$200 Intel Android Laptops Are Coming 319
symbolset writes "Outbound Intel CEO Paul Otellini created quite a stir when mentioning that touchscreen laptops would reach a $200 price point. CNET is now reporting in an interview with Intel chief product officer Dadi Perlmutter that these touchscreen laptops will run Android on Intel Atom processors at first. 'Whether Windows 8 PCs hit that price largely depends on Microsoft, he said. "We have a good technology that enables a very cost-effective price point," Perlmutter said. The price of Windows 8 laptops "depends on how Microsoft prices Windows 8. It may be a slightly higher price point." ... Perlmutter didn't specify what the Android notebooks will look like, but it's probable they'll be convertible-type devices. He also noted that he expects the PC market to pick up in the back half of the year and heading into 2014 as new devices become available."
bets? (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone want to bet that Microsoft will price themselves right out of the $200 atom market? I'm betting that $200 will be right about the price point for just the OS, so unless Intel wants to give away their atom touchscreen lappies, they'll remain android, or possibly get a linux option.
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As long as it's not locked down to for example only run Android I'm happy.
Re:bets? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Is that even relevant for the next generation of Atom? Bay Trail is supposedly going to use the Ivy Bridge graphics core. It's going to be on the market before Mir.
Re:bets? (Score:5, Informative)
It's not the "not running Android" that's the problem, it's the locking it down that's a problem.
One could argue part of the reason Microsoft is floundering is they chose to be such ass-hats about signed/unsigned code and locking down boot loaders to begin with. At least if they had left it unlocked they would have gotten their "tax" even if they buyer chose to run Linux/Android, like my netbook.
Don't forget Ubuntu for phones is coming and there's some Firefox/Mozilla OS in the works too. Perhaps someone might want to experiment with those?
Re:bets? (Score:5, Funny)
One could argue part of the reason Microsoft is floundering is they chose to be such ass-hats about signed/unsigned code and locking down boot loaders to begin with.
One could argue that, but one would be talking out of one's ass in doing so.
Re:bets? (Score:5, Insightful)
One could argue that, but one would be talking out of one's ass in doing so.
I don't think the code signing is directly screwing Microsoft, but it's part of an element of 'customer hatred' that really shows the way they are going. We all know how development works. You choose to do one feature or another. Code signing the way Microsoft chose it, has almost no customer benefits and plenty of long term customer negatives in terms of reducing competition and your own freedom to fix your system when needed (even fixing the bottom layer of Windows is blocked). Almost certainly one of the key features which makes Android better was dropped to do this. For example maybe Gesture Typing [youtube.com] - a bit like the Swype Nokia used to have on the N9 before it was cancelled.
Compare that to Google's "Data Liberation Front" [dataliberation.org] features designed to let you export your data when you want to. This has very little direct benefit for Google, but the customer benefit is massive and comes at the point when you least expect it. Short term this looks stupid, but long term it means that users come to "trust" [wikipedia.org] Google which is to Google's long term advantage as well.
Microsoft has a long history of choosing features like Active-X and directly executable email content which allow them to deliver proprietary control of your machine to themselves at the cost of problems (in those case security problems) for customers later. Customers may not know that they are being screwed now, but they remember that they were screwed before and are beginning to expect that. The Microsoft ban on GPL software [arstechnica.com] in Windows Market place is an example. They don't like the software so they make the choice for you. The choice to have a fixed user interface around hubs, not allowing Apps to change things is another example - at the beginning it makes things more consistent; it makes it easier for them to sell you more similar devices; but later on it means you can never achieve the full power of a customized mobile device and is part of a whole attitude problem leading to continual app disappointment [wired.com].
Simply put, code signing is a symptom of Microsoft's hatred of their own customers [guidryconsulting.com] (just one of the first links to pop up searching for Mirosoft customer hatred [google.com]. They look at their "ecosystem partners" as a bunch of suckers ready to be screwed when the chance comes up. That used to work in the old days when every tech company had to come round Redmond to get permission before doing a big new launch. Now it's just getting users and partners annoyed.
