Gadgetory

I'm Dan Ackerman and we are here taking a look at the Dell XPS 12 this is a brand new Windows 8 laptop one of the first laptops built specifically for Windows 8 and like a lot of those other early Windows 8 laptops it is what we call a convertible which means that the screen will either twist or rotate or flip in some way to turn it from a clamshell laptop into a tablet in this particular case it goes like this you pop the screen out on the back it's hinged here on the side and you flip it all the way around like this and when you do that it's actually pointing out from the back of the lid as you can see the auto rotate is still a little wonky it's something we've seen in a couple of Windows 8 systems but then you can fold it all the way down like this and you have got a slate style tablet that will work either in portrait mode or in regular horizontal mode and again not getting a lot of auto rotate love right here now if this looks familiar to you that's because we actually have seen a design like this once before also from Dell that was about two years ago in something called the dell inspiron duo which was basically a bigger thicker chunkier heavier version of this that had the same kind of hinged in the middle almost ferris-wheel style rotating screen that was a clever idea at the time but because it had an Intel Atom processor it was really underpowered and it just didn't come together and I don't think Dell sold it for a particularly long time so please see this comeback Dell was actually originally gonna call this a duo at the last minute they change the name and just called it an XPS 12 because it has a 12 inch screen you can get a fairly high-end version like we have with a core i7 and a 256 gig SSD that's a little bit expensive that's about 16 99 or you can get a much more entry-level version for I think 1199 which is a Core i5 and a 128 gig SSD which does seem a lot more reasonable because for what you're gonna do with this web-surfing often stocks maybe some social media maybe watch some movies online you're not really gonna need the core i7 you might as well get the less expensive version which at least seems understandable I'm not really sure as clever as the rotating screen is if anyone really gonna want to spend 1699 on that as far as the first generation of Windows 8 laptop / tablet / hybrid / convertible systems goes this is one of my favorite ways to do it because it doesn't really compromise that traditional clamshell laptop experience you've got a nice backlit keyboard you've got a big touchpad over here and at the same time you also get besides the tablet view which is you know marginally useful depending on what you're doing I really like the ability to flip the screen backwards to show somebody on the other side of your computer what you're working on are really great for sharing in meetings for example I'm Dan Ackerman and that is the Dell XPS 12