Gigabyte S1080 Windows 7 tablet announced
Any tablet that runs Windows basically looks like it’s steam powered when you compare it to the iPad or Android tablets. Because the OS is so incredibly outdated, performance greedy and tablet-unfriendly you need to have a lot beefier hardware in it to make it run even somewhat decent. The Gigabyte S1080 is no different, and at 15mm thick it clocks in at a bit shy of twice the thickness of an iPad 2. In that giant housing you have an Intel Atom N570, 2GB of RAM, 320GB hard drive, USB 3.0, SD card slot, WIfi, Bluetooth and a 3G modem. It’s supposed to be “only 895” grams though, which isn’t that much (yet a lot heavier than “real” tablets). The Engadget article lists battery capacity in mAh which is completely useless in terms of actually measuring battery capacity (where you need the voltage as well to get Wh), but if this even lasts 6 hours I’ll be impressed.
The tablet does stand out from other Windows 7 tablets though, in that it has a multimedia dock. That dock adds another battery for some reason (the dock ss so big that I don’t see who would use it on battery power), speakers, VGA-out and more USB ports, as well as an optical drive. It will start shipping in the US in June for about $700 without the dock, which means that this will be a seriously expensive tablet once you have everything.
