Fifteen Windows 8 Tablets Already Sold

Many things show up on eBay before they even get officially launched, and this is exactly what has happened to the first Windows 8 tablets to be created, even if they are only developer models.

Microsoft made sure that the Windows 8 operating system would cause a ruckus even well before launch when it said ARM support would be included.

Of course, this led to the obvious revelation that tablets would be among the items that the new OS would be optimized for.

It so happens that the company did, in fact, create the first batch of slates loaded with its early version of the software.

However, they were only about 5,000 in number (not that 5,000 is that small a number), and even those were available only to developers.

Not anymore, it turns out, as some of those slates found the needed channel through which they may land in the hands of the highest bidder.

Indeed, eBay became the means of sending those very tablets to anyone with enough cash in their bank accounts.

Currently, only two are said to be left, and their minimum bidding price is of $1,500, quite steep, though it gets better.

While such a tag is not totally out of the blue for the price of a seriously early leaked product, the fact remains that, in the end, this is still an auction.

On average, the units sold for about $2,844, while the most expensive reached the $4,000 mark.

For those who want to know what the product offers, it is based on the Samsung Series 7, with a dual-core Intel Core i5 central processing unit (CPU) of 1.6 GHz, the 64 GB or 128 GB, plus 4 GB of RAM (random access memory) and the common connectivity and I/O.

Fortunately, whenever the Windows 8 slates do come out for real (with a one-year AT&T 3G trial), they probably won't sell for much more (or less) than the Series 7 itself ($1,099/806 Euro and $1,349/989 Euro).