AT&T gets exclusive on Samsung ATIV Smart PC

Computerworld - AT&T will sell two Samsung tablets starting Friday: the Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 for $499.99 and the ATIV Smart PC for $799.99.

Both are eligible for a $100 discount when purchased with any Samsung Galaxy smartphone on a two-year contract.

The 11.6-in. ATIV tablet from Samsung will sell for $799.

The 11.6-in. ATIV, available exclusively at AT&T, runs Windows 8 and can be upgraded to Windows 8 Pro. As a result, it runs existing software and apps that run on Windows 7, Vista and XP, among others. A trial version of Office 2010 is also provided.

The ATIV has 64GB of storage, a microSD card slot and offers LTE network capabilities. The Intel Atom dual core processor is clocked at 1.5GHz.

The ATIV is distinguished by its detachable keyboard dock, so that a user can switch between a clamshell laptop and a tablet.

The Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 has a 10.1-in display, runs Android 4.0 and supports LTE.

Wireless access will cost $10 a month for each tablet under the AT&T Mobile Share plans, which require purchasing a monthly allotment of gigabytes of data that can be shared with up to nine other devices.

Samsung announced the ATIV in August, along with other tablets and a smartphone using the ATIV name but didn't divulge pricing.

The $800 price tag for the ATIV Smart PC is considered a premium for a tablet by most analysts, especially when some standalone tablets are going for $200 to $329 with much less storage and no detachable keyboard. Microsoft has defended the higher price partly because of the interoperability of Windows 8 with previous versions of Windows.

Matt Hamblen covers mobile and wireless, smartphones and other handhelds, and wireless networking for Computerworld. Follow Matt on Twitter at  @matthamblen or subscribe to Matt's RSS feed. His email address is mhamblen@computerworld.com.

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