Judging by the parade of tablet introductions at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week, slate computers are about the hottest thing in Tech Land. Been that way since Apple unleashed the iPad.
Yet even now folks I talk to are puzzled by how a tablet might fit into their digital lives compared to, say, a laptop or netbook.
For the past several weeks, I’ve been testing the Dell Inspiron Duo, a $549 convertible machine that targets the buyer who is wrestling with such choices. Duo does double duty. It’s a conventional Windows 7-based netbook with a regular touch-type keyboard. It’s also a touch-screen-based tablet. Dell accomplishes this feat via a creative flip-hinge design.
Convertibles aren’t new but haven’t made much of a mark. Recent efforts are promising but slow to get going. I’m looking forward to testing the latest Lenovo IdeaPad U1 announced this week at CES. It will be available first in China, where Lenovo is based, and won’t hit the U.S. until Google unveils Android 3.0 later this year. The hybrid machine combines a removable LePad touch slate that does Android with a Windows 7 base that has a keyboard. The full system will cost about $1,300 in China or about $520 for the LePad alone.
Dell’s design is equally inventive and more attractively priced for consumers. But, unlike the Lenovo, you can’t remove the tablet from the base and use it on its own. In its folded position, you’d be hard-pressed to even tell that the clamshell Dell computer is anything but an ordinary netbook. Lift up the lid and you see the keyboard, trackpad and 10-inch display. A conventional notebook, right? Not quite. Push your thumb against the screen so that the entire display swivels 180 degrees in a vertical direction inside a hinged lid, then…