Windows tablets

[AlphaWolf]

As for OS, did you happen to notice that this thing actually features a Windows button and a start menu? This interface paradigm is as misplaced here as it was in Windows mobile, and the sooner some touch friendly replacement is standardised on the better. But honestly, Acer just isn't the kind of company that has either the ambition or the pull to make that happen.

Most importantly though, tablets should be inviting and attractive. Most people just wouldn't want this plastic eyesore messing up the feng shui of their homes.

You ever notice all iOS devices have a 'home' button? I'm not sure what your problem is with it having a button. I agree win7 isn't the ideal touch friendly interface, but its certainly got iOS beat on software.

As for being ugly, IT LOOKS THE FUCKING SAME AS EVERY OTHER TABLET. It's a rectangle with an inch of bezel and an LCD screen in the middle.

 

[eastmen]

As for OS, did you happen to notice that this thing actually features a Windows button and a start menu? This interface paradigm is as misplaced here as it was in Windows mobile, and the sooner some touch friendly replacement is standardised on the better. But honestly, Acer just isn't the kind of company that has either the ambition or the pull to make that happen.

You know windows supports icons on the screen just as well (if not better ) than ios . So you can put all the programs you want as short cuts on the screen. I like the windows key , its easy to pull up the start menu quickly


as for looks , it looks good to me.

 

[Florin]

You ever notice all iOS devices have a 'home' button? I'm not sure what your problem is with it having a button. I agree win7 isn't the ideal touch friendly interface, but its certainly got iOS beat on software.

Sure, but the home button brings up an interface which actually utilises your screen real estate. Because, well, it was designed for touch devices. Similarly, while I agree that the Win7 software library is a major boon in theory, almost none of that software was designed with touch input or the tablet form factor in general in mind. Dicking around on a virtual keyboard with a mouse cursor is cute for demonstrations but this isn't the software that people will actually be using on tablets.

As for being ugly, IT LOOKS THE FUCKING SAME AS EVERY OTHER TABLET. It's a rectangle with an inch of bezel and an LCD screen in the middle.

Meh, so you don't understand design. That's alright, neither do Acer and Dell. Or maybe what you really want to say is that it shouldn't matter. But it does, and Apple and Blackberry get it. Heh, even the Samsung tab and the Xoom have this thing beat on looks.

 

[DuckThor Evil]

You ever notice all iOS devices have a 'home' button? I'm not sure what your problem is with it having a button. I agree win7 isn't the ideal touch friendly interface, but its certainly got iOS beat on software.

As for being ugly, IT LOOKS THE FUCKING SAME AS EVERY OTHER TABLET. It's a rectangle with an inch of bezel and an LCD screen in the middle.

I guess Ipad has to worry then
No that thing will go nowhere, as a tablet anyway, looks like somewhat good alternative for a laptop though.

 

[AlphaWolf]

I guess Ipad has to worry then
No that thing will go nowhere, as a tablet anyway, looks like somewhat good alternative for a laptop though.

oh I was never suggesting it's going to challenge the other tablets. I'm merely pointing out limitations in some objections. The start menu is perfectly useable with a touch interface, you can put applications in the quick access if you want, shortcuts on the desktop or quickstart menus. iOS isn't exactly spectacular, it copes with touch interface limitations by reducing user options. QNX looks like a much more functional OS for a touch interface.

I'm sure the target for this thing is a netbook transition device, there are plenty of people who do need windows. It's probably a bit underpowered for any serious uses, battery life a bit too low (4 hours video playback) reader type uses.

 

[eastmen]

I think alot of you guys are looking at past windows tablets and concluding that these are no good.

2011/12 are going to be big years for windows on tablets . We finally have good performance at low prices. The c-50 while not setting benchmarks on fire is a solid performer much better than the atom series with its gpu. Later this year we will see new lower power atoms , 32nm bobcats and win 8 beta . Once that starts happening windows tablets will start to gain alot of market share

the iconia wont outsell the ipad or most of the andriod tablets , but it will sell very well in its own right .

