The Slate of Toshiba’s OS Union: Android, Windows 7 or both?

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Friday, 23 July 2010 13:55

Your IT - Mobility

With Toshiba launching dozens of new notebooks for the consumer and business spaces for virtually any kind of user, along with new TVs, HD camcorders, a “cloud companion” PC and the book like dual-screen Libretto, the announcement that Toshiba would be launching its own slate with either the Android OS installed, Windows 7 or potentially even both this October arguably stole the show!

Toshiba Australia has come out in the IT and AV wars with all guns blazing, offering a huge number of new portable and ultraportable computers aimed at consumers and businesses at effectively all levels and all price points.

It’s an indication of how diversified the portable PC market has become, catering to the many different needs for screen size, performance, battery life, weight and more out there.

It’s in stark contrast to the iPad, which has a Wi-Fi-only model and a Wi-Fi, 3G and GPS equipped model available in three storage sizes.

But while the iPad certainly has its fans, the portable PC market now commands 60% of global PC sales, finally well and truly surpassing desktop PC models. And you need a computer to sync your iPad with.

If it’s not a PC, it will be a Mac, or for those who love a challenge, a Linux box.

So the PC market will not die anytime soon, but the pad/slate/tablet market is finally taking off, at last.

The only thing is, the best slate/pad/tablet out there at the moment comes from Apple with its iPad. Sure, there’s the “ModBook” that turns a MacBook into a Mac Tablet. And if you want a “real” tablet, the only other contender besides the ModBook is the Windows 7 “convertible” tablet that you get from Toshiba, Fujitsu, Lenovo, Dell and others.

Still, it’s the physical keyboard-less “pad” that has captured all of the attention, and Toshiba wants some of this for its upcoming, October timeframe Android OS or Windows 7 pads.

I asked Mark Whittard, the MD of Toshiba Australia, whether such a pad might come with both operating systems installed – and not just so you can boot from one to the other, but so that you could use both operating systems at the same time – if you wanted to, of course.

There was no definitive answer on that other than it was a possibility. My other comment to Whittard was that the on-screen keyboard on these devices needed to be absolutely as smooth as that on the iPad, or better – otherwise no-one would care!

Continued on page two, please read on!