Retail Stores to sell Intel’s Windows 8 Tablets and Hybrids in November
Intel Corp.'s Windows 8 tablets will be available in retail stores in November.
Aside from tablets, the hybrids that the company boasted during the annual investor meeting of Intel will be available as well. These new models of ultrabooks convert into tablets that Intel CEO Paul Otellini claimed as an innovation that redefined the traditional computer. Currently, there are over 110 designs of ultrabooks that are equipped with Intel's new Ivy Bridge processor.
All of the devices that will be made available will tap Intel's upcoming "Clover Trail" Atom chip. Clover Trail is Intel's first dual-core Atom design based on its 32-nanometer process technology. (The single core version of this chip powers a phone from India-based Lava and is slated for phones from Lenovo, Orange, and Motorola, among others.) Moreover, all of the devices will be equipped by the high-powered Ivy Bridge processor.
Intel first unveiled a prototype design of the hybrid device on the Intel Developer Forum (IDF) in Beijing. It features a full sized keyboard and a sliding screen that can be positioned to use as a normal notebook computer, or slid forward and used like a touchscreen all-in-one PC. The screen can also be folded flat on top of the keyboard into a tablet-style configuration.
The hybrid device is expected to be released in the fourth quarter of 2012. If the hybrid models will be released around the same time as the new operating system of Microsoft, Windows 8, this may well be the best way to see if Windows 8 works just as well on tablet devices as it does on a desktop.
Windows 8, like Windows 7 before it, will be powered by chips from Intel and Advanced Micro Devices and will be able to run older, so-called "legacy" applications.
Intel is already planning ahead as the source of CNET said that the company is developing a chip called "Bay Trail" in the works -- the company's future 22-nanometer follow-up to Clover Trail.
"It is a gigantic performer, with similar battery life to Clover Trail. It will also have a lot of security features built in and Infineon [3G/4G] silicon inside," the source said.
Bay Trail would use Intel's own graphics tech, not Imagination's. However, Intel did not disclose when the new chip will be released.