I'm curious about these alternatives, because I find alot of the android/apple arrangements to be soooo limiting, and slows me down in the name of "slickness." They're way way too consumer-oriented...woe is me if somebody hasn't slapped together "an app for that." $899 starting price, though...boy...you really have to change people's mindsets wrt how a tablet fits into their life if you're going to drive high volumes with that kind of price tag. They've done a lousy job of that...not that it'd be an easy thing to do.
way overpriced .. was thinking about getting pro version until price come out. has to run Garmin basecamp to support GPS on the move. this means some type of Win 7 netbook instead of Surface.
yup... been checking out Asus netbooks with Win 7 @ $250, but screen is not highest resolution available yet ... don't mind paying a bit extra for a nicer model. but not 3x-4x $$$. don't want Win 8 until all the gotcha's come out. none of the tablets will run basecamp and/or basic app's needed to function as main PC. one can boot Linux on android tablet, but Linux will not support Garmin basecamp. need a real keyboard to be functional as main PC for me. wifi linked to iphone with tethering should do it.
Right now it has potential but there is certainly a learning curve. The display seems fine and it ismuch faster than surface , but time will tell.
for watching movies, just did a 30 mins on the exo bike with it watching a documentary on the dam busters. My legs are going to be sore tomorrow.
Well, those that have one... the newness must have rubbed off by now. What are your thoughts? Regrets? Any update on the Pro version?
I think the Atom processor has a chance to make a huge difference here. (Atom is the x86 mobile processor.) This would run the full Windows 8 at very near the same power envelope as the ARM CPU. Intel is about to relase the next generation ATOM, I suspect we'll see some new products soon after that have the potential to light a fire under the Win 8 tablet market. Intel will make or break this depending upon their pricing model. If they try to prevent ATOM from taking sales from their more lucrative processors, they'll kill Win 8 tablets on that platform. If they can price ATOM similar to the ARM CPU packages, then good things could happen. Edit: if Surface was available today with ATOM, and priced about the same as Surface RT, I'd own one. Don't know if MS will ever do that though as it would kill the Windows RT product.
I'm not sure about that, netbook sales were pretty good for 2-3 years and they didn't put a huge dent into laptops.
I never used a netbook so I can't speak with any authority on the subject. That doesn't stop me from making some wild assed assumptions though. Netbooks came out when Windows XP was king of the hill. Atom based netbooks suffered huge performance problems because the CPU performance was not up to the task. Combine that with tiny screens and poor quality hardware in general, I suspect most people found them lacking. Windows 8 and especially RT don't require the same amount of CPU horsepower that XP needed. That along with better Atom processors today and the upcoming Atom have changed the equation.
But those atoms are still light years behind even a core 3, and the pro uses a core 5. An atom Windows 8 tablet could be great though in that it would be roughly the same price as an iPad but you can run all your x86 apps on it. While they might not run great all your basic tablet apps would be fine and it would give you the option of at least being able to do some work when it's just the tablet. My thought is I'm at an airport, get an e-mail from a client that X needs updated or changed, I jump into dreamweaver and fix it. A 10" tablet would be a lot easier to carry than my current 15" laptop. Adobe needs to expand their licenses to 3 computers though
I agree completely, The advantage with Atom over ARM, as you already stated, compatability with all x86 software albiet at a performance penalty for some. Atom over Core i3/i5/i7 is much improved battery life, less heat from the processor removing the need for fans which means lighter and thinner devices and contributing again to better battery life. For many people that may be the holy grail. Adobe, don't mention that name again! As 2013 rolled around, FrameMaker (all recent versions) decided licenses had expired. Being a holiday weekend, Adobe couldn't be reached for a solution. On Jan 2nd, they released a 'temporary' fix. didn't work on server operating systems, meaning no help for my 60 users that use FrameMaker in our Citrix environment. Finally got a working patch from them and all is well. FAA was breathing down my client's neck for a documentation edit that they coudn't make because FrameMaker wouldn't run.
Well i picked up a "pro" last night and its pretty cool. Learning a new system is going to be interesting. I bought it to work in the field, hopefully the screen will be bright enough outside if I build a little enclosure for it. I had to have a tablet with a good stylus so the ipads didn't cut it. My old convertible laptop was a bit clunky in the field so i'm hopeful that this will streamline things for me. Anybody have accessory, windows 8 tutorials or app suggestions?
atom processors suck total ass. worst cpu architecture, ever. the only thing they have is x86 compatibility, but they are soooo slow. ARM is the only way to go. I am excited about a full blown *nix distro being ported to tablets, that could be a killer product.
good thing neither of the surface tablets have atom processors then, eh? the rt is arm, the pro is i5. what will be interesting is if microsoft sticks with surface, and incorporates the new i5 processors with low power idle later this year... netbooks were actually pretty huge- they got up to ~20% of the notebook market.
Yeah, it is. I had a first gen netbook, and it was decent, but android tablets kill it. Having had a transformer 300 for about a year now, there's no way i could handle the constant search for a power source to keep the battery charged on a 'traditional' laptop any more. Hell, I only worry about plugging mine in every couple of days. from what I've read/researched, there's just no way any implementation of x86 will ever be able to touch arm for power consumption. Don't know much about the next gen i5 chip although everything I've read shows orders of magnitude differences. I can't talk about windows RT, haven't touched one. I'd use android or linux, in any case. debian has been ported to ARM. jaz
there are atom based windows 8 tablets that are already competitive with the tegra 3 based surface rt overall, and are also competitive at the cpu level when you isolate it, except at idle. and intel is supposed to be improving idle performance (on both core and atom chips, iirc) later this year. http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/atom-z2760-power-consumption-arm,3387.html
