Toshiba are finally offering their AC100 MID, the Tegra 2 based smartbook running Android 2.1 with the company’s own custom UI. Priced at £292.52 including tax ($449), so far only the non-3G AC100-10Z model – with WiFi b/g/n, Bluetooth and 8GB of flash storage – is available.
Its 3G sibling, the Toshiba AC100-10U, is still unavailable for order. It will have a 2100MHz UMTS/HSPA modem for use in Europe, along with quadband GSM/EDGE. Both get HDMI ports, 10.1-inch 1024 x 600 displays and 512MB of RAM.
The AC100 has also been listed at Amazon, though the retailer is still showing shipment delays of 1-2 months. Last week at IFA 2010, Toshiba unveiled the Folio 100, a touchscreen slate version of the AC100 expected to be priced at £329 when it launches in a couple of months time.
E-Noa’s Tegra 2 based Interpad was one of those tablets we harboured quiet doubts over back in July, uncertain whether the company could beat big-name rivals to the market with their Android 2.2 slate. Having met the company at IFA 2010 this week, though, it seems they’re well on their way to making some sales. The Interpad isn’t quite ready – E-Noa are apparently still working on a custom UI that will suit the 10-inch 1024 x 600 multitouch display – but it was certainly functional enough.
In its unfinished software state, there are still some obvious glitches. The presence of a phone icon on the homescreen is one, since while the Interpad will be offered with optional 3G/UMTS it won’t make voice calls, instead using only cellular data. E-Noa are keeping the details of the UI close to their chest, too, since there’s no sign of any screenshots or mockups on the company’s site and they couldn’t tell us at the show exactly what will change.
Tegra 2 kept things running smoothly, though with no wireless connection for the Interpad’s WiFi b/g/n (paired with Bluetooth 2.1 as standard) we couldn’t try out the browser. It’ll play back up to 1080p video (supporting MPEG2, H.264 and VC-1 codecs, among others) and E-Noa are still claiming an ambitious 8-12hrs of battery life from the 3,500mAh pack. That sizeable battery adds up to a hefty slate, though it’s a little thinner and a little lighter than Toshiba’s Folio 100.
It’s hard to pass judgement until we see the final software, since so much hangs in the balance of how user-friendly the core Android OS is on a significantly larger display than a smartphone. At €399 ($515) for the non-3G version, it’s priced the same as the Folio 100, though we’ve a feeling most users would opt for the recognizable brand name. As IFA 2010 has shown, the tablet segment is hotting up and within a couple of months there’ll be no shortage of above average hardware that the Interpad may have trouble standing out from.
Not everybody needs the world’s fastest mobile GPU, so NVIDIA is sagely trickling down its Fermi magic to more affordable price points today. The 400M family is being fleshed out with five new midrange parts — GT 445M, GT 435M, GT 425M, GT 420M and GT 415M, to give them their gorgeous names — and a pair of heavy hitters known as the GTX 470M and GTX 460M. Features shared across the new range include a 40nm fab process, DirectX 11, CUDA general-purpose computing skills, PhysX, and Optimus graphics switching. 3D Vision and 3DTV Play support will be available on all but the lowest two variants. NVIDIA claims that, on average, the 400M graphics cards are 40 percent faster than their 300M series counterparts, and since those were rebadges of the 200M series, we’re most definitely willing to believe that assertion. Skip past the break for all the vital statistics, and look out for almost all (HP is a notable absentee, while Apple is a predictable one) the big-time laptop vendors to have gear bearing the 4xxM insignia soon.
