Very impressive hardware design from Asus: full-HD display and dockable GPU too, remaining impressively thin and all from 11". Although I can see it seriously struggling with heat (noise?), battery life and price.
Will be very interesting to see if they have been able to manage these issues to make it a useable option in tablet-mode.
It's pretty much what I would design as the perfect device-- in theory.
This is exactly it. "In theory". Prior to iPad, then before MacBook air... This is exactly the device I wanted apple to make (And in many ways I still do).
Sadly, when you wrap your head around things like battery, heat, and the like. You realize it might not be the dream machine you're looking for. For Asus' and MS (and my) sake I'm hoping this thing kicks ass. If it does I know I'll be considering it.
The number one requirement for my tablet computer is that it does not get warm.
It is often in my lap, sometimes touching the part of my body that produces testosterone and that seemed maybe not to, uh, work as reliably back when I used to rest a full-powered notebook computer against it for protracted lengths of time.
(I have never noticed any part of my iPad 2 to be warmer than body temperature. According to at least one blogger, iPad 3 is definitely a different story.)
Battery life on this is going to be terrible and so is price. The article was probably right that it will land in the 2-4 hour range. For ultrabook type specs you'll be paying ultrabook prices. This won't likely be a $500 machine, more like $800-1000. So, $500 iPad3 or $800 for Windows transformer tablet?
Sure it will sell, but not in any kind of volume like the iPad.
I'm sure Apple could have build this, or still could, but they likely didn't because they coudln't hit mainstream pricing. Nobody has the volume or the operational excellence to compete with Apple on price, quality, or volume without sacrificing profit margins.
So, $500 iPad3 or $800 for Windows transformer tablet?
Full keyboard, proper general purpose OS, running a fairly powerful CPU and GPU and offering all your standard set of I/O ports. This is not an iPad competitor, but a Macbook Air competitor, that can also be used as a tablet in a pinch.
I adopt the "works for me" definition which, in the end, is the one I should use to select hardware for my use. Of course, you should probably not use the "works for rbanffy" definition for your own hardware acquisitions.
Most of my apps are designed to run on Linux. My IDE is Emacs and my system management tool is a shell. With that in mind, anything that's not Unix-like negatively impacts productivity. I have used Cygwin on Windows but, while it goes great lengths to make Windows a comfortable environment, in the end it's just not worth the effort if you can just run the real thing on your machine. Windows also takes ages to set up with software downloaded from just about everywhere. With Linux, I issue an "apt-get install" and sit back while the environment gets assembled. On a Mac, I have to install the xcode command-line tooling, ports and everything from that point on is completely automated. On Windows I don't even want to think the steps I'd need to take and the buttons I'd need to click before being able to just work.
Then it is your definition that is debatable (and self-centric). By the same reasoning Linux is not general-purpose because it does not run Visual Studio.
OSX, Linux and Windows are equally general-purpose by all reasonable definitions.
The only useful definition is a self-centric one because you'll use what you buy. I have no use for a machine that runs Visual Studio or Office, therefore, my criteria for selecting a computer will be very different from someone who needs to run both programs. For someone who wants to run games, a Windows PC with an ATI graphics card would be a good choice. For someone who wants to run Emacs and develop web applications, it's simply not the best one.
No, but it will run most of the apps that I run on OS X, or apps of equivalent functionality, so who cares. I bought my MBA because it offered the best hardware for my needs at the given price point, not because I'm a slave to OS X.
iPads can use Apple's wireless keyboards
Sure I can get a keyboard for the iPad, but I still can't (easily) run most of the apps I need to get work done.
And as an aside, I'd be fascinated to hear your argument as to how Windows is less general purpose than OS X
> I'd be fascinated to hear your argument as to how Windows is less general purpose than OS X
For me, at least, it's a pain to develop software on Windows. If I did Java development, it'd be relatively painless, but having to rely on Cygwin to have an environment that approximates the servers that will actually run my code is very suboptimal.
Don't think I'm a slave to OSX - I'm not, but I'd have a very hard time being productive in an environment that's completely alien to the software I write. Actually, for work, I prefer Linux, but a Mac is fine. And I can play with Xcode and iOS development on it.
It depends on what you intend to run. If you want to run either Visual Studio or Xcode, they are completely different machines. Both machines will run Office and a browser if that's your thing.
If you define the market narrowly enough, you could argue that the Honda Civic is not in competition with the Toyota Corolla, but you're just creating a self-serving definition at that point.
