Everyone’s all excited about that Freescale gizmo, but it looks like it may have competition. The Lenovo U1 has a similar convertible design, though with a slightly more rounded look. It’s also different in function: when docked, it runs Windows 7 on the dock’s low-power Intel processor, but once detached it uses an ARM CPU to run a lightweight Linux distro. Not sure how it’s going to handle the segue if you’ve got work in progress and need to dock it, but I’m sure Lenovo has that handled.
Here are the specs, broken down into tablet and dock portions:
Tablet:
- 1.6 pounds
- 1GHz Snapdragon processor
- 512MB DDR1 RAM
- 16GB SSD
Dock:
- 3.8 pounds (with tablet attached)
- Intel Core2 Duo U4100 processor
- 4GB DDR3 RAM (max)
- 128GB SSD
One other major difference: the U1 starts at a thousand dollars. I get the feeling Freescale might be the more attractive proposition to most people. We’ll see ‘em both at CES, though, so we’ll let you know.
[via PC Magazine]
That is unbelievably cool looking! Now, if we could only work down that price tag a little bit. Maybe offer a standard netbook version for the Dock and offer it at maybe, say, $400-$500? I’d probably buy one then. But at a grand… too much for me. Whatever happened to the recession and people being poor? :/
Intriguingly, it uses two different operating systems – Windows 7 when in laptop mode and a Linux-based system as a tablet.
From the brief demo of the prototype, it’s hard to tell how useful the tablet element will be, but it’s a neat idea that may tempt people who want the best of both worlds.
This one is a chameleon indeed. Details: http://bit.ly/lenovo-ideapad-u1-details
I want one. But then again I wanted a crunchpad.
Price is going to be a huge problem for this product.
Lenovo should consider selling the tablet by itself, or with the “dock/case” stripped down to just a keyboard and misc ports.
Like the Joo Joo abomination this product cost to much to have mass market appeal.
@$%#%#$ awesome though, I want one. (did I say that already?)
It’s indeed a very interesting concept, not too different from the PaceBook D110 made by PaceBlade in 2002. However the PaceBook had a full featured PC in both laptop and tablet mode (also featured a desktop mode.
I think with the technology available today the PaceBook concept could work very well and provide a much better design than this Lenovo and other tablets coming out now.
We made a patent for the case and the connection between tablet and laptop mode, patent and company was sold to Tulip in 2003, they also bought Commodore in the 90s. They have not developed any new tablet after the D110 (others are outsourced and pretty crappy).
I think it’s an amazing idea, but the design kind of sucks. It has that G3 clamshell iBook design… and the pizza shop light shade red cover/backing kind of sucks.
This is pretty awesome i could see many many uses for this. However the price tag is a little steep imo
I’m interested in the finally design of this unit. The original HP tablet had slate capabilities by putting the brains in the display and making the keyboard detachable. I’ve hoped for something similar ever since the HP was discontinued.
Some people are skeptical of the dual processor and OS design, but consider this: Most of the things I do which don’t require much keyboard input are reading web pages, PDFs, and other documents (Safari books, ebooks, etc.), and the machine required to just wait for me to finish viewing some text and scrolling down would take little CPU, thus increasing battery life. Then, to have a dual core CPU in the docked notebook is great because I hate having a netbook or tiny laptop for mobile use and having to remote into a beefy desktop/tower to run things like VMware workstation and my more powerful office apps.
I would be able to carry both with me to client visits, taking notes in a meeting on the slate (if pen input app like OneNote is available) and then connecting to their network and running other apps with the whole unit.
The more powerful combination would justify a higher price than bulky touch screen netbooks which can’t handle CPU-intensive apps as well.
pretty good review of it here: http://sharpformen.com/blog/2010/01/07/sharp-tech-lenovo-ideapad-u1/
no review @sharpformen.com
I saw this on CES coverage and had to have it. I think the price point is quite reasonable, given that it is both a fully functioning laptop and a tablet, and have already started saving so I can get one in June. I only hope I can get it in a non-red color.
I think with the technology available today the PaceBook concept could work very well and provide a much better design than this Lenovo and other tablets coming out now.
hi there you are right the cool stuff cost mony like a ozc 1 terabyte ssd $2,440 too $2,880 and a 2 terabyte ssd for $6,000 ipad $499 up too $829 a 256 gb ssd cost $500 but now at $468 and a 128 gb ssd cost $200 soo you have a 128 gb ssd in the note book and a 16 gb ssd in the tablet thats $250 of flash memory plus batteries 2 cpus could run $200 soo $450 plus 4.5 gb of ram cost more money soo there is probaly about $750 of componites inside the u1 hybride
I earnestly beg you to study English and punctuation. Henry
I like the concept a lot. I’ve just recently been looking into tablets; hoping to find one that can perform at more than the simple media gizmo level. I’d like the ability to operate harder programs, such as Quicken, Word, and Excel for example. This platform has that potential to some degree, albeit, you will have to dock the slate in order to run those programs I mentioned, still, it’s an all-in-one package and I feel it has promise.
The more powerful combination would justify a higher price than bulky touch screen netbooks which can’t handle CPU-intensive apps as well.
oh we are in 22 June and u1 is not available?!!!!
“Available in June with an estimated retail price of $999″