We love Asus's Eee Pad Transformer, so we can't wait to get our hands on its Slider sibling.
As the name suggests, the Asus Eee Pad Slider has a slidey bit - a display that reveals a proper keyboard - but what else is inside, and what's it going to cost? Let's find out.
Asus Eee Pad Slider specifications
Asus has revealed all: the Eee Pad Slider specs include a 1.0GHz dual-core NVIDA Tegra 2, a full QWERTY keyboard and USB port, SRS surround sound, a 10.1-inch WXGA (1280x800) screen and 1GB of RAM.
There's a choice of 16GB or 32GB of storage, twin cameras - 1.2MP on the front and 5MP on the back - 802.11b/g/n and Bluetooth 2.1. The panel is an Apple-style Intelligent Plane Switching (IPS) job, delivering a wide 178-degree viewing angle.
Asus Eee Pad Slider software
Hardly a surprise, this: the Asus Eee Pad Slider operating system is Android 3.1, although Asus says that the Slider is upgradeable to Android 3.2.
The Eee Pad's features means it's nearly a laptop
Reasonable screen, reasonable keyboard, mini-HDMI, USB, cloud storage... we're getting awfully close to laptop territory here, and at 960g we're getting awfully close to laptop weight too. That means the Eee Pad isn't just competing with other tablets: it's competing with netbooks too. Netbooks, of course, offer a more traditional PC experience - but they're almost as portable as tablets, and often cheaper.
The Asus Eee Pad Slider features include unlimited storage
No, Asus hasn't found a way to offer infinite flash memory - but every Eee Pad Slider customer gets a year of unlimited Asus WebStorage for their stuff. It's unclear whether that's unlimited in the sense of having no limits, or if it's "unlimited" like ISP internet bandwidth.
The Asus Eee Pad Slider UK release date
Everybody's gearing up for Christmas and Asus is no exception. Notebook Italia says that Asus intends to launch the Slider in Europe in September.
Asus Eee Pad Slider UK price
Asus is pricing its tablets aggressively, but don't expect the Slider to compete with low-end machines: we're hearing €479 for the 16GB model and €599 for the 32GB model. In real money that works out at around £437 and £525 before tax. That's a good bit more than the £325ish you'll currently pay for a keyboard-free Eee Pad Transformer, but of course unlike the Transformer the Slider's keyboard isn't an optional extra.
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