I was away at the end of last week, so I didn't see that details on RM's upcoming slate PC had made their way onto their website. Called the RM Slate, it does exactly what you'd expect - a fully functioning PC running Windows, in the style of a pad/tablet/slate device.
You can read more details on Merlin John's website too, but here's the key specifications:
And, very importantly, it's going to sell at £399. Which seems like a great price for a fully specified PC - especially in these days when smaller and lighter seems to more more cost.
I've always been a fan of truly portable PCs, and owned one of the original RM Tablet PCs, which went round the world on a year-long family gap year trip seven years ago. It wasn't designed as a ruggedised PC, but it withstood 12 months of backpacking, with no special protection (and even survived twice when I dropped it in the street). In fact, it was my mainstay device until I destroyed it by cracking the screen under a chair leg (don't ask!).
And the new tablet that RM have produced is the first tablet device that I've really, really wanted since then. To me, it means that I can have the convenience of leisurely web-browsing sitting on the sofa, whilst having a full Windows PC when I'm out and about. This probably makes the perfect student device - a device just as capable for creating information as for consuming it.