Acer may launch a tablet with a slide-out keyboard this year

Acer may become the next company to come out with a slider-style tablet. While convertible tablet-style laptops are nothing new, most of the devices fitting that description have historically looked like laptops with screens that had a swiveling hinge in the center, allowing you to fold the screen down over the keyboard for use in slate mode. This year we’ve seen a number of companies push new devices with slide-out keyboards which take up less space.

The Samsung Series 7 Sliding PC is a Windows slider that’s due to hit the streets any day now. Asus is also scheduled to launch an Eee Pad Slider tablet running Google Android 3.x Honeycomb.

According to DigiTimes Acer will launch a slider in the fourth quarter of the year, in time for the holidays. The tablet will reportedly have a 10 inch display and an ARM-based processor. There’s no word on the processor, but the timing would suggest that we’re talking about an Android device since Microsoft isn’t expected to officially launch Windows 8 until next year — and that will be the first version of Microsoft’s desktop operating system designed to fully support ARM-based chips.