Computers and electronics of portable formats are becoming more and more popular. During CES in Las Vegas the tablet concept have been one of the most common. The tablet concept is far from new, but the hardware of today makes them more interesting than before. Lenovo have shown a unique tablet solution with the IdeaPad U1 Hybrid. It’s a notebooks where the screen is detachable and can be used separately as a tablet.
To make this possible Lenovo have designed two computers in one. The notebook is powered by an Intel Core 2 Duo CULV processor and Windows 7 for operating system. If you detach the screen the computer activates “the tablet hardware”, which is a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon CPU together with 16GB SSD storage running Lenovo’s Skylight Linux.
The display has multi-touch and measures 11.6″. The computer weighs around 1.7kg where the tablet makes up around 700g.
Lenovo IdeaPad U1 is a Hybrid and the notebook becomes something of a docking station while the tablet PC is a mobile device with both WiFi and 3G.
The two PCs have been engineered to work together and independently through Lenovo’s Hybrid Switch technology that enables seamless toggling between the two processors. For instance, users can surf the Web in laptop mode and then continue from the same point without interruption if they detach to tablet mode.
This looks like a really interesting concept, but we will have to wait until June 1st, 2010. The computer is expected to cost around $900.
