Dell Inspiron Duo Design

The Dell Inspiron Duo design is a notebook that can flip into a tablet. If you want a tablet and a notebook together, this is your only option on the market. The Duo will be coming out in black, with red and blue to follow.

The notebook part performs like any other notebook. Possibly because of the tablet screen, the notebook screen does not have quite the graphic quality I am used to for a notebook. The graphics look fine straight on at direct angles, but anything away from these angles causes the graphics to begin to fade out. The Duo comes with very few ports, only two USB ports and a headphone jack. These ports are designed more like a tablet. Yet it weighs three pounds, and does not fit easily into your hand. The notebook is thin at just over one inch thick. A stand to prop the Duo up during tablet use is a big help. You can use the base of the notebook to hold the tablet, but you will have to manually adjust the touchscreen into focus and your touchscreen can suddenly collapse on you.

Switching to the notebook occurs by flipping the screen backwards to the tablet screen. You then fold the tablet down on top of the laptop and can begin to use the touchscreen. You do not need to wait very long for it to transition. Then you have a variety of programs to use, most using Microsoft Windows 7 Premium, rare for notebooks. The programs are easy to use for the most part. The touchscreen easily picks up fingerprints but still works well despite repeated use.

The screen of the free Dell Inspiron Duo seems to be well built. The mechanism that flips the screen is solid and should hold up to multiple uses. The part that flips to the touchscreen is covered with a textured coating to make the cover appear like any other notebook cover and to resist damage. However, this probably adds to the reduced visual experience. One has to wonder over time, how much damage the touchscreen will take on over time. It seems that with this machine you would need to be especially careful with the cover to your system.

The free Dell Duo comes with the Dual Core Atom N550 processor chip, Broadcom Crystal HD accelerator and 2 GB of RAM. As notebooks go, this one is well powered for the job. The keyboard for the notebook is easy to use and the touchpad is easy to manipulate. Perhaps due to the dual system, programs seem to take longer to come up then on other notebooks. Once up, they perform well. Battery life is limited with the Duo at this time. The battery recharge only lasts for three hours and needs to be recharged. It seems strange that the battery does not last longer.