Acer Bows New Windows 7 Tablet

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A surprise bit of news has cropped up, and it’s so surprising that it even got me waxing lyrical in the headline (I really only noticed after I put it up that, technically, everything rhymes up there). As it turns out, the folks out at Acer are looking to throw in on the Windows 7 tablet stakes too by putting out a tablet of their own, and it’s packing more than a few surprises.

You’ve already heard here about the Android offerings Acer has in mind, but this is a very new announcement. The new Windows 7 tablet from Acer is going to be packing an AMD processor, and that’s your first surprise of the whole affair. Most tablet PCs stick to Intel or Qualcomm processors, so seeing how AMD iron affects the process is going to be well worth our time.

Further, it’s a hefty 10.1 inch display tablet that measures only 15mm thick, and weighs just over two pounds, so it’s definitely going to be a highly portable device. It’ll also come packing both Wi-Fi and 3G connectivity, a pair of 1.3 megapixel cameras (one in the front and one in the back), and further word suggests a docking station (that pic above certainly helps–it clearly looks like it’s docked in something) to make it more worthwhile to use when you’re not going mobile.

Now here’s where things get sticky. We don’t yet know the screen resolution, the hard drive size–if it’ll even have a hard drive, it might well go solid state–the memory amount or the like. And frankly, what we do know about the device so far is a little unnerving in its own right. The revelation of an AMD processor is weird enough for two, but what’s going to be involved with that docking station? Worst of all, how much will this thing cost?

And we’d better know more soon–they’re planning to put this on shelves February of 2011. They’re clearly playing this one very close to the vest, which leaves me a little unnerved.