 

[Lazy8s]

Phone processors give just enough extra priority to performance per power over performance per area that they're still the ideal tablet solution when scaled up.

This higher power space from which AMD is descending down toward the phone market will leave its mark of inefficiency on the design when it starts competing directly with phone SoCs for tablet design wins.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

As for being ugly, IT LOOKS THE FUCKING SAME AS EVERY OTHER TABLET. It's a rectangle with an inch of bezel and an LCD screen in the middle.

Oh no, it messes up peoples' feng shui!


Because it's different from the other tablets, it has.. no.. Apple insignia,.. and has data I/O ports, HDMI output and SD card slots, which is bad for a tablet because... iPad doesn't have those.. and iPad is Good, so those things must be Bad..

Plus, there's a windows button! Eeek!

So forget it, you just don't understand design.


^ I'm sorry everyone, it was stronger than me..
_____________________________________________________________________

Phone processors give just enough extra priority to performance per power over performance per area that they're still the ideal tablet solution when scaled up.

Except for the fact that they're only capable of running phone software in a big-sized device.
I want more than that. Symbian^3 is fine for my phone. Android is fine for my other phone.
More than 7" and I want to be able to use serious productivity software, fire up Steam and play those dozens of excellent games I already payed for.
And I do not want to have to download (cr)Apps for every website that doesn't load properly on the device.

This higher power space from which AMD is descending down toward the phone market will leave its mark of inefficiency on the design when it starts competing directly with phone SoCs for tablet design wins.

Unproven. Honestly, that's starting to sound more and more of a byproduct of ARM's (+ all the ARM SoC makers) marketing machine.
Something like "If you say enough times, it'll eventually become true".

<28nm is where both architectures will actually converge in power demands. Time will tell which one gets the top performance numbers.




Anyways, there's plenty of discussion for tablets without windows elsewhere, so could we keep this discussion for the ugly, bad-energy-conveyors, windows-equipped tablets that some of us are interested in?

 

[Laurent06]

Unproven. Honestly, that's starting to sound more and more of a byproduct of ARM's (+ all the ARM SoC makers) marketing machine.
Something like "If you say enough times, it'll eventually become true".

<28nm is where both architectures will actually converge in power demands. Time will tell which one gets the top performance numbers.

Sorry but you are making claims that no hard data prove at this point. What is certain is that currently most "high-perf" ARM SoC are about 1W, while Atom and C-50 are >= 5W.

In fact it's AMD and Intel that are to prove that "If you say enough times, it'll eventually become true" And don't get me wrong, I think they can achieve that, they just not have yet.

 

[Florin]

Except for the fact that they're only capable of running phone software in a big-sized device.
I want more than that. Symbian^3 is fine for my phone. Android is fine for my other phone.
More than 7" and I want to be able to use serious productivity software, fire up Steam and play those dozens of excellent games I already payed for.

What, you have games on Steam that work with a touch interface? How do you plan to actually use that serious productivity software on a tablet?

Hehe, come now. What you're looking for is something other than a tablet. So sure, get an Iconia for the keyboard, or just get another netbook. Better still, pay a little extra and snap up a MacBook Air 11". It is a wonderful general purpose device with a great keyboard, snappy CPU and a pretty decent GPU which runs Windows 7 well and plays quite a few Steam games.

And I do not want to have to download (cr)Apps for every website that doesn't load properly on the device.

You're going to be replacing pretty much all of your apps for a keyboardless device anyway. Anyway, there's no reason why Windows with a decent launcher wouldn't work quite well as a tablet OS, but I demand something better from hardware makers than this clunker. Maybe HP or Toshiba could make something pleasant, but then again they seem to be going with other OS options for now.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Sorry but you are making claims that no hard data prove at this point. What is certain is that currently most "high-perf" ARM SoC are about 1W, while Atom and C-50 are >= 5W.