Re:bets? (Score:5, Interesting)
Every time I think of Microsoft hating their customers I think back to one of their old ad campaigns where they actively and blatantly made fun of their customers. [openaccess.co.za]
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Just one example: Try to use most of Google's products, whether GMail, G+, Maps, whatever with a four year old browser. You'll see a nice little message pop up telling you that what you're trying to do won't work, because you're using an unsupported browser.
I recently found this out when I bought a BenQ UMPC (remember those?) with a decent enough browser (can do most any JS I can throw at it). It's just older than
Re:bets? (Score:5, Insightful)
Except that selling tablets isn't about just selling hardware. It's about selling an ecosystem. Google doesn't make their Android money by selling licenses to the OS: They make it off the Play store, and off of the other services (Advertising, maps, search) that Android strongly encourages users to use.
Microsoft wants to copy the success of Apple and Google in mobile, but that business model depends upon maintaining control of the device post-sale. If people buy a Windows tablet but don't actually run Windows RT/8 on it, then Microsoft loses all the post-sale revenue - the main source of income from the devices.
It's much the same situation as with games consoles: The consoles themselves are sold often at a loss, and the money made back by charging publishers a per-game fee to release games for the console. This can only work if there is some way to lock down the consoles not to run unsigned code, otherwise the publishers would simply release their games and not pay the console manufacturers a cut.
Re:bets? (Score:4, Insightful)
Microsoft wants to copy the success of Apple and Google in mobile,
Microsoft wants to copy the success of RIM/BlackBerry. The success of RIM in the Pre-Iphone/Android era, that is: selling business to business in a locked down environment.
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It's not the "not running Android" that's the problem, it's the locking it down that's a problem.
They aren't locking it down so you can't run Linux. They're locking it down so you have to go to their app store for 3rd party apps.
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Is there a difference?
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Ubuntu for phones.. hrm. I'm on the mailing list. It's a very empty mailing list. I'd love to see it. Hell I'd buy one.. but so far nothing.
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Re:bets? (Score:5, Insightful)
Clouds let me access all my stuff from everywhere that has an internet connection, which is increasingly everywhere. Local cache solves the intermittent connectivity issue. Clouds let me backup off-site for about $100/year, which is comparable in cost to running my basement server.
Dumb graphic terminals let me see a common desktop from everywhere. No more installing apps on lab computers - just remote in to my desktop. No more bringing a separate work laptop home, just hop on the VPN and remote desktop. It saves me a ton of time and effort. I don't even need to install MS Office or Matlab at home anymore.
iPods and their descendants are great for media consumption. You don't need a laptop to watch Youtube or to share pet photos on Facebook. They are so cheap that every member of the family can have one. The need for multiple PCs - and even multiple TVs - has eroded in a way I would not have anticipated. They've even replaced camcorders - I was one of perhaps only a dozen parents at the last dance recital still sporting a camcorder... almost everyone else was recording the performance with their phone or even a full sized iPad. (It was actually pretty comical looking.)
Re:bets? (Score:5, Insightful)
Android is still more thin client than computer, with lots of blinking lights for the kids... It's pretty great on a phone, where you want to look up simple information and play back your musis, but it's not a real desktop OS.
With Linux installed, I can do all the video and audio encoding I could want, not to mention being able to play back ANY video and audio formats. I can install GIMP and Blender and do high-end 2D and 3D graphics manipulation right on the device, not remote'd into a real computer, and not limited to MSPaint-type image manipulation options, but real work, right on the device.
And Linux is also a better thin client... Android RDP options are famously limited to a single host unless you pay up, and sadly, NX Client still isn't available for Android, so no GUI access to Linux systems.
Re:bets? (Score:4, Interesting)
I never really understood how webOS, as neglected and stillborn as it was, had a native X11 client (server, whatever, bite me) written for it by some community fan. But Android with its gazillion users never has, at least not that I ever found. Maybe some good technical reason for that which is over my head, but it seems odd.
Re:bets? (Score:4, Informative)
I never really understood how webOS, as neglected and stillborn as it was, had a native X11 client (server, whatever, bite me) written for it by some community fan. But Android with its gazillion users never has, at least not that I ever found. Maybe some good technical reason for that which is over my head, but it seems odd.
