The resurrected Modbook MacBook tablet gets a price
Want a 13-inch MacBook Pro modded into a touch-screen slate? It'll only cost you $3,499.
- Author of the award-winning, NY Times-reviewed nonfiction book The Tetris Effect; Longtime consumer technology expert for CBS Mornings
We originally reviewed the Modbook back in 2008, when it was a hand-built mod that took stock 13-inch white polycarbonate MacBooks, deconstructed them, and put them back together as bulky touch-screen tablets. Earlier in 2012, we learned that that original company had folded but the brand name was about to be resurrected by one of the first ModBook tablet's designers as part of a new company, called Modbook Inc.
The new Modbookwas short on details, especially price and configuration options, when we first wrote about it in June. Today, the company has announced that it is taking preorders for the new Modbook Pro, set to ship "mid-November." Before you get too excited, note that the base price is going to be $3,499, and each preorder requires a $500 deposit.
Various upgrades are available on top of the base price, and the company describes them as follows:
Custom configuration options for the Modbook Pro include the choice between a 2.5GHz Intel Core i5 or 2.9GHz Intel Core i7 dual-core processor, increased memory up to 16GB and select solid-state drive options with up to 480GB of internal storage. As the only OS X tablet computer of its kind, the Modbook Pro can be ordered to come preinstalled (via OS X's Boot Camp utility) with Windows 7 as a secondary operating system, or even to boot natively into Windows 7 right out of the box. The dynamic product configurator also allows customers to build out a full desktop setup with up to two standard or Wacom pen-enabled large-screen displays, adding a maximum of 5020 by 1600 pixels (two 2560-by-1600-pixel external displays) to the Modbook Pro's built-in 1280 by 800 pixel screen.
Read our previous coverage of the Modbook Pro here, and take a trip back to the original 2008 Modbook review here.