The Sony Vaio Tap 20 has just been revealed at the IFA 2012 conference in Berlin and it’s being called a desktop that can be used as a laptop. It comes with a stand that will allow it to sit up vertically like a desktop, be laid flat or be tilted so that almost any position is covered. It has a built-in battery so that it can be moved around the house like a laptop and at 5.2kgs it is about the right weight for that.

It’s designed around the 10-point multi-touch panel which is a 20” screen running a resolution of 1600 x 900 and the built-in Mobile BRAVIA Engine 2 is going to make on-screen movement much more fluid according to Sony. This touchscreen is of course the centerpiece of the Vaio Tap 20 which will come installed with Windows 8 so will make great use of the many touchscreen features available in Windows 8. Sony is already discussing two applications that will be released with the computer: Family Paint and Fingertapps Organizer. Family Paint seems to be Microsoft Paint with the ability to have two people using it as once and to upload to Facebook or Twitter while Fingertapps Organizer will allow you to keep your family’s agenda up to date with the family friendly calendar.

An interesting feature of the Sony Vaio Tap 20 is that it will allow you to “throw” your pictures, music or movies to a DLNA capable device which means that you can quite easily stream a movie from the Tap 20 to your TV. Sony suggest that it will have much better sound and speakers than most laptops have and S-Force Front Surround 3D is to be included for the “ultimate clarity”. Vaio Tap 20 is going to be available with your choice of i7, i5 or i3 processors and between 4 and 8GB of DDR3L SDRAM. It will have a choice of a 750GB or 1TB hard drive and all the normal connectivity features like Bluetooth, USB 3.0, Memory Stick Duo and SD card reader and WLAN a/b/g/n. This is very similar to most Vaio laptops so anyone who is familiar with them would be right at home with it.

It seems to be creating a lot of buzz across the internet because it is flatter than many touchscreen PCs and its 5.2kg weight will actually allow you to move around the house with it. Sony appear to be investing a lot of resources into the software side of it so that they can add features to the Windows 8 touchscreen features that you will find already installed which begs the question : could Sony be looking to dominate the touchscreen market with this one device ?