Oh I'm making no claims at all. My last sentence says it all: we'll know when both architectures are using <=28nm for their low-power versions (as I've heard the top performing Cortex A15s might bring the performance\power consumption ratio down).

What, you have games on Steam that work with a touch interface?

For RTSs or click-based games (broken sword, SCUMM-like games), configuring a dual touch for right-click will give me almost perfect playability.

For any other game, I wouldn't want to use it in tablet mode anyway.
Swiping my fingers to simulate swinging a sword feels ridiculous (I've played Infinity Blade for ~1 hour), rotating the whole tablet to steer a driving simulator is too tiring, playing platform\FPS games with virtual on-screen gamepads is too unconfortable and unprecise. I don't want any of that.


With something like the Iconia, I can plug in gamepads, a keyboard (included) and mouse, connect a 5.1 headset, connect through HDMI to a TV/projector for up to 1080p, Then I can charge up Steam and play spectacular AAA games that I bought for dirt-cheap, the way they were meant to be played (pun unintended), with much better visuals than any Android\iOS game to date.
I can do it all in one device.

How do you plan to actually use that serious productivity software on a tablet?

With keyboard+mouse, the same way as any PC. Without keyboard+mouse, the same way as the half-assed office editions there are for ipads, or with a capacitive stylus input.
Either way, I can do both. I'm not limited to dumbed-down versions of anything. How can you not value that?!

Hehe, come now. What you're looking for is something other than a tablet. So sure, get an Iconia for the keyboard, or just get another netbook. Better still, pay a little extra and snap up a MacBook Air 11". It is a wonderful general purpose device with a great keyboard, snappy CPU and a pretty decent GPU which runs Windows 7 well and plays quite a few Steam games.

For the price of a (decently specced) Macbook Air 11", I can buy:
1- an Acer Iconia
2 - a whole PC with a quad-core Athlon II, 4GB RAM and a HD5850.
3 - a new mid-range Android smartphone, just for the fun of it.

Gee, decisions, decisions...
Anyways, Apple's overpriced gizmos are not for this topic.

You're going to be replacing pretty much all of your apps for a keyboardless device anyway.

I disagree. In fact, for every software I've used during my labor day so far (Mozilla Firefox 4, Chrome 10 and Microsoft Access), I haven't used any that would require a touch-friendlier UI.

Anyway, there's no reason why Windows with a decent launcher wouldn't work quite well as a tablet OS, but I demand something better from hardware makers than this clunker. Maybe HP or Toshiba could make something pleasant, but then again they seem to be going with other OS options for now.

I've seen news with talks of customized start-up UIs for the upcoming Win7 tablets (Oak Trail and C-50).
I bet that "porting" those to any windows tablet (for example, the Iconia) should be a breeze.
Nonetheless, I'd be happy enough with Win7 + widgets + folders + shortcuts.
Although I recognize its value, I'm not an "UI-prettyness-whore" (I love my N8's UI, so there).

 

[Lazy8s]

Actually, I'm questioning the scalability of ATi's GPU here as much as x86. Imageon/Adreno was/is a decent design.

Advances in process technology don't favor one architecture over another. The more efficient one will just raise the bar again.

Yet I wholeheartedly agree that the x86 software ecosystem has plenty of strengths still to leverage against ARM in mobile devices. Hopefully someone will package it into an attractive product platform before the relevance is lessened any more.

 

[swaaye]

My opinion is that tablets are good for reading electronic things comfortably but actually trying to accomplish any forms of input on them is a pain in the ass. Gimme a netbook over one anytime in that case.

And on a related note, the Android software ecosystem sucks compared to any desktop OS. On top of the various bits of annoying nickel-and-dime-you halfway-functional ports-of-GPL-software-now-with-a-crappy-UI and GPL-violations , you also gotta blink at an OS in 2011 that has worse UI performance than a 10 year old Windows XP Celeron box. Not even Honeycomb's stock browser is accelerated. This would have to be one advantage of a Windows tablet (hopefully).

