The free open source nature of Android has really put a dampener of the Windows 7 tablet parade with only a handful of devices currently on the market.
Out of that very small handful the Winpad really shines!
The external appearance of the Winpad is vaguely reminiscent to the iPad’s but it is far from a carbon copy.
The alloy frame is much thicker than the iPads and is full of cooling vents for one. The vents are to keep the Intel Atom 1.66 Ghz CPU nice and cool while in use, the extra thickness of the device also gives ample breathing space for little CPU and also provides enough room for a large(ish) battery 1 Gb (2Gb option) or RAM and a whole range of plugs ports and switches.
In fact there are 2 x USB plugs, a HDMI out and a micro SD card reader all built in to the 10.1 inch tablet.
Gizchina News of the week
We had a chance to play around with the tablet and found the screen to be very responsive even when covered in plastic wrapping (to keep it safe from our clumsy hands). Windows 7 makes for a great tablet O.S and has some nice features such as a on screen ring which circles the point you are touching on screen making it east to navigate the very familiar Windows landscape.
Prices for the Winpad start at around 3100 Yuan ($464) for a 16Gb SSD model with 1Gb of RAM and climb to the dizzying heights of 6000 Yuan ($900) for a 128Gb SSD model with 2 GB of RAM and 3G.
Get more on the Winpad and other Windows tablets by following us on Twitter.
Trade inquires are welcome for the Winpad please contact us for pricing.
dear sirs,
i just purchased the win pad and i am a little disapointed with it.
unfortunatly because windows 7 is installed on the 16gb ssd, basically i only have1,5gb free space on this drive.
this has two major problems:
1- windos 7 does not allow us to install programs into a diferent drive.it always instals programs in the ssd. so only with 1,5gb this is very limiting. this also means that the available micro sd is almost useless.
2- because i only have 1,5gb, it is not possible to do anywindos update (like sp1) because there isn’t just enought space available, ans again it wont work from the micro sd slot nor from a usb pen drive
also wifi is very weak.
i wanted to install unbuntu, but it does not work imediatly “out of the box”. i saw in your site some test of this unit with unbuntu working quite well. can you tell me how can i solve the windows 7 limitations, or how to install ubuntu on this hardware, so that touch screenand other functions work properlly?
thank you
Hi sorry to hear you are having problems.
You should find that Ubuntu is very easy to install, but that you will need to hunt down the drivers for WIFI and the touch screen, but I’m not sure where you can find them. Sorry