Australian company Evolve III announced an Intel Atom-powered tablet that can be booted into Windows 7, Android, or the MeeGo version of Linux. The “Maestro” offers a capacitive multitouch screen, 2GB of DDR3 RAM, 32GB or 64GB of SSD (solid state disk) storage, and an Intel Atom N475 processor that may later be replaced by the Z670 (“Oak Trail”), according to the company.

Evolve III isn't widely known, but news of its Maestro tablet has been pinging around the blogosphere as a result of a showing at Intel's Consumer Electronics Show (CES) booth earlier this month. According to various reports and a video (embedded later in this story) released by the company, the device will be released during the second quarter of this year in a triple-boot configuration.

Intel has been touting its Atom 6xx processor, in both "Moorestown" and "Oak Trail" versions, as the basis of at least 35 different tablets in 2011. The Atom is different from ARM and MIPS processors, Intel CEO Paul Otellini noted in a conference call promoting the CPU last week, in that it can run Windows 7, the Google-backed Android, and MeeGo, jointly developed by Intel and Nokia.

It's triple-boot, then, that got Intel reps talking about the Maestro, which is otherwise a typical Atom-powered Windows 7 tablet. Evolve III doesn't itself mentions only Windows 7 on its site, as far as we could find, but it does provide a Flash-based demo of its user interface for MeeGo, from which we captured the two screens below.

Screens from a Flash-based mockup of the Maestro's MeeGo interface
(Click either to enlarge)

According to Evolve III's product page for the Maestro, the device will have a capacitive touchscreen (size unspecified, but likely ten-inch), a 1.83GHz Atom N475 processor, and 32GB or 64GB of SSD storage. Also cited are a 1.3 megapixel camera, a mini-VGA output, and a microSD slot.

Evolve III's Maestro (left) and the earlier Tega v2 (right)
(Click either to enlarge)

We'd guess the Maestro's actual specifications are still in a state of flux, however. From the image (above left) provided by the company, the tablet looks identical to the Tega v2 (above right). The Tega v2 also hails from Australia and is said to boot either Windows 7 or Android, but the dimensions (10.82 x 6.7 x 0.55 inches) cited by Evolve III for the Maestro don't match up.

Further, the video (below) shot at CES appears to show a different device. As for the device's CPU, Intel reps reportedly stated that when it ships, the Maestro will be upgraded to the Z670 ("Oak Trail") Atom, which has been touted as slashing the power consumption of x86 CPUs.

Evolve III's Maestro running MeeGo
Evolve III YouTube page
(click to play)

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