Dell has put an end to its much-touted hybrid tablet wait; the 10-inch Inspiron Duo is up for grabs at $549.

Confirming details that had surfaced earlier the hybrid tablet is powered by a dual-core Intel Atom N550 processor and sports 2GB of RAM. The tablet-cum-notebook runs on Windows 7 and sports Broadcom's Crystal HD accelerator to play high quality multi-format HD video playback. The display has a resolution of 1366x768. It's available in red, blue and black color.

The report of the clamshell notepad first surfaced on Tuesday, though it was first spotted in September at the Intel Developer Forum.

The distinguishing feature of the tablet is that when the screen is flipped, out comes a QWERTY keypad, transforming the tablet into a notepad. The metamorphosis is seamless and takes only a few seconds.

With the clamshell device Dell is charting a new category which brings the essence of a tablet and PC on a single platform. However, it leaves one wondering as to whether it can put up a show against iPad and other Android tablets, as it uses Windows 7 for its tablet which hasn't performed well on tablets, as it is too feature-rich for a tablet infrastructure.

Dell is back with its favored partner Microsoft Windows as it takes the onus of integrating the software with hardware away from Dell, considering that it lacks the expertise to integrate both. With Windows created to leverage Intel processor, Dell merely has to assemble the hardware, unlike Android where the onus of integrating the OS with the hardware falls on the OEM.

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