France's eviGroup SmartPaddle surrenders to lower prices

You may remember eviGroup's range of SmartPaddle Windows 7 tablets, the latest arriving back in March with the heavy-duty price of $1,800. Now it's produced a budget-model and rechristened the hefty original as the SmartPaddle Pro. The new SmartPaddle (keep up) has a 10.2-inch 1024 x 600 capacitive multitouch screen, 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera, 2GB RAM, 32GB SSD and a 1.66GHz Intel Atom N455 that runs Windows 7. Battery life is rated for five hours and the only build-to-order option you have is to squeeze a 120GB HDD in there too -- but they don't recommend you do. The company has stopped talking up its webcam-based gesture controls (probably for the best) and has made the old-school move of including a physical scroll-wheel along one side of the device. It's available to order now, at the comparably barganacious price of €660 ($900).

[Thanks, Nicolas]