Baseline Modbook Pro gets its RAM, storage and screen sensitivity doubled, stays at $3,500

Baseline Modbook Pro gets its RAM, storage and touchscreen sensitivity doubled, stays at $3,500

The first batch of Modbook Pros have yet to make their way to owners, but the base model is already getting a spec bump. The Macbook come tablet will have its RAM boosted from 4GB to 8GB and its solid state drive roughly doubled in capacity to 120GB. As for the Wacom pen digitizer on the slab, a total of 1,024 pressure levels will make it twice as sensitive than previously planned. What's the cause for the sudden volley of upgrades? Turns out the folks at Modbook Inc. managed to get a sweeter deal on parts from manufacturers and had the financial wiggle room to include better hardware. One thing that hasn't changed on the Modbook Pro, however, is its price: the tablet will still withdraw $3,500 from pockets. Those who've already pre-ordered one of the devices will get the upgrades at no additional cost when the slates ship later this month.

Update: Reader ThorntonArt points out in the comments that the Modbook Pro doesn't sport a touch-sensitive screen, but one that's sensitive to pen input. We've clarified the post.

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Baseline Modbook Pro gets its RAM, storage and screen sensitivity doubled, stays at $3,500 originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 08 Nov 2012 13:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Modbook Pro gets priced at $3,500, as pre-orders begin

No one ever said a modded MacBook Pro was gonna be cheap. Last week Modbook announced that it would be going ahead with pre-orders on the Modbook Pro today, but didn't really touch on pricing. As ordering begins, the company's attached a $3,500 starting price tag for the honor of controlling your 13.3-inch Mac with a pen. The Modbook Pro, which is set to start shipping in the middle of next month, runs Mountain Lion and features a 2.5GHz Intel Core i5 processor (upgradable to a 2.9GHz i7) and memory and storage up to 16GB and 480GB, respectively. If you're aching to get your hands on one of these Frankensteinian tablets, you'll have to plunk down a $500 deposit.

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Modbook Pro gets priced at $3,500, as pre-orders begin originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Oct 2012 17:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Modbook Pro to launch with SSD storage, up for pre-order October 3rd

Modbook Pro to launch with SSD storage, up for preorder October 3rd

It wasn't all that long ago that Modbook Inc's CEO, Andreas Haas, made the mac-in-tablet Modbook Pro official, now we're learning that the super-slate will launch with high performance SSD storage. So, as you wield your MacBook Pro come tablet, you'll be free from spinning disks. Great, but what impact will this have on capacity? Well, according to the firm, storage will start at 64GB as standard, with upgrades possible all the way up to a, not-unreasonable, 480GB. Pre-orders go live on October 3rd, along with the all important reveal on price. Regardless of cost, if that void between the iPad and full-fat Windows 8 slates had been irking you, here's your answer.

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Modbook Pro to launch with SSD storage, up for pre-order October 3rd originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 29 Sep 2012 10:23:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Modbook Pro gets official, CEO Andreas Haas talks success in an iPad world

The Modbook Pro gets official, CEO Andrea Haas talks survival in a postiPad world

You'd be forgiven for assuming that the ModBook dream died with release of the first iPad. After all, the first version of the hacked notebook predated Apple's announcement by a couple of years. When the iPad finally hit in 2010, it did a lot to address the desire for a slate device running Apple software. Since then, things have largely remained silent on the Axiotron front. In fact, the last time we heard a significant peep out of the company was back in 2009. Its former CEO Andreas Haas assured us, however, that the real reason for the company's silence is a bit more complicated than the story of yet another product falling victim to the Apple steamroller.

"Axiotron itself was a great company," says Haas. "Back in 2008, I took the company public, everything was really great. There was one little thing that turned out to be a huge problem, which is that the company was largely bank-financed and 10 days after it went public, Lehman Brothers went belly-up and put the whole financial market in a tailspin. After that was mostly spent on trying to somehow restructure the company, and ultimately there was just nothing that could be done about it."

As the newly reborn Modbook Inc. teased via its Facebook page yesterday, however, the name lives on. This week marks the return of the tablet in the form of the 13.3-inch Modbook Pro, a device slated to ship early this fall. Can such a device survive in a world that's been downright flooded by tablets in the years since its predecessor's release? The company clearly feels it can -- that its new product is unique enough to set itself apart in amongst the deluge of slates, calling the new Pro, "the world's most powerful and largest-screen tablet computer." And in a space where hardware and software are relatively neutered, it's understandable how the company might be inclined to make such bold claims about the converted notebook.

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The Modbook Pro gets official, CEO Andreas Haas talks success in an iPad world originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 28 Jun 2012 11:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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