Agentless Backup is Not a Myth

CES 2011 Asus has outed its Android tablets at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), including one that cannily solves the problem of typing quickly on a touchscreen: it has a drop-down physical Qwerty deck.

That's the Eee Pad Slider, and it's joined by the Eee Pad Transformer and MeMO. Transformer and Slider both sport 10.1in, capacitive touchscreens, feature Nvidia's Tegra 2 chip under the bonnet and will run Android 3.0.

They also boast front- and rear-facing cameras - 1.2Mp and 5Mp, respectively - and mini HDMI portage. The Slider has on-board HSDPA 3G connectivity in addition to the Wi-FI both 10.1in tablets provide.

All of this will be available on a host of tablets from other vendors too, but the Sliders drop-and-tilt keyboard is an interesting shift from the norm that may well see the device replacing a netbook for many users.

The Transformer has a physical keyboard too, but it's just a clip-on accessory not so very different from the Apple iPad's keyboard dock, though the Asus version sits the screen in landscape mode and comes bundled.

Why the strange mix of upper- and lower-case in its name we can't say, but we can say the MeMO is a 7in Android 3.0 tablet that comes with both a capacitive touchscreen and a stylus "for taking handwritten notes".

It's based on Qualcomm's Snapdragon chip.

Asus didn't say when we'll be able to get out mitts on these machines - it's waiting for Google to get Android 3.0, aka Honeycomb, out first.

There's no word yet on pricing, either.

Asus also showed off its Windows 7-based Eee Slate EP121 at CES. ®

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