The vast majority of consumers will never install or run either Visual Studio or Xcode. To most consumers, Windows laptops are in direct competition with Apple laptops, because they are both general purpose computing devices that will do what the consumer needs.
Are you saying that Windows is the Civic while Apple is the Maybach (or vice versa)? This doesn't make a lot of sense, because Apple laptop vs Windows laptop is a comparison of similar products. Civic vs Maybach is a comparison between a low-end consumer product and an extreme luxury item. Exactly 63 Maybachs were sold in the US during all of 2010. So no, I don't think Honda would consider Maybach to be in competition with the Civic, and I assume Maybach is probably not especially concerned with the Civic, either.
> For most users, Windows laptops, Apple laptops, Chromebooks and iPads are in direct competition. All four do Facebook just fine.
Is this supposed be an argument in favor of your claim that Apple laptops and Windows laptops are not in competition? Because it seems like you're arguing with yourself at this point.
So, we agree the Civic and the Maybach, despite being both automobiles that run on internal combustion engines, have very different feature sets.
Now let's consider this Asus and a Macbook Air. One is built to run Windows 8, Office, Windows games and become a tablet, the other is built to run OSX, Xcode, iWork, iLife. Both run browsers, but that's the same as saying both the Honda and the Maybach use asphalt roads. You can make a Macbook Air run Windows, but you cannot make an Asus ultrabook run OSX.
Sure, and we no doubt agree that the iPhone and Dell's Copper Servers, despite both having ARM processors, have very different feature sets. I don't think that either of us would consider that a relevant comparison, though.
Now let us look at the Asus and a Macbook Air. Both are general-purpose computers. The Asus is not made for Office or Windows games. The Air is not made to run Xcode or iWork or iLife. The software is actually written for the devices, not the other way around. The computers themselves are both made to be general purpose computing devices. They are intended for browsing the web, and writing documents, and watching video, and sending email, and maybe writing programs, and editing video, and any number of other tasks. They are both created for the same core purpose, though: to be a primary computing device for the consumer.
What you're doing is looking at the Civic and saying it has dual overhead cams instead of a single overhead cam system in the Corolla, and therefore the two aren't in competition. Products don't have to identical to be in competition. Consumer products are rarely true commodities.
To the typical user, Apple laptops and Microsoft laptops very much are in competition. They can get everything they need done on a Mac or a Windows machine, including developing software. Both Apple and Microsoft know this.
For some prospective users it is an acceptable replacement (since most casual users have friends with a "real" computer that they can turn to occasionally) and for some purchasers it is not.
And for some people a bike is acceptable (friends have a car), but i don't compare it to the price of a car.
This is an ivy bridge with a full HD screen, dedicated graphics, SSD option. Chances are it will be faster than the current MBP. It is not for 'casual users'.
Of course no single laptop model is going to outsell the iPad, that's not how the PC market works. Laptops as a whole outsell iPads by a staggering proportion, and that's not likely to change any time soon. Almost always (certainly more than 50% of cases) the iPad is a secondary computer. It's purchased by people who already have ready access to a laptop or desktop.
I'm certainly looking at this device (and others) for my next laptop. Guessing from your product allegiance, you might be happier with a Macbook Air, which is also a similar device (and much more expensive, at that).
It seems safe to assume they put a 36 watt hour battery in there (iPad3 is 42.5) since the transformer book is bigger in all dimensions and as you point out has hardware that needs a big battery. If the graphics are switchable (also reasonable) that should yeild 4+ hours for video and nearly 6 hours for web browsing with Flash.
I don't see why it shouldn't have decent battery as a tablet and possibly great battery life when docked as a laptop. There are also i3 and i5 models available.
Apple isn't doing this because they are supply bound on a product that has 40% margins.
Acer also announced 11.6 and 13.3in Aspire S7 Ultrabooks with 1920x1080 displays. Full HD at 11.6in -- 190 dpi -- seems almost excessive, but I'm not complaining. Other stats (11.6/13.3): 9h/12h battery life, about 1kg/1.3kg, and "800-1800 USD" (yeah I know).
Now please start selling regular sized displays with those kinds of dpi!
I wish there were more 13" screens with a 1600x1200 or 1440x900 resolution. Whether it's too much density (1920x1080 11-13") or not enough (1366x768 13-16").
I really don't get the "wimpy Atom" thing. I run Ubuntu 12.04 with Unity (with visual effects) on a first-gen Acer Aspire One with a first-gen Atom processor and, while I won't be playing games on it anytime soon, it runs very well. So well, in fact, it is taking me months to effectively move my main computing to my newer i3-based laptop.