Part of the reason is likely that X11 is the wrong solution here. It's an okay protocol on a fast local LAN. With the correct extensions it's great on a local machine, but it has very little compression. You will do better with something like XVNC and an Android VNC client. What's a real shame, though, is I don't seem to be able to find an NX app for Android which should be much better than VNC. This is strange since I know Google uses NX internally.
Still, when I searched Play there do seem to be some X servers. Just none I have ever tried.
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NX is just a proxy on top of X11. NX requires an X11 implementation. NX for Android doesn't exist, because Android didn't have an X11 server for a long, long time.
The X11 protocol isn't perfect, but as you said with NX, it only takes minor workarounds to fix it, and make it surpass all other proprietary solutions.
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WebOS had an actual standard Linux user space. Everything was back level, but it was there.
Android does not. The user space is all locked down custom java land.
On WebOS you could actually load up standard ARM Linux repos and install whatever you wanted. Awesome idea, IMO. I'm still bummed it never caught on.
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Android finally got an X11 implementation, but it took forever. Probably has a lot to do with the fact that Android applications are essentially java based, while webOS was more amenable to just porting native Linux apps.
webOS got horribly bungled, as did MeeGo, and others. There's still some hope these days, in the form of Ubuntu Phone, but I'm not holding my breath.
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Why would anyone want to encode video on an Atom? I have an 8-year-old computer that would win that competition. At this point in time, a $200 netbook computer is not going to be great for content creation. Ante up to $400 and you'll have something more reasonable. I'm not sure there's a big market for netbooks anymore - most are probably better off getting a tablet and then buying a keyboard for it.
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That's what I would call horrible support... It's better than hardware devices, like iPods, but only barely...
Where's Musepack/MPC? Where's MPEG-1 LayerII audio? Where's AC3?
And there are numerous music player apps for Android, but when the UI completely sucks, I discount them pretty quickly... Win
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I didn't see MPC/Musepack, MPEG-1 Layer II (MP2) in any of those, yet you could play both on an iPod with Rockbox firmware.
They are the highest-quality lossy audio codecs out there, yet there's practically no players on Android that can handle them, and this after we've been freed from the restrictions of hardware players.
Re:bets? (Score:4, Interesting)
But
Re:bets? (Score:5, Interesting)
Well obviously this Intel Android Laptop is not targeted at you. Everyone knows exactly who it will be targeted at, Android phone users who want to do a little bit more and need the keyboard and screen interface and of course tossed in with an Android phone contract, a pretty good and could be a well targeted sweetener, with an interface they are already accustomed to. What will be interesting is how much data storage expansion the device allows for and how readily an Android phone can be hooked up to it to transfer data and charge the phone.
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Everyone knows exactly who it will be targeted at, Android phone users
Uh no. It's targeted at everyone but power users, and even some of us just want a small fast light device that works to play companion to our other systems.
Re:bets? (Score:4, Insightful)
Android is a great OS for what it is made to do.
It is not made to do serious work on.
It is made for content consumption: Web browsing, multimedia playing, games.
Actually Android is perfectly fine as an SSH terminal with an add on bluetooth keyboard. Alt-TAB switches between sessions just as you would want. There's almost never a need to touch the screen which is a major benefit. Oh.. when you said "work" you meant playing with excel spreadsheets. ;-)
Seriously though, there's a screen size below which multi-window doesn't work well. At that level the Android interface becomes somewhat logical. Such a device is always going to be a compromise.
Re:bets? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:bets? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because you want your computer to be independent from the cloud?
Because you want to do things which are not available on Android?
Because you just want a desktop interface on your laptop, instead of a phone interface?
Because at some point, someone might unveil a competing OS which is vastly better than what exists now, and you might want to switch your laptop to that?
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Because you want your computer to be independent from the cloud?
Android is not cloud-dependent.
Because you want to do things which are not available on Android?
You can install Linux on Android.
Because you just want a desktop interface on your laptop, instead of a phone interface?
Since 4.0 it's not really a phone interface any more. It more resembles what Classic MacOS would have become had it actually evolved.
Because at some point, someone might unveil a competing OS which is vastly better than what exists now, and you might want to switch your laptop to that?
By that time, they'll probably need a new system to run it anyway.