 

[eastmen]

the atom is going to have a hard time keeping up with bobcat.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXXOLnPnS7o&feature=related

Here is the c-50 1ghz dual core vs the atom n550 1.5ghz dual core 4 core hyper threading. The atom is using 4.3 watts vs about 6 watts of the c-50 while using the net.

The atom n550 has a hard time playing 1080p its a slide show n some points while the c-50 runs fine. You can see easily in the birds flying scene. During you tube 1080p 11.5w total system power vs 9 for the atom. Its using more power but its actually playing the video just fine for such a little bit more power.

I really can't wait till the 32nm bobcats hit later this year

 

[metafor]

the atom is going to have a hard time keeping up with bobcat.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXXOLnPnS7o&feature=related

Here is the c-50 1ghz dual core vs the atom n550 1.5ghz dual core 4 core hyper threading. The atom is using 4.3 watts vs about 6 watts of the c-50 while using the net.

The atom n550 has a hard time playing 1080p its a slide show n some points while the c-50 runs fine. You can see easily in the birds flying scene. During you tube 1080p 11.5w total system power vs 9 for the atom. Its using more power but its actually playing the video just fine for such a little bit more power.

I really can't wait till the 32nm bobcats hit later this year

A thing to note is that ARM SoC's today are capable of 1080p high-profile playback flawlessly at under 1W.

 

[eastmen]

A thing to note is that ARM SoC's today are capable of 1080p high-profile playback flawlessly at under 1W.

which one is that ? any video even 480p on my samsung epic kills my battery i'm lucky to get an hour. I doubt the screen eats up that much power.


I'd also love to see any arm today run photoshop or edit videos

 

[idsn6]

I'd also love to see any arm today run photoshop or edit videos

 

[metafor]

which one is that ? any video even 480p on my samsung epic kills my battery i'm lucky to get an hour. I doubt the screen eats up that much power.


I'd also love to see any arm today run photoshop or edit videos

iPad....Adobe even released a photoshop for iPad recently I believe.

I don't have the 1080p battery numbers but:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4266/blackberry-playbook-review/18

720p plays continuously for 13 hours on iPad 2. 9 Hours on Xoom. A 25Wh battery on the iPad 2 indicates a total system power consumption of 1.92W including the display and storage.

MSM8660, OMAP4 and I believe Exynos are all capable of 1080p high-profile, I believe and their peak power is nowhere near 4W; not even close.

 

[Exophase]

the atom is going to have a hard time keeping up with bobcat.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXXOLnPnS7o&feature=related

Here is the c-50 1ghz dual core vs the atom n550 1.5ghz dual core 4 core hyper threading. The atom is using 4.3 watts vs about 6 watts of the c-50 while using the net.

The atom n550 has a hard time playing 1080p its a slide show n some points while the c-50 runs fine. You can see easily in the birds flying scene. During you tube 1080p 11.5w total system power vs 9 for the atom. Its using more power but its actually playing the video just fine for such a little bit more power.

I really can't wait till the 32nm bobcats hit later this year

None of that has anything to do with the CPU though. Lincroft (in Moorestown/Oaktrail) can do 1080p decode on its GMA600. According to Anand this is done by employing PowerVR VXD IP. Some form of hardware video decode/encode is absolutely essential for phone and tablet, Intel wouldn't dream of trying to enter these markets without it.

Likewise Ontario has dedicated video blocks (UVD3) for 1080p, but I hear that C-50 can end up with > 70% CPU utilization while playing Bluray. Not a good sign for power consumption if true. There's also no hardware encode support, while GMA600 has support for 720p.. not good for cameras in mobiles.

 

[eastmen]

still waiting idsn6 . I'm talking about real photo shop not the magic tricks they are doing there and real video editing not vga quality which i've been doing for the last decade or longer on my pcs.


The ipad would die when i import 1080p video from my hf11


metafor where is the 1080p ? Look at the black berry 1080p kocks off almost 3 hours from its battery life. I'd love to see the numbers on the ipad with its huge battery.... oh wait anand says the ipad can't do 1080p