Acer ICONIA Tablet PC

Acer today announced a dual-touchscreen Windows 7 tablet dubbed ICONIA. It could be the ultimate envy producing, gesture recognizing, all-point touch tablet devised yet. Does the concept look familiar? It's extremely reminiscent of the Microsoft dual-screen Courier that caused a frenzy last fall.

Microsoft supposedly killed the tablet and then rumors surfaced again this summer that the Courier might come to life after all. Acer's press materials carefully credits Intel for help in developing. But note that the device runs Windows 7. Today Acer also announced two Android tablets, 7-inch and 10.1-inch, and a 4.8-inch screen Android smartphone (to do battle with the Dell 5-inch Streak).


But the ICONIA is far-and-away the coolest device of Acer's massive new product line. Instead of a start button, it features the "Acer Ring" which will appear "by placing five fingers on the screen and making a grab gesture." From the Ring you can start applications or launch a virtual keyboard among other tasks.

The "touchbook" comes equipped with a bunch of Acer developed applications including the TouchBrowser, TouchPhoto, TouchMusic, TouchVideo each enhanced with the gesture library. Likewise it includes the apps SocialJogger, My Journal and Scrapbook.


More apps will almost certainly come because Acer also today launched its own apps store, alive, and its own media streaming/synching service, Clear.fi.


Acer didn't mention the price or release date, except to confirm that it too will be available by Q1 2011. I'll update this post when I confirm that information.


Here are the full hardware specs on the ICONIA from Acer. I'm glad I haven't bought a tablet yet. Can't wait to read the reviews on this puppy to see if it performs as great as it looks.


Acer ICONIAC Specs