Mobile News

One of the world's most useful gadgets is the tablet PC. You could use it as a digital notebook and it makes it perfect for taking notes by conferences, writing reports or just editing office documents. The downside of a tablet PC however is its narrow purpose – it's just not good for almost any other work behind the desk or wherever you go. That's why I was so surprised by my first meeting with Gigabyte's M912. The gadget looks like a traditional netbook but it works also like a tablet PC. So you get the nice functionality of the touchscreen device (the tablet PC), but also receive a great netbook with some interesting features. As already mentioned, Gigabyte M912's display offers touch-sensitive navigation and it work pretty descent. The fact that you could finally touch the interface of a Windows XP device makes you first go “wow”, but you'll get used to it pretty soon. The screen of course rotates at angle of 180 degrees. Except for the 8.9” diagonal, M912 also offers a great resolution – 1280x768. It delivers images with perfect quality and the view is one of the best among the rivals. Passing through its other hardware characteristics, I should mention the option to implement a 250 GB HDD, up to 2 GB of RAM memory, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity. M912 comes with the familiar to all of us Intel Atom Processor N270 1.6GHz, which is frequently (or even exclusively) used in netbook configurations. Of course you'll also count on a few USB ports, ExpressCard slot, and 4 in 1 card reader, which we found pretty useful by transferring all these images and testing software. We couldn't help but test Skype, which allowed us to make some video calls as there is a 1.3 MP in-built web camera. This one together with the two 1.5 W speakers you could easily use for video conference at the office. What about the size? Well, this pretty little thing comes in great shape, sized at 235x180x28/42 mm and weighing only 1.3 kg with the optional 6-cell battery. The Gigabyte M912 is now available on the European market at a price, depending on how much efficient configuration you choose. You could find it at around 500 euro. Further comments and questions you are welcomed to post in our forum >>