Gigabyte M912V Shrinks the Tablet PC

Taiwan's Gigabyte has officially announced its M912V, shrinking the swivel-screened tablet PC into a oh-go-hip tiny form factor.

Taiwan’s Gigabyte has officially announced its M912V tablet PC, which takes the whole idea of a touchscreen-based, swivel-display notebook computer and crams it into a form factor more closely associated with a sub-notebook or the new flavor of Atom-powered “netbook” PCs.

The M912V sports an 8.9-inch, 1,280 by 768-pixel LCD touchscreen display (with LED backlighting) that can rotate 180 degrees to transform from a traditional notebook form factor to a tablet PC. The M912V packs an 1.6 GHz Intel Atom processor and a 2.5-inch SATA hard disk drive offering up to 250 GB of storage. The unit also offers 1 GB of RAM, a 1.3 megapixel Web cam, integrated stereo speakers, Bluetooth and 802.11b/g Wi-Fi wireless connectivity, and an ExpressCard slot, and an option for HSDPA mobile broadband connectivity.

Gigabyte plans to ship the M912V with a customer’s choice of Windows XP, WIndows Vista, or an unspecified flavor of Linux. Gigabyte also hasn’t specified a ship date or price point for the M912V; we imagine it might debut in Taiwan and Asian markets before reaching European and (maybe) North American shores.