Hands on with Gigabyte M912 and M724 convertible mini-tablets

Carving out the newest niche in the low-cost, mini-laptop, ultra-portable, *gasp* netbook category is the Gigabyte M912. As a convertible, touch-screen mini-tablet, the M912 runs Vista or Ubuntu Linux atop Intel's Atom processor. Unfortunately, it looks like it might be hampered by a 4-cell battery showing just over 1.5 hours of battery left on a 95% charge. The 7-inch M724 apparently shares the same chassis as the M912 but is meant for classrooms-only, not consumers. Uh, right. That was the original market for all these netbook-class machines as we recall.

Read -- Gigabyte M912
Read -- Gigabyte M724

[Gaspode @ Jun 3rd 2008 8:54AM]

..to get modded down.

[Thi mam(kris120890) @ Jun 3rd 2008 8:48AM]

go away nobody wants you here.

[huh @ Jun 3rd 2008 8:59AM]

sigh.. just make one of these with minimum bezel, full linux support, and a long battery for less than $550 and I'm in.

[huh @ Jun 3rd 2008 3:16PM]

oh yeah, and 2gb support. ram is super cheap these days, and often provides more performance boost than a faster cpu.

[Del Hass @ Jun 3rd 2008 9:00AM]

Boy, I got tired already of following this UMPC/netbook craze.

I ended up buying a nice 12" Thinkpad X40 of of Ebay for much less than an EEE 700.

You'd basically be an stupid early adopter if you buy at this stage. example is buying a EEE 900 when 901 and even 1000 is just around the corner.

[PowerPaul @ Jun 3rd 2008 9:01AM]

Why isn´t there a stylus or digital pen anywhere in the pictures?

This is supposed to be a tablet pc, right?

Do they want you to buy a stylus separate?

[Craig @ Jun 3rd 2008 10:05AM]

That's what I've been wondering. Is it tablet touch screen or like iPhone touch screen? Can you write on it with some sort of stylus or just press buttons in the OS like 'Ok' or 'Shutdown'?

Based on the pics and the fact that there aren't pimping it as a tablet pc, its probably the latter unfortunately.

[TareX @ Jun 3rd 2008 9:03AM]

I LOVE it, it is PERFECT.

I always wanted a windows-capable (and Linux.... no prob) tablet mini-laptop. It is so elegant and I don't give a damn about power. 99.9% of the time I use my laptop, it's plugged in.

Perfect perfect perfect. I would have preferred WinXp but everyone says Vista's handwriting recognition is top-notch so I won't complain about that.

So my shopping list for the year is almost complete:

HTC Dream
M912 mini-laptop tablet
That megatron gaming monster pc

[Skullgrl @ Jun 3rd 2008 9:23AM]

Oh it is! I plugged in my tablet for art purposes and it's amazing. Windows journal is my favorite. It takes writing and turns it into text (granted the other program that sites or hides on your desktop does that too but Journal is like the expanded version.) Theres also a post-it note type thing that you can just write on. I don't have all that much experience with this kind of thing but I know its way better than what I could do when I had this tablet plugged into WinXP. But both the Vista and XP versions I've used are for the home.

[Alexkass @ Jun 3rd 2008 9:10AM]

what about wacom support?

[initialxy @ Jun 3rd 2008 9:14AM]

i will high rank you since we don't see someone gets excited about being second everyday. in a way, you are more pathetic than the "first" guy.

[Tom @ Jun 3rd 2008 9:20AM]

Are they serious on battery life? Would this battery be upgradeable?

[TareX @ Jun 3rd 2008 9:42AM]

http://www.umpcportal.com/2008/06/is-this-little-gem-a-new-raon-digital-umpc/

This is an image of an AMD-based device that has been shown at Computex. Its small, really small. One of the smallest I’ve seen with a full keyboard. It’s got a 7" touchscreen and its 1024×600. Its starting to look nice. AMD’s officials are saying its running Turion and that it’s 1.5 times the processing power of an Atom and will return 2.5hrs video-playback runtime. Its looking very interesting indeed. [Continued…]

http://www.umpcportal.com/2008/06/is-this-little-gem-a-new-raon-digital-umpc/

....I think AMD's umpc is a much smaller/more capable umpc... it has a touchscreen as well, but too bad it doesn't pivot and become a tablet like the M912. But its SO small, you can extend the screen all the way and easily enjoy the touchscreen AND keyboard!

[Kent Pribbernow @ Jun 3rd 2008 10:09AM]

But at what price?

[Mark @ Jun 17th 2008 7:24AM]

just find it ... use google.com/products or something ...

[Sinnix @ Jun 3rd 2008 10:37AM]

This looks cool but I think I'll stick with my X61.

[PEZ @ Jun 3rd 2008 4:28PM]

I want a dual-core atom with a camera, GPS and 3G connectivity, wifi, bluetooth and some other crap that will make it expensive. oh, XP.

[dantrevino @ Jun 7th 2008 6:59PM]

wwwaaaaahhhhhh! poor baby these things found a larger market. so what. quit whining and go buy your $5000 laptop.

[Mark @ Jun 17th 2008 7:07AM]

bleh, i dont like that windows logo on keyboard ... id like to see here "traditional" home button like eee pc has ...

[vinny @ Aug 21st 2008 4:44PM]

This is an awesome looking netbook, I like the approach they have taken with it, if anyone is interested theirs a blog following this netbook here;

http://gigabyte-m912.wiredblog.org/