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Re:bets? (Score:5, Interesting)
PC manufacturers won't bother - the $200 price point was not appealing the first time around. There was absolutely no money to be made then, just like now. Unless Intel is shovelling parts at the OEMs for free, there's no way.
Hell, before the iPad came out, you want to know what happened to the $300 netbooks? They became $400 and $500 netbooks! The $300 ones were basically clearances or older models that haven't moved because they were tiny 7" screens or other compromises that people didn't like.
Even Chromebooks are compromised to get them to that price point, mostly by going ARM.
At this point, the question of $200 will depend on what crap they can cut in order to meet the price - most likely you'll see the return of crappy screens (ye olde 800x480), tiny RAM (2GB or so if you're lucky), and miniscule hard drives (8GB SSDs). All of which would make a Windows 8 experience pretty terrible.
A $200 retail laptop would have to have $150 tops in parts (the $50 is eaten as retailer profit, manufacturer profit, shipping and warehousing, etc). A cheap spinning rust hard drive is probably $50 for 500GB, way too expensive. 8GB of SSD storage from a thumbdrive, say, is cheap - $5. Then there's RAM, CPU, battery, and all the other pieces which quickly eat up that BOM cost.
Re:bets? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not in DNA (Score:5, Insightful)
As Steve Jobs said in the iPad launch keynote "They're just cheap laptops"
Except the quote was this ""They're slow, they have low quality displays and they run clunky old PC software. They're not better than a laptop at anything, they're just cheaper: they're just cheap laptops."
The new generation of $200 laptops are fast, high quality displays...and run Android.
In context of price mentioned in this quote, Android has already surpassed Apple in the tablet market by producing better value tablets. Perhaps price is something Jobs should not have dismissed so easily.
Ironically younger Jobs agrees with me "What ruined Apple was not growth They got very greedy Instead of following the original trajectory of the original vision, which was to make the thing an appliance and get this out there to as many people as possible they went for profits. They made outlandish profits for about four years. What this cost them was their future. What they should have been doing is making rational profits and going for market share.”"
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Ironically younger Jobs agrees with me "What ruined Apple was not growth They got very greedy Instead of following the original trajectory of the original vision, which was to make the thing an appliance and get this out there to as many people as possible they went for profits. They made outlandish profits for about four years. What this cost them was their future. What they should have been doing is making rational profits and going for market share.â"
What's really ironic is that NeXT got very greedy and priced themselves right out of the market.
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The new generation of $200 laptops are fast, high quality displays...and run Android.
So Jobs was right again. "They're slow, they have low quality displays and they run clunky Android software. They're not better than a laptop at anything, they're just cheaper: they're just cheap laptops."
Ironically younger Jobs agrees with me "What ruined Apple was not growth They got very greedy Instead of following the original trajectory of the original vision, which was to make the thing an appliance and get this out there to as many people as possible they went for profits. They made outlandish profits for about four years. What this cost them was their future. What they should have been doing is making rational profits and going for market share.â"
Says the basement dweller to the most successful tech company there is.
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All the Intel-based Chromebooks are just rebadged Windows laptops. The only difference is the BIOS/EFI firmware needed to boot ChromeOS.
Anandtech's review of the Intel-based Chromebooks covers this in detail, even giving you model numbers to compare.
And it's because these are crappy rebadged uber-low-end Windows laptops that they make such crappy Chromebooks.
If you actually want a Chromebook, then get the Samsung one using the Cortex-A15 chipset. At least then you'll get all-day battery life.
Re:bets? (Score:5, Interesting)
...crappy screens (ye olde 800x480), tiny RAM (2GB or so if you're lucky), and miniscule hard drives (8GB SSDs)...hard drive is probably $50 for 500GB...
With a polished+supported OS and an 80GB drive, at $200 it'd work for a lot of people, either as a primary system if they're poor or a secondary/work-only one if they're not. I'm speaking firsthand from my single-core 2GHz Thinkpad T43 after finally upgrading it to 2GB of RAM today; it has a 60GB hard drive, 1024x768 14" screen, runs SimplyMepis 11 Linux (currently using 4.8G + 1G swap), and does everything I'd like it to do.
