Maybe There's Something Better Than The iPad After All

Well, when everyone found out that the iPad was NOT going to be Mac OS X on a tablet, they were hugely disappointed. Hell, even Hitler was disappointed. Instead, they're given the same iPhone OS that on the iPod Touch and the, well, iPhone. But to us that were looking for OS X on a tablet, don't fret, it might be possible after all. A German consumer electronics start-up named Neofonie has announced a new tablet called the WePad.

And here's the bit that will really get your hopes up. This bad boy comes with an 11.6" display (1366x768), a 1.66GHz Intel Atom N450 processor, GMA3150 graphics... wait, stop right there... An Intel Atom? But that's an x86 chip! And, earlier versions of this chip (N270, for example) has been known to run Mac OS X and Windows XP - The Acer Aspire One AOA150 can run Mac OS X and it has an Intel Atom N270 and the Intel GMA950 GPU, a predecessor to the GMA 3150. Well, back to the specs... It also features a built-in webcam, two USB ports, a SD card slot, integrated 3G, and a a battery that'll last long enough to watch Stephen King's The Stand without interruption - A full six hours.

Aside from that, the tablet runs Google's Android operating system, which has popularity as the OS of the HTC Hero, the Motorola Droid, the Samsung Galaxy, and even Google's own Nexus One. The WePad has integrated stereo speakers, 16GB of flash memory built-in with an optional upgrade to 32GB, a SIM card slot, access to Google's Android Market and the WePad App Store, and the major deal-breaker, full Flash Player and Adobe AIR support, bringing thousands of popular Flash web apps and games to the WePad - a big plus for, e.g. Facebook users that play FarmVille, who found out that they can't tend their farms from the iPad due to a lack of Flash.

Since this tablet is not too far off from a netbook, in terms of hardware, it is more than definite that the OSx86 crew will get Mac OS X running on this tablet, possibly even make Hitler happy. If Mac OS X isn't your thing, well, I can't see any reason why you couldn't run Windows XP or Windows 7 on this thing - Especially with Microsoft's push of Windows 7's new Windows Touch APIs for tablet computing, which isn't actually anything new, since Windows 3.1 had an optional API, Windows for Pen Computing, as did other Windows releases.

Finally, remember, that the Android operating system uses the Linux kernel at it's very heart, and is more-or-less fully open source, so if this thing runs Android, you bet it'll run Linux like a dream.

Primary source: http://hothardware.com/News/Neofonie-WePad-Is-An-116-AndroidBased-iPad-Killer/