Its cradle doesn't have a keyboard?
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Windows 8 Tablets/Laptops/Laplets Cross Shopping Thread of Most Confusing Launch |OT|
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Its cradle doesn't have a keyboard?
brotkasten
Member
It's just a stand with some extras, I think.
Yeah, that's going to be awesome in classes.
That's kinda silly, especially if the dock doesn't even have an extra battery.
The surface has a huge battery though and will have a similar CPU and smaller screen.
I doubt the surface will suffer in battery life compared to other ivy bridge tablets
I just want it to last ~8 hours of classroom use and cost ~1k.
Shogmaster
Member
They would be rather useless for my needs since none has Wacom and decent res screen while giving me at least 8GB of RAM.
Penguins&PolarBears
Member
The irony about this big comparison table is that it doesn't even include the best hybrid design of all, the Asus Taichi.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DNQc9rgV9A
The Taichi design has all the power and slimness of a Zen ultrabook or MacBook Air with a 1080p multi-purpose touch screen on the back. Asus is always leading the PC industry forward. Ignore all the imitators. Asus is the company that manufactured the MacBook & iBook for Apple, created the Eee netbooks, and popularized the Transformer convertible that everyone is now copying. And now the Taichi represents the next evolution and the competitors already have their copying machines fired up. Sorry if I sound like I work for the company or something, but it's about time somebody said it. Asus is the most innovative hardware manufacturer in the PC industry and you should keep a close eye on what they're doing now because everyone will be copying them in 12-18 months.
BTW, look who has the slimmest and lightest Windows RT tablet. No surprise there. And the discrete graphics options on the Transformer Books, just brilliant.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DNQc9rgV9A
The Taichi design has all the power and slimness of a Zen ultrabook or MacBook Air with a 1080p multi-purpose touch screen on the back. Asus is always leading the PC industry forward. Ignore all the imitators. Asus is the company that manufactured the MacBook & iBook for Apple, created the Eee netbooks, and popularized the Transformer convertible that everyone is now copying. And now the Taichi represents the next evolution and the competitors already have their copying machines fired up. Sorry if I sound like I work for the company or something, but it's about time somebody said it. Asus is the most innovative hardware manufacturer in the PC industry and you should keep a close eye on what they're doing now because everyone will be copying them in 12-18 months.
BTW, look who has the slimmest and lightest Windows RT tablet. No surprise there. And the discrete graphics options on the Transformer Books, just brilliant.
I think this is up for debate; I consider the transformers to be more versatile.
Could happen. The surface pro has a 42 which battery and should do better than ultra books of the same size. I think 8 hours for surfing the web or in office will happen
Shogmaster
Member
Going to sit it out and wait til next year. Got a laptop last year.
Lots of interesting ideas from different companies. I'm hoping the market is still free enough for the products to evolve by incorporating other companies ideas and building on top of it rather than sitting on patents.
Lots of interesting ideas from different companies. I'm hoping the market is still free enough for the products to evolve by incorporating other companies ideas and building on top of it rather than sitting on patents.
Will be really interesting when these devices start hitting reviewers, the Atom devices have a lot of questions to answer on power, and on the i3/5/7s we need to know how hot/loud they get and how long their batteries last.
On the i3/5/7 devices I think heat and fan noise will have a big part to play in figuring out what the best design solution is. That and whether or not the transformer mechanisms are durable enough.
On the i3/5/7 devices I think heat and fan noise will have a big part to play in figuring out what the best design solution is. That and whether or not the transformer mechanisms are durable enough.
Shogmaster
Member
Detachable slate/keyboard form factor w trapped batteries is mature for ARM devices because of their very low TDP, but not quite there for Intel Core devices. You need vents and get very low battery life under load (4 hours ish).
I wouldn't mind such form factor if they made the slate a little bigger (2.5 lbs and a bit thicker) if you get SODIMM slots and swappable battery.
With Intel CPUs, you'll have to settle for Atom for such form factor to get decent battery life, but then with their 32bit architecture, OEMs solder on only 2GB of RAM. And the CPU is still In Order, so sometime it hangs for ages. It's fucking annoying...
I disagree. Right now mobile Atom chips (medfield) are ready. They are in phones and they are not particularly power hunger. In fact I am pretty sure Motorola will announce an intel Android phone in 2 weeks for the US market.
There is another advantage the Atom mobile chip has over the ARM soc, intel's superior fabbing technology.
