14 DAY TRIAL // Judging by this recent event, French company Evigroup knows that it has to do unusual things on the tablet market if it hopes to make itself noticed from behind larger PC and mobile product companies.
To gain some attention from the media and, by extension, prospective buyers, Evigroup developed a dual-boot slate.
And here some may say that tablets with two operating systems aren't really unusual. And even if they are uncommon, Windows and Android are found installed alongside one another on various laptops as well.
But here is the difference: although a dual-boot tablet, the SmartPaddle Pro, as Evigroup decided to call it, does not, in fact, come with Android and Windows.
Instead, it has two versions of Microsoft's Windows operating system installed: Windows 7 and Windows 8.
Of course, it isn't the finished Windows 8 we are talking about here. Microsoft hasn't launched that OS yet after all.
The preview version is still something to behold, though, and useful for getting owners up to speed on the differences between it and its predecessor. Nothing like having both software packages installed on the same machine to get the complete picture.
Evigroup's SmartPaddlePro has a price of 759 Euro and, as a rebranded Pegatron Slate 7 (WeTab), it gets an 11.6-inch multitouch LCD (1366 x 768.) and an Intel Atom N450 central processing unit (1.66 GHz).
A Sandisk SSD of 32 or 64 GB is present too, along with two USB ports, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Ethernet, mini-HDMI, SDHC card reader and a sim card slot. More information is available here, on the tablet itself and the keyboard dock that adds Ethernet and three USB ports.
The Windows 8 operating system will be released in the fourth quarter, probably in October or November. Regardless, when it does, Evigroup will deliver a free update to the SmartPaddlePro.