ArchosFamilypad
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Archos' £275 13.3-inch FamilyPad designed to encourage family time
Three months after we spied the Archos FamilyPad on the FCC, it's finally making its debut just in time for the holiday shopping season. As its name suggests, the 13.3-inch tablet is designed for a whole family to gather around -- though we doubt it would be very comfortable if your family has more than four people. With 10x multitouch support, Archos claims families can use it to watch movies, keep organized, share pictures and play digital board games; the company even pre-installed a few of the latter to get your family started. The FamilyPad doesn't have the best of specs, with a 1,280x800 HD display, 8GB flash memory, a microSD card slot, a 1GHz ARM Cortex A8 CPU, HDMI output and a front and rear camera that are 2-megapixels each. It does run Ice Cream Sandwich and would offer "a variety of email accounts for each family member." Those in the UK can purchase it for £274.99 ($438) when it's available in December, while US residents might have to wait a little longer. Maybe you can give your kids some ChildPads to play on their own instead; they might appreciate it more than enforced togetherness.
Archos MW13 'FamilyPad' opens up to the FCC, bares its 13-inch soul
Archos has already been targeting kids with its Child Pad slate, and now it looks like it's going after mom and pop, too. A recent FCC filing of a slate emblazoned with "Family Pad" shows a large tablet (13.3-inches according to the manual) that will apparently come in other -- hopefully smaller -- sizes. Likewise, there appears to be 8- and 16GB variants, 802.11n wireless, and an Allwinner A10 processor. The Android tablet also has a memory card slot for adding up to another 32GB, as well as a pair of USB ports, HDMI, and front- and rear-facing cameras. This choice of processor suggests it'll be reasonably gentle on the pocket whenever it comes out, which considering it's at the FCC, could be soon.
