TabletKiosk's Sahara i400 series does it up slate style once again

TabletKiosk sure does love its slate PCs, and we're especially liking this new Sahara i440D. It's not exactly for the power users in the house, with an Intel Celeron M ULV 423 processor at the helm, but it makes up for that with its diminutive 0.98-inch thickness and 3.3 pound carrying weight. There's also room for up to 4GB of DDR2 SDRAM, so while your apps might be a bit on the sluggish side, at least you can run lots of them. Up front there's a 12.1-inch XGA screen with a 179 degree viewing angle, but where the i440D really shines is with its connectivity, including Bluetooth 2.0+EDR, two USB 2.0 ports, firewire, eSATA, gigabit Ethernet, a PCMCIA slot and cradle connector. There's also a fingerprint reader and room for a 6-cell battery. No optical drive or keyboard, of course, but the fancy screen can switch between being a pressure-sensitive digitizer and a resistive touch screen, so your fingers can at least keep busy leaving prints all over display. Configurations start at $1,795 for the i412T with 512MB of RAM, a 60GB HDD and Windows XP Professional and ramp up to the $2,295 i440D with 1GB of RAM, an 80GB HDD and Vista Business. Pre-loaded Linux is also an option. TabletKiosk should start shipping these in March.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

[Newmiracle @ Feb 7th 2007 1:14PM]

The other higher powered tablets in the lineup have Duos, not Celerons.

From the site:
"Sahara Slate PC i440T -- Configurations start at $2,195 MSRP with an Intel® Core™ Duo L2500 processor, 1.0 GB memory, 80 GB HDD and Windows XP Professional SP2. Shipping begins late March, 2007.

Sahara Slate PC i440D -- Configurations start at $2,295 MSRP with an Intel® Core™ Duo L2500 processor, 1.0 GB memory, 80 GB HDD and Windows Vista Business. Shipping begins late March, 2007."

Of course you're paying more for the privledge, but there seems to be some room for power users if they're willing to pony up.

[Rob Bushway @ Feb 7th 2007 1:42PM]

only highlighting the celeron is very misleading. Their Core Duo slates will really sell and won't be on the sluggish side. I especially like the new dual-input options: touch and active digitizer pen.

[Tom Wolf @ Feb 7th 2007 9:51PM]

It's connectivity options were lauded, but I see no mention of wifi. Oversight?