Hardware The Tablet You Want Isn't What You'll Get

It goes without saying that CES will see a lot of tablet launches. However, the tablet you really want is unlikely to be among them. Why? Not through lack of innovation; it's more about economics and materials.

http://www.bit-tech.net/blog/2011/01/10/error-tablet-not-found/

 

Atom no, sandy bridge yes.

Also, haven't people shown dislike to full windows on tablets? Why does MS bother? Unless they are going to do a serious tablet UI for it.

 

The metro UI on WP7 is great, there's even a vid of it working at 1280x720 resolution. Maybe we'll see it in tablets before Win 8.

 

Windows would be great... IF they bothered to set it up right for it. Wasn't one tablet used with Win7 at one point and it failed harder than the Soviet Union?

 

"by bit-tech Staff"

Lol, not wanting to put your name to this flamewar material?

 

I'd rather wait for Android 3 than use a tablet with Win7 shoe-horned onto it.

 

Microsoft is hell-bent on spreading Windows to every device. That is its vision. This is why they are now porting it to ARM processors (which requires new drivers and new versions of Windows applications, as the underlying code is too different and the ARM CPU is not powerful enough to run in emulator or virtual mode, which kind of makes the whole exercise pointless), and why it refuses Windows Mobile 7 to be ported to tablets. It is: one OS to rule them all.

Nice idea. Except that it is only in the small print that you read that applications will not work across all these different versions of Windows; there is only an illusion of uniformity. It is not like Google Android's 'fragments' architecture, in which applications are programmed to display and behave differently depending on the hardware they find themselves on. Rather, it makes more sense to think of Microsoft's ambition as a branding exercise: to get all OS's everywhere to carry the Windows logo and look like Windows and behave like Windows even if under the surface they turn out to be very different beasts. It is like Macdonalds: looks and tastes the same everywhere even though the ingredients are different in each country.

There is a certain logic to that: no surprises. You know exactly what to expect. If you can use Windows on one machine, you can use it on all of them because it is familiar. But other than that it brings no practical benefits. They are still different OS's under the hood. And the same experience is not necessarily useful for very different devices. You do not want a Tablet to behave like a desktop, because it isn't a desktop --and because otherwise you would have bought a desktop.

It will end in tears. Microsoft is a dinosaur. It has evolved to become very successful in its specific ecological niche but it cannot make the transition to the new ecologies. The future belongs to those unassuming small furry rodents called Google Android and Chrome and Apple iOS.

 

I think I will wait until Win 8 to see what that OS is like. Also don't like closed systems so fingers crossed. Agree with Sandy Bridge, but how long will it take to miniaturize for tablets? Everything I have seen of Atom hasn't been that good, I wonder how the new Atom will cope, but I'm not hopeful that it will be more powerful and energy efficient.

Basically this depresses me :'(

 

We saw it happen with netbooks. They didn't take off until a Windows OS was added to the mix, then it went off like a rocket. Apple couldn't enter that market as it just couldn't produce a £200 - £250 item. Linux failed simply because it wasn't Windows. I'm not saying that was right but it was true.

Tablets again aren't selling like hot cakes and that is because it isn't Windows. Yes, the iPad has sold 12 Million or whatever the figure is but in comparison to netbooks, that will be a very small figure.

I've owned an Atom Win7 netbook and I own an iPad. I have to say other than the touchscreen, the Win7 netbook is a better experience and I can do what I want with the netbook. The iPad is far too restrictive for sharing data and media around my home network. This is a basic omission that needs correcting now for iPads as well as a price drop. Andriod to me just looks like a cheap iOS but is the same price as an iPad.

I know Nexxo does tend to be anti-Microsoft rather than pro-Microsoft (not to be taken personally) but his paragraph about Microsoft being brand dominant is correct. That was proved by the death of Linux netbooks.

The Tablet market will only pick up when Microsoft enters the market.

 

The thing that really amuses me with Windows 7 tablet reviews is that almost all of them complain that the buttons are too small and it's difficult to tap certain UI elements, but I've not seen a single site that's realised that you can change the height and width of most buttons including the "red x"... the interface for doing so is even indentical to that in XP...

 

You make an interesting point. Let's pretend to be Joe Schmo for a second. He's either a Mac or a PC. He's very unlikely to be a Droid, let alone use Linux.

If you already have a Google powered handset, maybe a Droid tab makes sense, but for the man on the street - it doesn't.

