It is as if Steve Ballmer has taken it upon himself to don the mantle of the iPad slayer and he is soldering on with the Windows 7 OS even though critics would not waste a chance to mince words describing how inefficient the operating system is in a tablet environment. Actual prototypes were too few and far between to prove them wrong though this seems to have been taken care of a bit with the unveiling of the MasterPad, a prototype tablet brought out by the Israel based company Pegatron. And if initial responses are to be believed, the tablet does look to be quite a capable device.
The first thing that catches everybody’s attention is the super thin frame of the MasterPad which Pegatron says is all of just 14 mm. The screen is 11.6 inches of In Plane Switching display with 1,366 x 768 widescreen resolution while the processor is the Intel Atom N450 unit running at 1.66GHz. There is also a dedicated HD video-processing chip to enhance the multimedia capabilities of the tablet. Pegatron has stated the MasterPad is capable of smooth 1080p video playback and is also compatible with the Adobe Flash.
These apart, the MasterPad incorporates a 1.3-megapixel webcam with a microphone, a memory card reader as well as an accelerometer. Then there’s going to be two USB ports and a mini-HDMI port. The table also comes with an integrated 3G modem along with on board memory options range from 32GB to 64GB. All of this stuff is enclosed with a magnesium and aluminum alloy body and stops just short of a kilo in weight.
However, the job of keeping everything moving has been entrusted on a rather disappointing 2-cell battery. Disappointing since it has to be rushed to the nearest power socket every 5 hours or so. This is half of the iPad’s famed 10 plus hours of running time and anyone who’d like to better the iPad will obviously have to at least match up to that, if not able to move past it. In any case, for a tablet PC to be truly called a mobile device, it should have a minimum of 8 to 10 hours of battery back up time to live up to that tag line.
The MasterPad is slated to be market ready within a few months from now and will released initially in the domestic market followed by an international launch later. Also, Pegatron has revealed, there is a version readied that will run the Android OS.
With a keen interest in tech, I make it a point to keep myself updated on the latest developments in technology and gadgets. That includes smartphones or tablet devices but stretches to even AI and self-driven automobiles, the latter being my latest fad. Besides writing, I like watching videos, reading, listening to music, or experimenting with different recipes. The motion picture is another aspect that interests me a lot, and I'll likely make a film sometime in the future.
