14 DAY TRIAL // So-called “hybrid” devices have been cropping up on the IT market for as long as the industry has been around, so we aren't at all shocked to see tablets and ultrabooks combine.
Chinese company CZC Tech has formally introduced something called U116T, which behaves like a tablet but has ultrabook hardware.
What we mean by that is that all the necessary physical parts are crammed behind the 11.6-inch LCD (liquid crystal display) and the only part “missing” is the keyboard.
We have used the inverted comas because that component does exist but not as part of the same whole as the rest. Instead, it is a keyboard dock like the ones used by ASUS Transformer slates or, really, any tablet with Bluetooth support.
The CZC U116T will have an Intel Ivy Bridge central processing unit acting as its heart (the company didn't say which one exactly). Up to 4 GB of DDR3 RAM (random access memory) will back it up.
No discrete graphics card will be needed, as the CPU has its own integrated GPU to work with.
Moving on, the storage space will vary, provided by a solid-state drive (SSD). Buyers will have to make a choice between 16 GB, 32 GB and 128 GB.
Furthermore, the tablet half will have an USB 3.0 port, one USB 2.0 connector, Ethernet, a SIM card slot and, for when the SSD is just not enough, a microSD card slot as well.
As for the display, it is a multi-touch panel (capacitive) with a native resolution of 1,366 x 768 pixels (HD).
All in all, the main component has pretty much everything it needs to function properly, except for the physical keys. The keyboard dock has its own asset though: a battery pack that will extend the time one can use the U116T without recharging.
CZC Tech will put the ultrabook-tablet on show during Computex Taipei, 2012 (June 5-9). The price and availability date should come out around that time.
