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Samsung Series 7 convertible tablet coming soon

It seems Samsung is close to releasing its Series 7 Sliding PC. Amazon was taking orders for this novel convertible tablet earlier today (the page is no longer accessible).
Written by John Morris, Contributor

It seems Samsung is close to releasing its Series 7 Sliding PC. Amazon was taking orders for this novel convertible tablet earlier today (the page is no longer accessible).

I got a peek at the Samsung's Sliding PC 7 at the Consumer Electronics Show in January (CES: The weird world of Windows tablets). As I mentioned in that earlier post, Samsung said it borrowed some of the hinge technology and know-how from its handset business to design the Series 7. When it is closed, the Series 7 looks like a slate tablet, but the display slides backwards and tilts up to become a netbook with a full-size keyboard.

The Series 7 is listed at $649 with a 10.1-inch display (1,366x768), 1.5GHz Intel Atom Z670 processor, 2GB of memory, 32GB of storage and Windows 7 Home Premium (a bit less than the $700 list price that Samsung provided at CES). The Atom Z670 is part of the Oak Trail platform for tablets, which Intel announced at its Spring Intel Developer Forum in Beijing last month. It looks like the Series 7 will be one of the first Oak Trail devices to reach the market, though Intel says there 35 tablets and hybrids like this in the works.

Though it theoretically competes with all tablets and netbooks, the Series 7 competes most directly with Dell's Inspiron Duo, which uses a swiveling screen to accomplish the same trick. The advantage of the Series 7 is that it is thinner and lighter than Inspiron Duo. The Series 7 is only 0.8 inches thick and weighs 2.2 pounds while the Inspiron Duo is more than an inch thick and weighs 3.0 pounds. On the other hand, the Inspiron Duo starts at $100 less than the Series 7 with a 10.1-inch display, 1.5GHz Atom N550 dual-core processor, 2GB of memory, a 320GB hard drive and Windows 7 Home Premium. Though it will depend on the size of the battery, my guess is that the Series 7 will have better battery life (Samsung has previously said it will last up to eight hours), but the Inspiron Duo should be faster.

Here is CNET's review of the Dell Inspiron Duo.

Neither of these will take the place of an iPad or Honeycomb tablet, but they may appeal to those who want a Windows netbook that can do double-duty as a tablet for reading e-mail, checking social networking sites and browsing the Web.

(Via The Tech Report.)

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