That said, I'd rather have a Droid than either of the other two. Unless I suddenly sprout a second bank account, in which case I'd probably buy a matching Mac, iPhone and iPad.

 

Wonder if windows tablets will allow you to play deus ex? You know you want to try it

 

i am looking forward to Andriod 3.0 on tablets, and also Blackberry's Playbook, which seems to have a very well made tablet OS. another good choice is Palm's HP's WebOS, it looks to be very suitable on a 10inch screen.

scaled up iOS is silly, it feels like a phone OS with way too limited functionality. (that's coming form an jailbroken iPhone user)

scaled down Windows is also stupid. having windows means people expect to be able to run their usual program on it, and it will disappoint.

 

I still don't see any reason to use a tablet rather than a netbook. Netbooks (especially those new Fusion jobbies) give you the "full experience", don't need to be held in your arm all the time, come with a physical keyboard and the screen is protected when you close it. You can get similar battery life too, and the weight isn't much more than that of a tablet.

The whole tablet thing seems to me to be a fad that was generated entirely by Apple's RDF. No one wanted one until Apple told them it was cool to have one.

 

Joe Schmo isn't a 'mac' or a 'pc', he's just a guy. He doesn't care, he just gets what works. Regular folks are buying Android phones now.

Also, would you STOP referring to Android as Droid? Droid is a line of Motorola phones. Christ almighty.

 

I guess this was written a while ago...because hasn't CES finished? Sadly I think Intel and MS have missed the boat, I can't really see anything beating the iPad 2 when its launched.

 

Well if w7 runs on this tablet, then android certainly will!

 

The iPad is designed to do a few things VERY intuitively. That is it in a nutshell. It isn't for geeks who want a monster computer that will do everything. I spent a lot of time bashing apple and the iPad until I realised that basic fact. Now I intend to pre-order the iPad 2 as soon as it's announced. Why? Because I have a 1-year-old daughter. It will be years before she will be able to use a traditional computer effectively, but all indications are that she would get to grips with the iPad within a matter of days. THAT is why the iPad is successful.

And that is why I would argue that plenty of people wanted something like it long before apple launched it, they just didn't know the precise details of how that would be achieved.

 

After this CES, Mr. Jobs is sitting there in Cupertino laughing his ass off, as noone was able to pull a decent tablet out of their hats.

Let's forget a moment about hating Apple and let's plain and simple look at the facts and devices irregardless of what you think is necessary and what's not. For the majority of people the iPad offers all they want actually.
So now, to get a good chunk of that pie, you need to come with a tablet, that is of a high quality as the iPad, has the same battery-life, a comparable simple to use OS, designed for being used with your fingers instead of a mouse+keyboard and..... you need to offer this thing for less or atleast no more then $500!

Galaxy Tab for example... only 7" and $100 more expenive then the iPad.
The tablets announced by Asus... the Eee Slate EP121 with Win7, CLUV-intel-hardware and poor battery-life for $1000+. The EeePad MeMo will run Android 3.0 and is announced to be sold for $500-700 but it's again only 7".

And the list goes on and on like this.

Let's face it. Either you want a full OS on a powerful notebook, or you want an atleast 10"-tablet with an easy to use and maintain OS and good battery-life. The things shown at CES are all sitting nicely around the sweetspot not hitting it.

On another note: I don't know what happened, but back in 2000 I had a small HP 620 LX Palmtop PC that was running Windows CE, had a keyboard and a resistive touchscreen.
This was a real good device actually and if M$ would've continued and tweaked their Windows CE OS into the direction of the back then popular Palm-devices then they would allready have something decent to offer for a tablet.
And Hardware? Well we had small netbooks (if we call the HP 620 LX that) with keyboard and touchscreen allready, powered by decent non-intel hardware with good battery-life.

So... what happend there, that we don't have the perfect devices in our hands today, which we allready were seeing to develop some 10 years ago?

 

What do I want out of a tablet? Something that when I'm out, I can use as a basic, simple, web-surfing device that can will work as my computer does (so include basics like Flash). But it also needs to have some use when I get to a desk. I want to be able to run multiple things at once, use a proper keyboard and mouse.

So far, and I realise it isn't a tablet, the thing that seems to answer this best is the Motorola ATRIX. But I would be reluctant to buy another Motorola product after the fiasco I've had with getting updates for the Milestone.