The Dell Inspiron DUO is a computer that can be used as a tablet or a netbook. But while old-school convertible laptops had swivels that allowed you to twist the screen and fold it down over the keyboard, the Duo has something different: A display that rotates inside the screen bezel.

Say you’re using the DUO in laptop mode and you want to convert it to tablet mode. Just push the screen back 180 degrees and then close the lid like you would if you were turning off the computer. Now you have a tablet. Want to convert back to laptop mode? Just open the lid and push the screen.

The DUO has a 1.5GHz Intel Atom N550 dual core processor and runs Windows 7.

Dell showed off the Inspiron DUO at an Intel event in September, but the company hasn’t announced a launch date or pricing yet. But it looks like we won’t have to wait too much longer. The company posted a teaser video for the Inspiron DUO on YouTube. You can check it out after the break.

via nDevil

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8 replies on “Dell posts video teaser for the Inspiron DUO tablet/netbook”

  1. Given good battery life, this would’ve been almost perfect EXCEPT that for that price I can buy BOTH, a fairly decent small netbook for small computing-on-the-spot AND a larger android tablet for ebook reading/light gaming-browsing.

    They always lose perspective on the price when a nice, desirable product comes out. I’m really tempted to buy it until I realise that, for that price, I can buy TWO lesser solutions that equal MORE than the intended new gadget.

    I’d buy this if it were $400. But at $500+, I’ll be buying a $150 chinese table and a $250 decent netbook. I’ll save the $100 for beer.

  2. Since there is no mentioning of the battery life, we can safely assume it horrible like with the other Win7 tablets (like 3-4 hours).

    1. I don’t doubt your hands-on and ownership experience, but I get just around 8 hours of battery life from my Windows 7 TABLET. I guess I made a good purchase decision. In theory, these SLATES should get comparable battery life to their netbook counterparts, since they use basically the same hardware. As we know, there are Windows 7 netbooks that get far more than 3-4 hours of battery life, so I wouldn’t be afraid of updating your belief system if you start seeing the same thing from slates. It’s weird to blame an operating system for battery technology. In fact, if you’ve ever conversed with an OEM or ODM about slates, you’ll find that the battery prospects are actually really good because the form factor permits the inclusion of more capacity, since there is less room occupied by a keyboard and other case materials.

      1. Except for the fact that many manufacturers out there jumped on the “thinness” train.
        Thinner = less space for batteries.

      2. A consumer tablet must weigh MUCH LESS than a tablet-PC you likely talk about. And that means much less installable battery capacity since batteries are normally heavy (the OEM-affordable ones). Netbooks are also much less weigh constrained so they can include more batteries.

        My Toshiba Portege (admittedly an old one) Tablet PC had 2-3 hours of battery life in its heydays. And it is heavy like hell, it cannot be used on-hand for long.

        Reviews of brand new types of Win7 consumer tablets (3 types I remember) put a 3-4hr battery runtime maximum on them.

      3. What is the brand and type of your Win7 tablet? I have yet to see any Win7 tablet with an 8 hr battery runtime spec.

  3. I hope this is less terrible than I suspect it will be. I’m a tablet guy, actual tablets. For a few long time, I rejected pure slates and instead only purchased and used convertible tablets that offered both a slate and a laptop mode. Usually, the hinge on such devices are rotational, but some have also had swing-hinges like this device has. Over the last few years, I’ve gotten fed up with convertible tablets and transitioned to an all pure slate line-up. I have a lot of gripes about convertible tablets, and starting with Windows Vista slates became very viable. For example, in a traditional clamshell design the keyboard, which is on top of the hardware internals, is designed to be an important part of the cooling and thermals. When the device is sealed into slate mode, this dissipation is impeded and the device really heats up. There are lot of other gripes I can make too, but the bottom line is that almost every convertible tablet, rotational or swing hinge, is a bad laptop and a bad slate.

    Because everybody is now stupid, slates are for some reason the trendy new form factor for content consumption devices focused on media and Internet usage scenarios, despite the fact that slates have traditionally been the purest form of tablet (i.e. a creative, productive pen-input scenario). My best guess is that people are going to buy this like they buy everything, because of the way that it looks in the marketing. They’ll fantasize about using the keyboard to be productive, and then when it’s time to “sofa surf” they’ll do the opposite of the intuitive thing and flip the device into its underwhelming slate mode. At 10 inches, this is probably going to be too big for the handheld experience that it needs to deliver. In contrast, at 7 inches this device would nearly be perfect. Anyhow, good luck to it. Of course, none of this will matter, because despite the fact that a device like this can do far more than an Android slate because of its operating system, reviewers will soil themselves over their inability to even understand what user experience means in the context evaluating a Windows 7 device.

    1. Of course you are right when you say that Android has much less functionality than Win7.

      However, for the use-case people want to buy these machines (couch/bed browsing, emailing, video), such advanced functionality is not needed. Long battery runtime is needed and an Android/ARM pair can give them that at a relatively low price point.

      It is not an accident that several big-name producers now say flat “no” for Win7 tablets. They know very well what technical difficulties they face. They could put more batteries into ot to raise the runtime to 8hour but the weight of the device would make it unfeasible for the target use-cases.

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