Apple's upcoming big event is getting a lot of obvious hype; then again, any event hosted by the company tends to be that way. But the big deal this time around is that Apple is apparently going to unveil a brand new device that's been called the iSlate.

Of course this is not a shocker as any net junkie will know a little bit about it. This has been a long time coming and rumours have been out by the droves. Nothing's been officially confirmed just yet as Apple loves the whole cloak and dagger routine.

But we know that this tablet is on the menu for sure; we just don't know exactly what it's going to be capable of or what it'll look like.

Speculation has it that this the new device is going to be of the Tablet PC variety, in case you're still in the dark. This is the new trend of Internet computing as companies are eliminating the keyboard altogether. It's the touchscreen generation people and Apple has the ball in their court at the moment.

The author is a tech afficianado who writes on technology.

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The iSlate is 'slated' to be the iPhone on steroids. If you're a fan of Apple's handset, this one could make you a fanatic. A couple of rumours are talking about the device running on an iPhone 4.0 OS which was only recently announced for the upcoming next-gen iPhone that's been dubbed the iPhone 4G in certain circles. It's also possible that the 4G may also make its presence felt at this event. The heat is reaching boiling point.

We may not know what it looks like and will have to rely on those creative individuals to show us a few mock-ups only to make us salivate a little more. However a while back a leaked image (http://www.phonearena.com/htmls/Apple-iSlate-specifications-revealed-article-a_8530.html) of a spec sheet was out, which just happened to showcase a list of the iSlate's specs.

From that leaked image, we can presume that the device will feature quite a bit on the hardware front like a 2.26GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor with 3MB L2 cache memory, a 120 Gig hard disk and about 8GB DDR3 RAM (Wow!). This is not going to be a slow device. Of course there's a lot more.

With regard to connectivity it will be loaded to the hilt with options like Wi-Fi with 802.11 draft N specifications which means a wider range for those with large houses. It's also shown that the iSlate will incorporate Bluetooth 2.1 with EDR, thank goodness! It'll be better than the iPhone. Well the older models at least pre-update. It'll also have a camera on board for web chatting and it might, just might, have a built-in projector (?). This I find a little hard to believe but with Apple you just never know.

The OS they've mentioned is called Mac OS X Clouded Leopard 10.7. Rumours are also talking about the display featuring multi-touch functionality which should make web browsing and viewing hi-resolution photos really comfortable. The display itself is said to be 7.1-inches and of the OLED variety which means that we should be able to expect a pretty decent battery life.

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Will the iSlate be in some way tied to an iTunes account for downloading content if it's running on an iPhone OS? I hope not and logically it seems that would be unbelievably ridiculous because it's supposed to be a laptop with full Internet connectivity. All you'll need is VLC (a media player) for your videos and you're good to go, I don't mind using iTunes for music though.

Irrespective of what we think though, Apple is definitely going to surprise us. They've done it before with the iPhone and MacBook Air which to some, surpassed expectations. Personally, my iPhone 3G is growing on me, but the fact that one has to Jailbreak and unlock it to see how truly wonderful it is, is quite disheartening.

The iSlate hasn't got a price attached to it yet, however, it's estimated to be somewhere in the vicinity of US $700 which works out to about Rs 32,353 (assuming Rs 46 to a US dollar). That's just a literal conversion and don't expect it to hit Indian shelves for that price. Can you imagine if it was priced less than the iPhone? Wouldn't that be something

The countdown to Apple's big unveiling is ticking down to its last few minutes; I'm excited, what about you?

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