After being the center of attraction for media, users, Windows enthusiasts and others, Windows 8 will finally be out this year and with this curiosity to know what tablet manufacturing companies will have their names added with it has also increased among all!

So, any idea which companies will be tagged as Windows 8 tablet makers once the new Windows hit the market this year? Well, there are number of popular manufacturers that will get to included in the long list of tablet manufacturing companies, some of these are HP, Dell, Lenovo, Acer and Asus which will come up with their Windows 8 tablet sometimes in October this year.

The other names that came into limelight for working on their own set of Windows 8 tablet to be introduced in the earliest possible part of 2013 happen to be Sony, Toshiba, Samsung, and Lenovo.

Well, as far as Dell is concerned, it has been keeping quiet about its plans for coming up with its tablet. It did launch the Dell Streak 10 tablet based on Android Honeycomb last year but it kind of kissed goodbye to it soon.

There’s a somewhat similar story about HP. It did land up into tablet market but couldn’t taste much success with its HP TouchPad which did gain popularity but it couldn’t last that long.

Interestingly, both the companies got ready to try out their luck in the tablet market once again with Windows 8 tablets.

Here’s a spicy rumor at the end of the year and if this spicy little rumor turns out true, the coming year will bring in some cool presents for you! Now the grape vine has it that Apple is planning to release two new iPad models in a time span lesser than a month.

It is believed that these devices will see the light of the world at iWorld (earlier known as Macworld Expo) on January 26, 2012. This is going to have a special fascination as Apple hasn’t participated in this event since 2009.

If reports from sources are to be believed, these two new models will form a league with the already existing iPad2 and target entry-level, mid-range as well as the high-end segments of the market. The present iPad2 is believed to be directly competing with Amazon’s Kindle Fire, and thus targets the entry-level market. This suggests that there will be a necessity for Apple to lower their tablet price by a real huge amount which seems quite unbelievable as Amazon Kindle Fire is available at $199 where as Apple’s iPad starts at as high a price as $499.

Both of the upcoming models will be offering 9.7 inch screen with an upgraded resolution of 2,048 x 1,536. And to provide with better brightness to the screens, they are going to use dual LED light bars. The most of the display parts will be provided by Sharp whereas at the same time some of the parts will also be supplied by LG Display.

Sources have also informed that these next generation iPads will be powered by quad-core A6 processor manufactured by Samsung. Interestingly, Samsung is also found to be providing the CMOS image sensor for one of these tablets which offers a 5MP camera. And at the same time Sony is said to be providing the sensor for the one with an 8MP lens.

The batteries for the tablets will be provided by two different manufacturers – namely Simplo Technology and Dynapack Internation Technology. The batteries will have a capacity of about 14,000mAh, which is much more than the double of the capacity that the currently available iPad2 comes packed up with.

Google has declared the completion of its CR-48 pilot program that includes 2 Chrome OS based notebooks from Acer and Samsung. During the second half of the annual Google I/O conference that was held in San Francisco yesterday, the “Chromebooks” were unveiled. Notably, both the machines have similar netbook like specifications.

The Chromebook manufactured by Acer will offer a display of 11.6 inch, dual core Intel Atom processor, an HD webcam along with a microphone to cancel noise, integrated dual band Wi-Fi and optional 3G, two USB 2.0 ports, one HDMI output, and a 4-in1 card reader. A continuous usage for up to six hours is ensured by the 2.95 lb device. It will be priced $349.

Samsung’s version will offer a larger display of 12.1 inch; a more extensive battery offering 8.5 hours of life and with all these upgrades, its total weight becomes 3.26lbs. It will also offer HDMI port for Mini-VGA. Samsung is pricing its Chromebook with Wi-Fi connectivity at $429 and for the one with 3G connectivity at $499.

Both the systems could be preordered on June 15 in seven countries that include – the US, the UK, Germany, Spain, Italy, France, and the Netherlands. Google also has a plan to provide a special “Student Package” which will help students to buy the chrome based notebooks by paying just $20 every month. There are possibilities that Google brings out similar plans for enterprise customers also.

Other than the Chromebooks, Google has also teased Chrome OS based nettop and interestingly, it has named it as “Chromebox”. Though not enough details are out, yet it is known that one model is in the developmental stage at Samsung. There is a resemblance between the nettop and Apple’s Mac mini; nevertheless, it is targeted to the businesses and will be offering system admin tools.

There still hangs a dilemma how will Google’s cloud centric OS will do but its web browser has been doing well so far. It has already observed a hefty growth since its launch in September 2008. Right now, Google Chrome is being used actively by 160 million people worldwide compared to 70 million users that it had last year.