I don’t know if you remember, but we’ve told you a little bit about Viewsonic’s plans to launch two tablets at IFA Berlin. One was the Viewsonic Viewpad 7 and the other one a mysterious dual boot tablet. Now we know that rumor was true, as Laptopmag just made a hands on video with the Viewsonic ViewPad 10 (or ViewPad 100 or ViewPad 10i, as the official name is not set yet). As expected from the name, what we have here is a 10 inch slate tablet, with a multi touch screen (1024 x 600 pixels resolution, small but effective as Windows 7 buttons will be bigger) and the amazing capability to dual boot Windows 7 and Android.

    Because it runs Windows 7 the CPU must be x86 compatible, that why Viewsonic used the Atom N550 single core CPU running at 1.66 GHz  for the ViewPad 10. And in spite of the Atom CPU the overall thickness of the slate is something to be admired. Even if the general looks are not final yet, we have to admit to Viewsonic’s nice design. Hope they won’t ruin it somehow before launch. The three Android buttons are found on the right edge of the screen while the left side hosts the various USB ports, display out (micro VGA they say but I haven’t heard of this standard just yet) , card reader, microphone and headphone out jacks plus the charger port. The upper part only hosts the 1.3 megapixel front facing camera, the SIM Card slot and the speakers. The bottom part has some ventilation holes and that’s it.

    Classic Windows desktop

    Classic Windows desktop

    As you’ll see in the videos below the Windows 7 Home Premium seems to run pretty fluid, considering the Atom CPU and the 1GB total amount of RAM. The OS is hosted on a 16 GB SSD drive, so we don’t know how much is left for user files, but considering you’ll be able to slide in a 32 GB microSD HC card in there, I believe there’s enough room to store your own media. Now back on the software side, Viewsonic hasn’t yet finalized the dual boot interface so for now we’ll have to do with the Windows boot screen, but a nicer version is in works.

    Viewsonic ViewPad 10 - side views

    Viewsonic ViewPad 10 - side views

    As for Android, Viewsonic has used version 1.6 (I know, very antiquated, just like the Dell Streak), but maybe things will change in a few week, when it will launch first in Europe and later in US. Because of the Atom CPU the Android runs pretty fast, but you’ll get also the downside of higher power consumption compared to the usual ARM CPUs found in Android tablets. No actual battery life figures were announced by Viewsonic. Price is another matter, one that concerns us all so the 550 EUROS estimated price is not that high, at least compared to the Samsung Galaxy TAB 7 inch slate. We’ll let you know when we have more info on the Viewsonic ViewPad 10.