• Tweet

The Cregle PenBook is a new tablet PC which looks like it’s designed to combine some of the features of classic Windows tablets with the sparse design of modern mobile tablets. As you might have guessed from the name, the PenBook comes with a digital pen and an active digitizer which you can use to draw or write on the display. There’s also support for multi-touch gestures and palm rejection.

The tablet has a 10.1 inch, 1024 x 600 pixel display, measures 10.4″ a 7.2″ x 0.7″ and weighs 2.3 pounds.

But one of the things that really stands out for me in the product demo video are the touch-sensitive areas above and below the display. You can use these to adjust screen brightness with a swipe. You can also use the Touch Bars to enter customized commands or keyboard combinations such as Page Up or Down, or Ctrl+Alt+Del.

Unlike many tabelts on the market today, the Cregle PenBook has a user replaceable battery. The standard battery is a 5000mAh unit which the company says should provide up to 6 hours of battery life.

The bad news is the tablet has a 1.6 GHz Intel Atom Z530 processor. It’s a low power chip which should help the tablet reach that battery life estimate. But in my experience, it’s also a pretty sluggish chip and Windows 7 can feel kind of slow on devices with this chipset.

The Cregle PenBook has 2 USB ports (1 host and 1 device), a headset jack, a built-in mic, stereo speakers, 802.11b/g/n WiFi and Bluetooth 2.1.

There’s no word on the price or release date yet.

via Rob Bushway