I like this in principle. You are right that the "working part" of a tablet could be a bit lighter with this approach.
However, one of the great benefits of tablets is how easy they are to start working on: with my iPad, if it's in my briefcase and I have to add a calendar item, I can pick it up, start it, add a calendar item, and put it back in mere seconds.
Having it attached to a keyboard and having to mess with the wire would slow this process down a bit, I would think. Also, I can't pick up the whole package and run to a meeting quite as easily.
I agree that it will be less mobile than a conventional tablet, but some people will be glad to lose a bit of mobility for desktop horse power and price
I don't like the wired approach. It reminds me of our first VCR as a kid that had a wired remote. lol
I'm sure others are doing it too but I think that Asus has it right with the Transformer line. You have a tablet that is self contained. But you can easily attach the keyboard which then turns it into a laptop. The keyboard has some additional I/O and another battery. I wonder if it would be possible to take that one step further and have additional cpu/gpu power in the keyboard so that as a laptop it is even more powerful.
>"take that one step further and have additional cpu/gpu power in the keyboard"
that's an even better idea, but OS wise will probably cause problems. The original idea is simple enough to implement 5 years ago, I can actually take my old x61t and probably hack it myself...
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 22.9 ms ] threadHowever, one of the great benefits of tablets is how easy they are to start working on: with my iPad, if it's in my briefcase and I have to add a calendar item, I can pick it up, start it, add a calendar item, and put it back in mere seconds.
Having it attached to a keyboard and having to mess with the wire would slow this process down a bit, I would think. Also, I can't pick up the whole package and run to a meeting quite as easily.
I'm sure others are doing it too but I think that Asus has it right with the Transformer line. You have a tablet that is self contained. But you can easily attach the keyboard which then turns it into a laptop. The keyboard has some additional I/O and another battery. I wonder if it would be possible to take that one step further and have additional cpu/gpu power in the keyboard so that as a laptop it is even more powerful.
that's an even better idea, but OS wise will probably cause problems. The original idea is simple enough to implement 5 years ago, I can actually take my old x61t and probably hack it myself...