Samsung TX100: Hands-on with Samsung's sliding tablet

We've trekked for days into the vastness that is Samsung's stand at CES 2011 (it's really more of a warehouse, honest) and stumbled blinking into the light, having had a hands-on with the rather nifty-looking Samsung TX100 -- a Windows 7 tablet with a slide-out keyboard. Click through the photos above to check it out.

In tablet mode, there's a custom skin that allows you to swipe around through various apps and programs, which persists even when you pull out the keyboard from the back of the tablet. We didn't find it to be the fastest UI around, but it certainly seemed workable. Windows 7 isn't an ideal tablet interface, but will be more helpful when you flip the TX100 into laptop mode.

Happily, the keyboard doesn't seem to have made the TX100 too bulky, and it felt slim when we held it. That said, check out the photos and make up your own mind.

It should function reasonably well as a normal laptop too, thanks to USB and HDMI ports. We had a quick rattle around on the keyboard, and found it to be fairly comfortable.

Samsung is claiming the TX100 will last around 9 hours before the battery conks out, which would be impressive if it holds true. As for storage, you're looking at 32 or 64GB SSD options, which is a healthy dose of drive space, we reckon. The model we examined had 2GB of RAM, and we were told was running on an Intel Atom CPU, though anything could change before the TX100 actually goes on sale.

It will cost £599 when it launches in the UK towards the end of March. That's pricier than rival tablets, and not exactly cheap for a laptop, so fingers crossed the TX100 can justify its price when we give it the full review treatment.