By Chris Scott Barr
Convertible laptops aren’t exactly new. The concept has been around for a while, allowing users to change their seemingly ordinary laptop into a tablet. Their execution, however, always frightened me a bit. Namely, the ones I’ve used have all had a single hinge in the middle, at the bottom of the screen. While mostly stable, I always worried that relying on this single hinge would one day lead to it breaking. Apparently the people at Dell didn’t like that design either.
Dell’s latest netbook dubbed the ‘Dell Duo’ has a 10-inch touchscreen that swivels around so that the device can be used as a tablet. The difference is that it has the normal laptop hinges, with what appears to be a set of bars on either side of the screen that allow for swiveling. This looks like a much sturdier approach to the tablet design.
We don’t know much else about the Duo, except that it will use an Intel Atom processor and run Windows 7 Premium (instead of the Starter edition found on most netbooks). More details will likely emerge soon.
Looks like Dell is onto something with this idea.
First idea of theirs to impress me this much in a while.
Jesus! This is awesome, none of that single rotating middle hinge that breaks instantly found on all convertible laptops/tablets wannabees.
Mechanically this is far more sturdy and durable than that often flimsy single joint solution. What is tedious is the actual hardware, the upcoming AMD Zacate APU would make this a killer machine!