Cisco’s New Business Tablet Sports Android OS

Cisco, the company famous for its cutting edge business technology, has just entered the tablet race with the Cisco Cius.  It was unveiled at a conference in Las Vegas by the CEO of the company and may just be a top contender for the best tablet device of the year—at least for business purposes.

The Android device weighs just 1.15 pounds but sacrifices little in specs.  The screen is only 7 inches on the diagonal (smaller than the iPad’s) but are you really going to miss it?  Probably not.  It sports a front-facing 720P digital camera for crisp video conferencing and a second 5mp rear-facing camera for snapping pictures on the go.  The good news is that the device will run for a solid 8 hours (or so Cisco says) on a single charge—that’s about twice as long as an average netbook!

Though most of the connectivity features rely on WiFi, the device also offers 3G circuitry built-in.   You’ll also get Bluetooth and Micro-USB compatibility but being a Cisco device the bells and whistles aren’t about the hardware.  This portable tablet will be able to run Cisco’s proprietary software and comes bundled with Cisco Quad, Show and Share, and Presence (to name just a few.)

You can expect a few of these puppies to pop up as early as next month but full production and launch won’t happen until early 2011.  No word on price.