My laptop's specs give a good idea of what a manufacturer could get away with in creating a polished Linux-based laptop. The OS and most Linux programs don't take up much room, so even an 8-12G SSD (or 30GB HD to be generous) would be fine and a SD/microSD card reader would then allow the user to take on the cost of additional storage based on his/her needs. If the timing's just right, the company could take advantage of others pushing towards super-high resolutions by buying the WXGA or XGA screens at a huge discount.
I don't know the OS costs, so it's hard to comment much on them -- but there are at least a few computer repair/building services out there that sell PCs they've set up with very newbie-friendly Linux distros and have had a lot of very satisfied/repeat customers, which suggests it's possible to pull it off; seeking out those successful geeks and finding out their "secrets" might be the wisest approach. The most important thing there, I believe, would be to ensure the customers know that the computer wouldn't run Windows, so there's no confusion/shock when they go to use it (as with the netbooks a few years ago); hell, with word out now that Windows 8 is a giant clusterfuck, it shouldn't be hard to market the fact that the OS isn't Windows as a desirable thing.
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Re:bets? (Score:5, Insightful)
Those $200 netbooks were very popular, they are basically what started the whole netbook fad...
The reason they went up in price was because they went up in spec, primarily in order to run windows. Once they were powerful enough to run windows, they were no longer cheap and became considerably heavier too, which took away the original benefits of a netbook.
Re:bets? (Score:5, Interesting)
Office doesn't run on Android.
That means both of Microsoft's cash cows will have been bypassed. They'll HAVE to respond in some way.
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Not really. The executive suite can dismiss this as a fad, like they did iOS and Android. They can pretend this is not happening, put their fingers in their ears and sing "la la la".
It won't end well for them, but they can and will do that.
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Last I heard, a leak suggests that office is being ported to android.
http://www.engadget.com/2013/04/10/microsoft-office-ios-android-roadmap-leak/ [engadget.com]
LibreOffice for Android “frustratingly close (Score:4, Informative)
Office doesn't run on Android.
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/03/libreoffice-for-android-frustratingly-close-to-release/ [arstechnica.com] LibreOffice is close to release :) Although Android has a several of its own.
I still don't want touch screen (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't want a touch screen. How about saving the touch screen and making a $150 laptop? The touch screen is just unwanted extra cost. I have a hard enough time keeping the screen clean without people intentionally smearing their grubby fingers across it. It's definitely not anything I want to pay extra for.
Netbooks are quite useful. I'd also like to see more ARM units with long battery life. The netbook form has more room for battery than a tablet does so there really aren't any excuses any more for not having 10 - 12 hours of battery. That's enough to get through a full day at a conference or long flight with transfers.
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Alas, microsoft killed any hope for such laptops... Once you have hardware capable of running windows, you need a much larger battery if you want decent runtime, more cooling to accommodate the hotter running components, larger storage etc.
A small laptop running a non crippled linux distro would be awesome, and would sell well if properly marketed, but it seems noone is willing to push such a device.
It has been said for years that a linux laptop wouldn't sell, and yet most of the reasons cited have been deb
Android uses touch screen (Score:2)
I don't want a touch screen. How about saving the touch screen and making a $150 laptop?
Ignoring that the Android OS has advantages when using a touchscreen. I think you need to look for your saving elsewhere. We live in Bazarro world where my (relevantly) expensive low resolution and DPI touchless laptop cost's more than my relatively *cheap* touchsceen high DPI tablet. The bought a whole tablet yesterday for $100. I'd be surprised if the keyboard would cost $50.
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It's okay, they won't exist anyway. Every time you see a "$xyz (sillily cheep) abcs are coming" story on slashdot, the price shown is the price that some engineer has decided they might be able to get the BoM down to. The result is that even if they meet that BoM, they'll still charge 50% more to make a profit, and most of the time they don't meet the BoM, so it ends up being 100% more expensive.
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Will NEVER happen. Microsoft will PAY manufacturers to take their OS, should they feel threatened. This is what happened with NetBooks, where XP was given away to stop the flood of cheap Linux netbooks. Manufacturers also got Microsoft advertising dollars in the exchange, to boot, and could get a few dollars more from preloading crapware like
Crapware... (Score:2)
Anyone want to bet that Microsoft will price themselves right out of the $200 atom market? I'm betting that $200 will be right about the price point for just the OS, so unless Intel wants to give away their atom touchscreen lappies, they'll remain android, or possibly get a linux option.
