CES ushers in the 2011 Tablet War

Lenovo has fired the first shot of what some are calling the Tablet War as its IdeaPad Slate has just entered a marketplace that could see 50 million units sold over this coming year.

With a 10.1-inch, true 1080p HD display, the IdeaPad uses Windows 7 OS, rather than Android’s Honeycomb, used by tablets from the likes of Toshiba.

Lenovo has also streamlined the user interface so that the apps are separated into “work” and “play” tabbed areas.

This first-gen IdeaPad Slate boasts a 32-GB solid-state drive (expandable through a side-memory card slot), along with 2 GB of RAM and built-in 3G connectivity.