I see no reason why a medfield intel 10" tablet couldn't be as power efficient as a 10" arm tablet. Intel tablets can dualboot Windows and Android too.
In fact I don't know see why people want to use i5 to run on mobile devices. If you can't run a particular program on 5 watt atom chip, you should slim down your software until it runs; not putting a 20 watt chip in it to brute force the problem. That's so wrong on so many levels.
Intel wants sell more expensive i series chips, so they came up with a "ultrabook" scheme and Microsoft is hilariously buying into it. Going by the ultrabook sales number the general public know whats up.
why ? Tablets with the i5/7 line aren't much thinner than ultrabooks /
The surface pro will be 13.5mm thick . This guy here is 3-18mm
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6194/asus-ux31a-putting-the-ultra-in-ultrabooks
It has a i7 3517u 1.9/3ghz ivy bridge 4 gigs of ram with the hd 4000 and 16 Eus it has a 13.3 inch screen 256 gig ssd and has a 50wh battery (bigger than the surface)
Idle the cpu is around 50c and in gaming it goes up to 90c . But remember your not going to actually be touching the cpu , there will be a heatsink and a fan moving the air out.
In the case of the surface it will be moving air out along a grill built around the screen
They also get 8 hours of idle life almost 7 surfing and about 4.3 hours watching movies.
Those are actually great numbers. The other thing they mention is that this display takes alot of power.
In terms of the tablets we've seen they will all deal with these issues in diffrent ways. I'm convinced that in its class the surface pro will have the best battery life. Its simple why really its coming out 3 months after the other devices and i'm sure ms will be getting top binned parts if not perhaps haswell thats supposed to be 15% faster ipc and have a much faster gpu while using less power at the same clocks as ivy bridge.
It will be interesting to see how it shakes out.
Wiktor
Member
Nice choice of words to avoid the fact that they've copied this design from Lenovo
Anywy, I love what ASUS have been doing. The first Zenbooks were unusable garbage, but each iteration have been huge improvement. And the U500 with GF650M finally looks like Ultrabook for regular users. I just wish they wouldn't slavisly copy Macbook Air shapes.
That said, Taichi seems wasteful. Transformer Books makes much more sense as a hybrid. Heck, even rotating screen tablets seem like better idea than Taichi.
Shogmaster
Member
LOL, have you even tried to use Atom slate for anything useful beyond what you can already do on iPads and Android tablets? It sucks something awful when asked to do anything remotely demanding.
So if you think having a shitty experience while doing something is "ready", power to ya. Go to town. I myself have already gone through that mess and want no part of it.
Atoms can have TDP almost low as a powerful ARM quad core, but that using same GPU (PowerVR SGX) and having to simplify the architecture to a point of being useless like In Order processing and 32 bit RAM config (which means they solder 2GB of RAM on the mobo and tell you to fuck off). No other chips in PC world made you suffer through that since Pentium 3. Pentium fucking 3 dude. Fuck that. Fuck that right up it's ass.
Funky Papa
FUNK-Y-PPA-4
I've been toying around in the IFA with most if not all convertible tablets and they are giving me a somewhat ugly vibe. Cheap plastics and uneven quality materials ahoy, plus shoddy keyboards and terrible (and I mean terrible) latching mechanisms that require way more effort from the user than they really should.
There are some exceptions like the ones from ASUS (both of them are pretty damn solid, even if the release mechanism is a bit crud) and a few others I can't really talk about, but so far they feel low budget-ish. Noticiably above the utter crap that were the first generation of netbooks, but slightly below the earliest ultrabooks. On the plus side, all of them are REALLY snappy, from the RT versions to the x86 ones, Atoms included. Seeing Windows 8 flying on an ARM device is something else.
Also, the U500 is the bomb, yo. Feels and looks like a real fucking winner.
If anybody has questions I'll be glad to answer them to some extent (before somebody claims I'm a bullshitter, mods can check that I've been in Berlin these days by looking at my IP history).
There are some exceptions like the ones from ASUS (both of them are pretty damn solid, even if the release mechanism is a bit crud) and a few others I can't really talk about, but so far they feel low budget-ish. Noticiably above the utter crap that were the first generation of netbooks, but slightly below the earliest ultrabooks. On the plus side, all of them are REALLY snappy, from the RT versions to the x86 ones, Atoms included. Seeing Windows 8 flying on an ARM device is something else.