Depends how much crapware they can shovel onto the Windows laptop. The crapware vendors donate a buck or so for each installation, in the expectation that some of them will result in fifty or so bucks back, and maybe annual fees or future upgrades. It's one of the reasons there is little difference between the price of a PC with Windows and a PC with no OS (sometimes the Windows PC is even cheaper). Our strategy has been to just wipe the disk and install Xubuntu; no problems, and no crapware.
They already have (Score:2)
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This always makes me angry as a teacher. We NEED these cheaper laptops for our budgets, but our IT people, understandably from my limited perspective, want to keep one system to manage, so we are required to buy from Dell. No cheap laptops in the cafeteria for our students to use. All the desktops are in use in the Media Center? Well, sorry, we can't buy four Nexus tablets, we have to wait to get one more desktop.
We're supposed to get tablets in the next few years for all the students, but those will be Mi
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I don't know if this will actually eat into the desktop market but the laptop market is under threat by this. MS will propably keep the corporate PC for a couple of years but they are currently losing the casual home market.
ANECDOTE ALERT:
I got my mother a 3G tablet complete with a dirt c
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
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Windows ones sold more because they were heavily marketed, while linux ones just sat on the shelf... Also the linux distros present on most of these netbooks were crap (and no two manufacturers had the same distro).
With a decent distro, and some decent marketing to explain the benefits a lot of people will actually choose linux just like they chose an ipad or android device.
Andoid and not Chrome (Score:2)
Interesting. I would have thought Chrome would have been a better fit for the laptop but I guess Intel is keen to push Touch and Android is much better suited to that end.
I wonder too if this is a ploy to encourage MS to lower its prices too?
To me it looks like Intel is pushing touch as a must have feature to try and get everyone to upgrade but I see it mostly as a fad myself (kinda like 3D TV). It's kinda interesting but ultimately not upgrade worthy.
Though if someone implemented it in such a way that it
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android over windows (Score:5, Interesting)
.
I thought that the sub-$300 laptops were declared dead last year and at the beginning of this year. Are people finally realizing that holding a tablet upright isn't all that it's cracked up to be?
:>)
And also that {unbundling a touchscreen laptop and selling its parts individually as a touchscreen tablet + case cover + attachable keyboard + carryalong recharger which ends up costing twice the cost of the comparable bundled together laptop in the firstplace} is untenable in a market-place where people are still interested in saving money.
"game changer" (Score:4, Insightful)
You 6-digit username kids might not remember this, but once upon a time, a comment like this could sink your whole product, or whole company...Windows was it for PC. (imagine Dell or HP saying this in '98)
Now, it's like, "Yeah, Microsoft can come to the party, but they'll have to bring their own booze"
I deem this Android/Intel laptop to be *the* game changer that causes even mainstream media to realize M$ dying quickly.
I guess we'll see...
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Re:"game changer" (Score:4, Funny)
Yeah, and kid$ like you have been $aying this $ince '98, too. *Yawn*
Re:"game changer" (Score:4, Interesting)
You 6-digit username kids might not remember this
Says the poster with a 6-digit slashdot ID using terms like M$. This is not the best way to come across as a fountain of wisdom.
Death of Windows (Score:4, Informative)
Dying?? WTF, go read their revenue GROWTH and profit GROWTH for the last quarter before you say moronic things. To be dying their growth would have to at least be stagnant, preferably decreasing, hint IT ISN'T. So far android laptops have failed, the chromebooks have sold less than the disaster that was surface tablets.
IBM doesn't sell many computers either. ;). Microsoft has had revenue growth despite three quarter of dropping windows computer sales, on the back of raised priced in server live, an EOL console live subscriptions, making more monet from online office...instead of offline office....hold the bus three quarters of dropping sales.
Interestingly if we look at Amazon...the largest online retailer. http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/electronics/565108/ref=sr_bs_1 [amazon.com] A chromebook is *still* the bestselling laptop....I couldn't see the surface in the top 100!?
Libreoffice for Android (Score:2)
Just having Office make this better than Android.
