Computex 2012: Hot New Gear on Display

Ultrabooks, thin and light laptops, and Windows 8 tablets are the talk of the town at this year’s Computex trade show in Taipei. The gear unveiled so far gives a clear indication of what you’ll be able to buy this year when Windows 8 ships, although details are scarce on pricing and sometimes specs. Here’s some of the hottest gear shown off in Taiwan.

Acer’s W510 tablet has a 10.1-inch IPS display with a keyboard dock that allows 295-degree rotation and up to 18 hours of battery on Windows 8 (8 hours without the dock). It has one USB port, microHDMI, microUSB, microSD ports and an 8-megapixel camera on the back.

The Acer W700 Windows 8 tablet has a larger 11.6-inch 1920-by-1080 pixel display (that’s full HD), and is also port-heavy — one USB 3.0 port (three more on the dock), microHDMI, and a Thunderbolt port.

Acer’s Aspire S7 Ultrabooks will come in 11.6- and 13.3-inch touchscreen display versions. Though very slim, the 11.6-inch model will have a USB 3.0 port, microHDMI and microSD card reader, while the larger model will have an additional USB port and a special display hinge so you can lay the screen flat.

The Asus Tablet 600 is an ARM-powered Windows RT machine with a 10-inch display and a quad-core Nvidia Tegra 3 CPU. It has 2GB of RAM, 32GB of storage, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0, along with an 8-megapixel camera on the back and a 2-megapixel camera on the front.

The Asus Taichi laptop actually has two screens. It’s basically a thin and light laptop with a second touchscreen display that covers the entire back cover. This also means you’ll be able to use it with the lid closed, or show off images on both displays simultaneously (the displays are independent). It will run Windows 8 and come in 11.6- and 13.3-inch versions.

The Gigabyte X11 Ultrabook is made from carbon fiber materials and weighs just 975 grams with its 11.6-inch 1366-by-768 pixel resolution display. It is 16.5 mm thin at the back and 3 mm along the front. There’s also a 128GB solid-state drive, 4GB of DDR3 memory, two USB ports and a microSD slot.

MSI’s Slider S20 is a convertible Ultrabook Windows 8 tablet with a screen that slides to reveal a keyboard. It has an 11.6-inch display, an Ivy Bridge processor and will come with USB 3.0, Bluetooth 4.0, and HDMI connectivity.

The Samsung Ultra Touch is a Series 5 Ultrabook with a 1366-by-768 pixel touchscreen display. It runs Windows 8 and has a 500GB hard drive and a 24GB SSD for quicker-boot-up. There’s also one USB 3.0 port, two USB 2.0, a HDMi and an SD card slot.

Samsung’s Series 5 Ultra Convertible has a 360-degree hinge, allowing the Windows 8 notebook to flip into a tablet. It has a 13.3-inch 1366-by-768 pixel touchscreen display and an array of ports including three USB (two 2.0, one 3.0) and HDMI.

The screen on the Series 5 Ultra Convertible from Samsung can fold against the base of the laptop, turning it into a tablet. There’s also the same 500GB hard drive and a 24GB SSD for quicker-boot-up as in the Ultra Touch.

Samsung’s Series 5 Hybrid tablet notebook PC runs the full version of Windows 8 X86, but doesn’t use any latches to connect to the keyboard dock. Instead, it uses a magnetic system, but no other specs were revealed.

Toshiba claims its Portege Z930 Ultrabook is the lightest 13.3-inch laptop around (but it’s not lighter than the Gigabyte X11 11.6-inches notebook). There are three USB ports on board (two 2.0, one 3.0), HDMI, VGA and SD card reader. It will arrive later in the year with configurations including up to 512GB SSD storage and 12GB of RAM.