It still starts Emacs in under 5 seconds (and, considering my init.el, that's quite an accomplishment).
I'm not sure I'd be that much more productive if I could start Emacs in under a second.
That's really weird. AFAIK, hardware support for Linux is excellent on Atom chipsets. What brand was it? Mine uses the N270 and tops at 1.5 GB of RAM and won't deal with dual screens side by side (two of the reasons to switch to the i3)
Relative to Ivy Bridge, the Atom core is dog slow. On L1 cache bound benchmarks, it's routinely about 2x slower per clock (it runs about the same per clock as an ARM A9, FWIW). And the size of the L3 cache on SNB/IVB means that many tasks actually get much faster, relatively, as they start to spill out of L1/L2. If all you do is editing, you really aren't likely to care. But things that tax the CPU, like big web apps, tend not to work well on Atom boxes. Atom looks closer to an iPad or a smartphone in that regime than it does to a desktop CPU.
It plays video well enough. I never hooked it to the big tv to check whether it does 1080p at 60fps, but, apart from that, it works well enough. In any case, the Atom should not be the processor doing the video decoding and rescaling - that's what GPUs are for. Flash is very slow and Gmail is not very snappy, but that's the extent of my problems with it. I'll probably replace its battery, give it a small SSD and use it when I really need something small.
Or maybe there's some kind of annual conference for hardware manufacturers in Taiwan where it would be natural to announce new products. Such a conference might even have existed for, oh, thirty years or so.
You have a point, but this product is a direct competitor to both the iPad and Macbook Air, both tough nuts that other companies have been trying to crack. Given expectations that major Macbook Air upgrades are coming as early as next week, based on Ivy Bridge, getting a word out before the Apple hype starts seems like it could do nothing but help competitors.
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[ 0.23 ms ] story [ 70.8 ms ] threadWill be very interesting to see if they have been able to manage these issues to make it a useable option in tablet-mode.
It's pretty much what I would design as the perfect device-- in theory.
Sadly, when you wrap your head around things like battery, heat, and the like. You realize it might not be the dream machine you're looking for. For Asus' and MS (and my) sake I'm hoping this thing kicks ass. If it does I know I'll be considering it.
It is often in my lap, sometimes touching the part of my body that produces testosterone and that seemed maybe not to, uh, work as reliably back when I used to rest a full-powered notebook computer against it for protracted lengths of time.
(I have never noticed any part of my iPad 2 to be warmer than body temperature. According to at least one blogger, iPad 3 is definitely a different story.)
Sure it will sell, but not in any kind of volume like the iPad.
I'm sure Apple could have build this, or still could, but they likely didn't because they coudln't hit mainstream pricing. Nobody has the volume or the operational excellence to compete with Apple on price, quality, or volume without sacrificing profit margins.
Full keyboard, proper general purpose OS, running a fairly powerful CPU and GPU and offering all your standard set of I/O ports. This is not an iPad competitor, but a Macbook Air competitor, that can also be used as a tablet in a pinch.
That's debatable ;-) but I concede your point that Windows is more "general purpose" than iOS.
> Macbook Air competitor
Won't run OSX. It's not a competitor unless you plan running Windows 8 on your Macbook which is not very smart.
And iPads can use Apple's wireless keyboards, so, for US$ 50 more you get a really good keyboard you can use with your desktop computer too.
Most of my apps are designed to run on Linux. My IDE is Emacs and my system management tool is a shell. With that in mind, anything that's not Unix-like negatively impacts productivity. I have used Cygwin on Windows but, while it goes great lengths to make Windows a comfortable environment, in the end it's just not worth the effort if you can just run the real thing on your machine. Windows also takes ages to set up with software downloaded from just about everywhere. With Linux, I issue an "apt-get install" and sit back while the environment gets assembled. On a Mac, I have to install the xcode command-line tooling, ports and everything from that point on is completely automated. On Windows I don't even want to think the steps I'd need to take and the buttons I'd need to click before being able to just work.
OSX, Linux and Windows are equally general-purpose by all reasonable definitions.
No, but it will run most of the apps that I run on OS X, or apps of equivalent functionality, so who cares. I bought my MBA because it offered the best hardware for my needs at the given price point, not because I'm a slave to OS X.
iPads can use Apple's wireless keyboards
Sure I can get a keyboard for the iPad, but I still can't (easily) run most of the apps I need to get work done.
And as an aside, I'd be fascinated to hear your argument as to how Windows is less general purpose than OS X
Good for you.
