After Acer, Dell also manages to offer a $500 Latitude 10 Essentials Windows 8 tablet

It seems that half a grand is the magic number above which any high-end slate is considered expensive, set forth by Apple's iPad franchise that starts at this price.

How do you achieve that price point with a tablet that runs full-blown Windows 8, though? Dell has managed to do it, and announced it will be selling a $499 Latitude 10 essentials Win 8 slate.

The Essentials version gets down low to the magical price by getting rid of Wacom's active digitizer, which is present on the more expensive 10" Latitude tablet, as well as introducing a sealed battery, instead of a swappable one.

The 64 GB one can be had for $579 as we speak, whereas the more affordable $499 version will sport 32 gigs, and should be shipping this quarter. This actually puts the Dell Latitude 10 Essentials at the same price point as the Acer Iconia Tab W510, which is also powered by an Atom processor, has 2 GB of RAM, and 32 GB of internal memory, as well as the same 10" 1366x768 screen as the Dell.

source: Dell