14 DAY TRIAL // Beside all those 3D HDTVs, Sandy Bridge notebooks, tablets and digital cameras that fill the booths and halls of CES 2011, this show is where you'll also come across plenty of innovative gadgets, developed by companies who want to make a name for themselves in the CE market, as is the case with Speakal.
And for this year's CES, the company came prepared with the BTS8, an office phone system that's actually capable of doubling as a personal computer running Microsoft's Windows 7 operating system.
The BTS8 can be used for making, managing and recording phone calls and even video chat with the on board webcam via Skype.
Plus, this rather unusual hybrid from Speakal also comes with a 5-inch LCD display can be connected to an external monitor via VGA for more desktop space.
Additional features include fax receiving, SMS text messaging, a built-in media player, contacts management, and a calendar, as well as web browsing and email checking.
While Speakal doesn't provide any exact info on the hardware, the fact that we're talking about an ultra-compact PC that also sports additional office phone features leads us to believe that it's most likely built around one of Intel's Atom CPUs for the embedded market (AMD Fusion is also a possibility, but we don't really believe that's the case).
“BTS8 completely streamlines business communications and computing for the modern office” said CEO David Solomon.
“Users are able to optimize connectivity and empower their phone with the advanced capabilities of Windows 7 while saving up to 90% of the power regularly used with a desktop PC” added Solomon.
Beside not providing significant info on the hardware, Speakal has also refrained from offering us any pricing and/or availability details, but we certainly hope that they do manage to see this project through and make it commercially available, since we're pretty sure that many users from all sorts of different market segments would certainly be interested in such an AIO solution.