Remember the ViewSonic 7 dual-boot tablet that offered a booting option of Window seven and Android? Well, ViewSonic 10 is its siblings that has just launched. The 7 that they showed IFA 2010 may be unstable prototype but the ten that’s going to launch at November 15 is a fully fledged tablet priced at £449.
Unlike the ARM11 ViewPad 7, the bigger slate runs Intel’s 1.66GHz Atom N455 processor with 1GB of RAM and a 16GB SSD. There’s also WiFi b/g/n, Bluetooth, two USB 2.0 ports, a headphone socket and a 1.3-megapixel camera, together with a microSD card reader. The 1024 x 600 display supports multitouch gestures, and the whole thing measures in at 275 x 170 x 14.5 mm and weighs 835g.
ViewSonic reckon the ViewPad 10 is, thanks to the Atom CPU, the fastest Android tablet around – at least in terms of pure clock speed – but there’s a downside to the x86 core. Even though the smaller ViewSonic is running Froyo (2.1), this big sibling is running donut (1.6). To make matter worse, there’s no Android Market. Only third-party apps installed. Here’s a hand on video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8ZmVvmb7Es
Hold down the power button and there’s the option to reboot; when the slate restarts, you get a DOS-style boot menu and can choose between the (default) Android OS or Windows 7 Home Premium.
As it stands, selecting Windows is tricky – there are no arrow keys, contrary to the on-screen prompts – involving pressing the home button to move down the list and then the back button to select. ViewSonic is apparently working on a more elegant switching system, which will eventually allow you to hot-swap between the two platforms without demanding a reboot.
Like its predecessor, window seven is not friendly to touchscreen. The capacitive screen is responsive but if you want to be as productive as you are in the computer, you need a mouse and a keyboard extension. ViewSonic want to combine the best of two world, the task managing of window seven and web multimedia of Android but frankly, having 1.6 will decrease that aim by much. But still, to be sure, we need the review this thing for real.