Also, the U500 is the bomb, yo. Feels and looks like a real fucking winner.
If anybody has questions I'll be glad to answer them to some extent (before somebody claims I'm a bullshitter, mods can check that I've been in Berlin these days by looking at my IP history).
brotkasten
Member
Thanks for the report. Don't forget that those are still pre-production models, so the build quality is not necessarily representative for the consumer versions.
What is the U500?
e: Oh, the Asus Zenbook U500.
http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/47161/asus-zenbook-u500-ultrabook-windows-8
Yeah, that looks nice.
Funky Papa
FUNK-Y-PPA-4
I was told that most units were basically production-ready samples with final materials and I believe it. I mean, Windows 8's launch is around the corner, surely production has already started somewhere.
ASUS's 15-inch ultrabook with optional discrete graphics. Really sweet machine. On the tactile side, HP also had a new 15-inch ENVY ultrabook with a 1080p IPS touch screeen that looked like a million bucks, although being an ENVY I expect something really pricey.
Damon Bennet
Member
did you test out the Sony Vaio Duo 11? If so, what was your impression with that?
Funky Papa
FUNK-Y-PPA-4
I missed that and I still kick myself in the balls for it. The 15-inch Series 9 is my favourite ultrabook and I'd kill for a similar version
Just curious but which of the tablets seemed to have the best build quality... From the total package perspective (both winRT and pro).... If you could list all the ones you saw and your positive/negative impressions on each. I am more than likely going to get a surface anyways but would be curious which other one to be looking at in comparison from the ones shown there.
Specifically wondering if there were any good desktop docks? Seems everybody has a keyboard attachment but have seen almost no desktop docks.
LukasTaves
Member
Did they had any 3d somewhat intensive game running on those atom tablets? I'm really curious about how they are going to perform...
HollovVpo1nt
Banned
Reading some Acer Aspire S7 impressions, man this thing sure looks like high quality.. form Acer..
Funky Papa
FUNK-Y-PPA-4
It felt great, quite probably one of the best ones. It also looks like the most business minded of the group, definitely not a toy.
ASUS and Sony. Oddly enough I didn't like Samsung very much. Still, for those not looking for a tablet-thing nor concerned about the size, HP's Spectre XT TouchSmart Ultrabook is some real hot stuff.
Edit: I asked a couple of companies about cradles and they told me that they had no interest in them at the moment.
Most manufacturers were incredibly skittish about showing anything besides Microsoft apps, but ASUS had some decent looking dungeon crawler (just don't ask me for names) and it ran silky smooth on its Vivo Tab RT.
345triangle
Member
i was really impressed with the build when i used it, but i am completely not sold on touchscreen ultrabooks. sounds like a pretty bad idea all around.
i'm going to wait to see how all of this shakes out before committing! as the OP does a good job of conveying, it's a total clusterfuck. i think what i'll end up wanting is an RT tablet with a proper keyboard, so i'll at least have to see what the bulkier surface cover is like once microsoft lets anyone touch the thing.
LukasTaves
Member
I see, but the Vivo Tab RT is RT... I'm not much worried about that because Ms has been working closely with manufacturers to guarantee WinRT will run great on those... Plus, Epic showed UE3 running on that vivo RT...
What i'm curious is to see if the atom tablets can actually compare to the RT devices in performance, if they perform close enough i'm thinking about getting one due the stylus support...
Did Asus showed this same game on their vivo tab (the non RT version)?
Funky Papa
FUNK-Y-PPA-4
Not that I know of, but it is not like I camped there
Some dude (I think it was some ASUS staffer, but I'm not sure) gave it a brief run while the rest of us hovered around.
Atom's get a bad rap. I used to have a hp311 with a 1.6ghz atom and it was really bad. However that was 3 years ago now .
I have a brazos 1.6 dual core in my media server and it runs windows and alot of programs just fine. I see now reason why a late 2012 atom wouldn't offer similar or better performance.
In a tablet it should be just fine.
LukasTaves
Member
Not that I know of, but it is not like I camped there
Some dude (I think it was some ASUS staffer, but I'm not sure) gave it a brief run while the rest of us hovered around.
Thank you... I guess that they not showing as much about atom performance already says much XD
Even in Asus reveals videos you see a lot more game action time on the Vivo Tab RT than the Atom one... Bummer
Have you tried the HP Envy X2? I watched an 11 minute video of it somewhere and the latching mechanism seemed pretty great. Seemed easy to remove the tablet and inserting it was somehow helped by magnets.
