch screen, or put it into a dock with a bluetooth keyboard for full laptop functionality. At present it ships with Windows 7 Home Premium, but will run Windows 8. Just ask Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, who late last year posted a review of Windows 8 on his blog.
He reported: “To get a proper feel for Windows 8, I've been using it on a traditional desktop PC as well as a tablet – the Samsung 700T [aka Slate 7].
He described the new tablet features in Windows 8 as being “particularly bold and innovative.” He said: “I'm impressed with its clever integration of a bimodal interface to simultaneously support both desktop and tablet use in the same operating system. I found the gesture navigation on the tablet to be quite satisfying and responsive. And in general, I find Windows 8 to be snappier and more responsive than Windows 7.”
The Series 7 Slate features an 11.6 inch display with an aspect ratio of 16:9, 4GB of memory and a 64GB solid state drive. It measures 296 x 184 x 13mm and weighs in at 860gms. Battery life, according to Samsung, is seven hours.
The tablet has one USB 2.0 port, mini HDMI port and earphone/microphone jack. On the dock there’s another USB port, 1GBE Ethernet port and a full size HDMI port. The tablet has a 3.0 megapixel rear facing camera and 2 megapixel front camera.
Also included is the S Pen, a pressure-sensitive Samsung stylus that has been a feature of recent Samsung Galaxy smartphones and Samsung tablets. It slots into the side of the Slate and offers 1024 levels of sensitivity. Functionality depends on software that is designed to work with the pen, but it could be a significant differentiator between the Slate and competing tablets.
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