> I'd be fascinated to hear your argument as to how Windows is less general purpose than OS X
For me, at least, it's a pain to develop software on Windows. If I did Java development, it'd be relatively painless, but having to rely on Cygwin to have an environment that approximates the servers that will actually run my code is very suboptimal.
Don't think I'm a slave to OSX - I'm not, but I'd have a very hard time being productive in an environment that's completely alien to the software I write. Actually, for work, I prefer Linux, but a Mac is fine. And I can play with Xcode and iOS development on it.
Am I to understand that you think Apple laptops and Windows laptops are not in competition with each other? Seriously?
The vast majority of consumers will never install or run either Visual Studio or Xcode. To most consumers, Windows laptops are in direct competition with Apple laptops, because they are both general purpose computing devices that will do what the consumer needs.
For most users, Windows laptops, Apple laptops, Chromebooks and iPads are in direct competition. All four do Facebook just fine.
Are you saying that Windows is the Civic while Apple is the Maybach (or vice versa)? This doesn't make a lot of sense, because Apple laptop vs Windows laptop is a comparison of similar products. Civic vs Maybach is a comparison between a low-end consumer product and an extreme luxury item. Exactly 63 Maybachs were sold in the US during all of 2010. So no, I don't think Honda would consider Maybach to be in competition with the Civic, and I assume Maybach is probably not especially concerned with the Civic, either.
> For most users, Windows laptops, Apple laptops, Chromebooks and iPads are in direct competition. All four do Facebook just fine.
Is this supposed be an argument in favor of your claim that Apple laptops and Windows laptops are not in competition? Because it seems like you're arguing with yourself at this point.
Now let's consider this Asus and a Macbook Air. One is built to run Windows 8, Office, Windows games and become a tablet, the other is built to run OSX, Xcode, iWork, iLife. Both run browsers, but that's the same as saying both the Honda and the Maybach use asphalt roads. You can make a Macbook Air run Windows, but you cannot make an Asus ultrabook run OSX.
They are machines built for different purposes.
Now let us look at the Asus and a Macbook Air. Both are general-purpose computers. The Asus is not made for Office or Windows games. The Air is not made to run Xcode or iWork or iLife. The software is actually written for the devices, not the other way around. The computers themselves are both made to be general purpose computing devices. They are intended for browsing the web, and writing documents, and watching video, and sending email, and maybe writing programs, and editing video, and any number of other tasks. They are both created for the same core purpose, though: to be a primary computing device for the consumer.
What you're doing is looking at the Civic and saying it has dual overhead cams instead of a single overhead cam system in the Corolla, and therefore the two aren't in competition. Products don't have to identical to be in competition. Consumer products are rarely true commodities.
To the typical user, Apple laptops and Microsoft laptops very much are in competition. They can get everything they need done on a Mac or a Windows machine, including developing software. Both Apple and Microsoft know this.
Agreed, the Macbook lacks touch hardware. If you're buying hardware for Windows 8, it doesn't make sense to buy one without touch support.
An ipad does not replace a laptop, the devices aren't equivalent.
http://blogs.nvidia.com/2012/06/asus-nvidia-unveil-worlds-fi...
This is an ivy bridge with a full HD screen, dedicated graphics, SSD option. Chances are it will be faster than the current MBP. It is not for 'casual users'.
I'm certainly looking at this device (and others) for my next laptop. Guessing from your product allegiance, you might be happier with a Macbook Air, which is also a similar device (and much more expensive, at that).
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5872/intel-dual-core-ivy-bridg...
It seems safe to assume they put a 36 watt hour battery in there (iPad3 is 42.5) since the transformer book is bigger in all dimensions and as you point out has hardware that needs a big battery. If the graphics are switchable (also reasonable) that should yeild 4+ hours for video and nearly 6 hours for web browsing with Flash.
I don't see why it shouldn't have decent battery as a tablet and possibly great battery life when docked as a laptop. There are also i3 and i5 models available.
Apple isn't doing this because they are supply bound on a product that has 40% margins.
Now please start selling regular sized displays with those kinds of dpi!
I don't think many people will ever run xterm with the default font on a 1080 13" screen.
It still starts Emacs in under 5 seconds (and, considering my init.el, that's quite an accomplishment).
I'm not sure I'd be that much more productive if I could start Emacs in under a second.
Ubuntu used to take a very long time to boot (minutes); I couldn't even reliably watch videos.
I was very surprised (and disappointed) though, to see than in Windows everything was perfectly usable.
The world does not revolve around Apple.