That one seems pretty great, although I'd rather have it without the numpad and the keyboard centered.
I might have to consider getting a 15" notebook (quad-core). Wonder how much battery it will get with the GeForce.
It's probably still lighter than my 13.3" Macbook.
It's nice that on the 13" one the screen can lie completely flat on the surface. That makes the touch screen seem more appealing than the thought of using touch on a regular notebook.
Well according to this video the boot-up time on the atom was better then the RT.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPVct0jAAKs
I know that doesn't directly pertain to overall performance, but at least it bodes well.
Shogmaster
Member
Depends on what you ask your tablet to do. Most people don't ask a tablet to run Photoshop or Painter.
Funky Papa
FUNK-Y-PPA-4
I didn't, but someone I trust toyed with it and according to him it's a fine machine, not unlike most modern HPs. Still, I'm very wary of those "press to eject" designs. The central button SUCKS more often than not. It either requires more force than it should or to depress the button far too much inside the chassis (I'm looking at you, Samsung).
Penguins&PolarBears
Member
The HP Envy X2 looks like quality build and design. Very impressed with the Win8 touchpad gestures as well on the Envy X2. Envy X2 is definitely one of the most impressive Atom tablets I've seen thus far. They are all very similar in that class, but the Envy X2 seemed to be the highest build quality.
This Atom-based machine however would only be a PC I'd consider for my mom or brother, not for me. I'm going to need a Core-based 64-bit machine as my daily driver. That narrows things down to the Asus Taichi or the Transformer Books. If you're a gamer I'd say go for the Transformer Books, if you're more interested in portability I'd say go for the Taichi. Both will be pricey though.
I am not sold on the Surface Pro at all. The lack of a 2nd battery and docking ports plus a shallow keyboard and small touchpad and a small 10" screen takes away from the appeal of the Surface Pro to me. I'm sure the design is cool and build materials great, but I don't personally find Surface Pro very appealing as an ultrabook or laptop replacement. The Transformer Book and Taichi or even the ATIV Pro make for better laptop replacements.
My preliminary tablet recommendations to everyone depending upon what you're looking for:
Low-cost iPad replacement w/ MS Office: Surface RT
iPad replacement w/ legacy app support: HP Envy X2
Gamer/Power-user: Asus Transformer Book
Ultrabook replacement: Asus Taichi
This Atom-based machine however would only be a PC I'd consider for my mom or brother, not for me. I'm going to need a Core-based 64-bit machine as my daily driver. That narrows things down to the Asus Taichi or the Transformer Books. If you're a gamer I'd say go for the Transformer Books, if you're more interested in portability I'd say go for the Taichi. Both will be pricey though.
I am not sold on the Surface Pro at all. The lack of a 2nd battery and docking ports plus a shallow keyboard and small touchpad and a small 10" screen takes away from the appeal of the Surface Pro to me. I'm sure the design is cool and build materials great, but I don't personally find Surface Pro very appealing as an ultrabook or laptop replacement. The Transformer Book and Taichi or even the ATIV Pro make for better laptop replacements.
My preliminary tablet recommendations to everyone depending upon what you're looking for:
Low-cost iPad replacement w/ MS Office: Surface RT
iPad replacement w/ legacy app support: HP Envy X2
Gamer/Power-user: Asus Transformer Book
Ultrabook replacement: Asus Taichi
That is pretty disappointing... I really thought most of the oem's would be coming out with docks.
Really an interesting question.... to me there are only 2 classes. The ipad replacement market (where rt is targeted) and the pro market (where laptops live now).
I don't think there is any question the surface RT is the winner in the ipad replacement space (nokia may have something here but I don't see anybody else competing for launch) but the pro market is very crowded. I was given an ipad for personal use at work and have slowly been coming to the realization that for many things its better than a full pc which is why I am excited for RT. You get all the "ipad advantages" and less of a compromise from a full pc. Getting unreal engine on there is a huge deal imo. I really see winRT as the future of windows, not the pro version. Of course I am putting a lot of faith on them being able to get the major apps moved over. If that does not happen winRT will never gain traction.
I also don't think it can be said enough I think (in terms of support) the surface tablets will be by far the best. Sort of like how the nexus devices are the best android devices (because of that support). It starts with a clean and optimized version of windows and extends to the support through the ms store. That said I think there are better options than the surface pro with the larger screen sizes.
