I’d been hearing that Intel needed a little more time to get their Clover Trail chips to ship… but that doesn’t explain why we didn’t see more Windows RT tablets at launch.

The way these Windows 8 devices are being priced I dont see Microsoft having any impact on the tablet market. Android has them beat for price and specs, and the cool factor is covered by the ipad. Don’t see where these expensive tablets fit in.

Apparently, the Clover Trail model ATIV Smart PC XE500 is suppose to have a battery in the Keyboard dock… The higher end Pro model though doesn’t appear to have that feature…

Price for Clover Trail models are actually about the same as the RT models, they just tend to add extra for the Clover Trail models…

Namely features like WACOM digitizer pen, in the ATIV Smart PC case it’s the Samsung S-Pen. They’ll tend to be larger at 11.6″ instead of 10.1″… Samsung includes some of their S-Pen apps… Others like Lenovo offer to include full Office 2013…

Keyboard is included for the Samsung options… And typically starting capacity is 64GB and goes up to 128GB.

While more base models that better mirror the RT models are priced much lower. Like the Asus Vivo Tab Smart is priced at $499 for 32GB model… It just smaller at 10.1″ instead of 11.6″ like the Vivo Tab, doesn’t have the WACOM pen feature, and won’t be getting a keyboard dock but instead a smart cover and optional bluetooth keyboard.

Similarly the Acer Iconia W510 starts at $499 for the 32GB base model.

Tablets will always cost more than equivalent laptops. So while pricing will likely go down over time, don’t expect them to go that much further down… While as more models come out we should see a better range of options at least.