D
Deleted member 81567
Unconfirmed Member
I'm contemplating the Samsung route (with Samsung Ativ S and Samsung Ativ Atom Smart PC) or the Asus/Nokia Route (Nokia WP8 phone with ASUS Vivo Atom.)
Will the Atom be able to do what a standard laptop does? I'm spec-illiterate, so that's why I'm asking.
Will the Atom be able to do what a standard laptop does? I'm spec-illiterate, so that's why I'm asking.
Turns out there might be other devices made by companies no one gives a fuck about.
Here's a Fujitsu tablet with dock: fujitsu stylistic q702
Core i3/i5, 4 GB RAM, Wacom, only 1366x768.
Overpriced: 1100 Euros for tablet, 300 for dock.
They also have a more traditional touchscreen laptop: fujitsu lifebook t902
13.3", HD+, touchscreen, Wacom, i5/i7, HD4000, LTE, starts at 1600 Euros.
EDIT:
Also, some new pictures of the IdeaPad Yoga from IFA: ideapad yoga 13
It's actually one of the form factors I find most interesting. I'd have to hold one to see how acceptable it is to have the keyboard on the back, but at least you get a full, capable notebook with the tablet.
Hope we'll get the full specs and prices soon.
Here's a Fujitsu tablet with dock: fujitsu stylistic q702
Core i3/i5, 4 GB RAM, Wacom, only 1366x768.
Overpriced: 1100 Euros for tablet, 300 for dock.
They also have a more traditional touchscreen laptop: fujitsu lifebook t902
13.3", HD+, touchscreen, Wacom, i5/i7, HD4000, LTE, starts at 1600 Euros.
EDIT:
Also, some new pictures of the IdeaPad Yoga from IFA: ideapad yoga 13
It's actually one of the form factors I find most interesting. I'd have to hold one to see how acceptable it is to have the keyboard on the back, but at least you get a full, capable notebook with the tablet.
Hope we'll get the full specs and prices soon.
Penguins&PolarBears
Member
The Samsung ATIV SmartPC is very junky build quality and parts from what I've seen. It has the S-pen and Samsung note apps which is good, but that's the only major positive thing about the device.
As far as Atom what do you mean by what a standard laptop does? If you mean run all Windows programs then yes it will do that. If you mean is it a good choice for high-end gaming and video editing type tasks then no. For most productivity and web browsing tasks I think the new Atom Clover Trail processors will be good.
The choice between Atom and ARM I think comes down to whether you want legacy apps and how much you care about standby battery life. I expect Atom and ARM will be competitive in Metro app performance and battery usage life. I think where ARM will beat Atom will be in extended standby mode. In other words set your ARM tablet aside for a few days and it will have near 100% battery while updating your apps constantly, but set your Atom-based tablet aside for a few days and it will either be dead or have gone into a hibernation mode where it's been off for the past few days not doing anything.
Jzero
Member
Oh damn RT takes a lot longer.
Shogmaster
Member
Thankfully you won't be cold booting ARM devices too often.
Penguins&PolarBears
Member
I initially was a fan of the Yoga as it has very high quality materials and is attractive, but I have a few issues with it now. First obviously it's thick in tablet mode and it's not the thinnest ultrabook I've ever seen either. Second I don't like where the vents end up when you convert to tablet mode. The vents blow out the side where you might be holding in portrait orientation. They need to develop a smarter ventilation system like Surface Pro. And 3rd I don't like that the keyboard keys will be exposed to either hitting the surface you lay the tablet on or to your hands while holding it as a tablet.
It feels like this design could be refined further to hide the keyboard keys completely when in tablet or presentation mode. The positive side is that when closed the screen is completely protected. I don't think the Yoga is a bad choice, but as a tablet it just seems like it would be too thick and hot to use comfortably.
The Dell XPS Duo 12 isn't a bad all-in-one hybrid design either. This is how I would rate the all-in-one ultrabook hybrids.
Asus Taichi > Dell XPS Duo > Lenovo Yoga
^This is without knowing the details on weight and price.
D
Deleted member 81567
Unconfirmed Member
I see. The Atom might not be that viable then.
Anyone wanna estimate a price for the Asus Transformer or the other Intel core based laplets? The Samsung Pro one is so pricey.
Anyone wanna estimate a price for the Asus Transformer or the other Intel core based laplets? The Samsung Pro one is so pricey.
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