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/03/libreoffice-for-android-frustratingly-close-to-release/ [arstechnica.com] Libreoffice in close to release so you don't have to wait too long. Although many users have already moved to alternatives like Google Docs.
Perhaps eliminating Secure Boot? (Score:3, Interesting)
Intel might be building a computer that gives other operating systems a test bed to innovate and create something new. A multifunction laptop/tablet that can run Android, Chrome, Linux, or Firefox OS as the user desires.
Intel has to do this... (Score:5, Insightful)
Intel can fire sale Atom chips, but they can't achieve price parity with competing non-Windows ARM-based devices without ditching the Windows tax.
Re:Intel has to do this... (Score:4, Interesting)
Intel are now facing the same issues the highend RISC vendors faced in the 90s...
Having the fastest processors available isn't enough, it wasn't for Alpha, PPC or MIPS and it wont be for Intel. Cheaper processors may be slower, but they sell in much larger volume, cost a lot less, use less power and are still adequate for people's needs.
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Intel has had to "face a long slow slide to irrelevancy" against other processor architectures since the 80's. They have talent, money, market share, and fab superiority. There is nothing special about ARM that previous x86 competition did not also supposedly have. Nerds and fanboys do not learn from history.
Sure, platforms today do not require or benefit from backwards compatibility with the x86 instruction set. Neither did Unix, Linux, or Windows NT. Platform independence is right around the corner a
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Re:Intel has to do this... (Score:4, Funny)
My sister is an Apple fan, so my mom is now using an iPad as her *only* (not just primary) device. She hasn't had an issue so far, other than she had to re-buy some programs she had with equivelent apps.
But that wouldn't work for OP. He had to convince his mother that his use case and hers were identical. Hasn't dealt with his Oedipal issues yet? I dunno, but the fact that all that some people need is a tablet is a foreign concept to many on this site.
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iPad the loser tablet. (Score:2)
My sister is an Apple fan, so my mom is now using an iPad as her *only* (not just primary) device. She hasn't had an issue so far, other than she had to re-buy some programs she had with equivelent apps.
Your topic being off-topic it is worth noting in context of this article that Android are now outselling Apple on tablets, and if your sister/mom has need for a keyboard in future its probably better to invest in Android.
Re: (Score:2)
And you have an odd definition of "off topic" in that any reply (even a topical one) to an off topic comment is off topic. I was responding to the "I convinced her to not get an iPad because I believe it inferio
Re: (Score:3)
Intel to compete against Chinese $9 ARM chips? (Score:4, Insightful)
Bitch please, enough of those bad jokes.
$200 Android tablets use $9-20 ARM A9 dual-quad core SOCs. How is Intel going to compete with that? Give chips for free and make it up in volume?
Re: (Score:2)
Atoms are still comparable in price, its an issue but not the major one. They probably have spare old fab tech to make these.
The main problem with this is that A15s are more powerful than atoms, both absolute and per watt. Also, the graphics in these is likely to be terrible to top it off.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Bitch please, enough of those bad jokes.
$200 Android tablets use $9-20 ARM A9 dual-quad core SOCs. How is Intel going to compete with that? Give chips for free and make it up in volume?
Intel should make a new architecture that's better than ARM (battery life, performance/watt) and then work with Microsoft for Windows support. Atom+Windows is a delaying tactic, letting Intel and Microsoft collect as much rent as possible. Making a new architecture would be a savior for both companies:
* Intel can gain market share from exclusive Microsoft support. Notice how Windows doesn't really support ARM because the device has to be locked down; so you can't just throw Window on whatever cheap hardwar
call me interested (Score:3)
200$ for a tablet that will not potentially suck with a windows CE OS and a Pentium era CPU, ...with a keyboard ?
and a wife in college?
maybe sold, if it replaces my 10 inch fujitsu lifebook running w2k and office 2000
Android a success (Score:3)
200$ for a tablet that will not potentially suck with a windows CE OS and a Pentium era CPU, maybe sold, if it replaces my 10 inch fujitsu lifebook running w2k and office 2000
Apart from the obvious. Windows CE was awful...badly received and in any way a joke when compared to Android. Even Microsoft put a bullet in that horse (Although its amusing that what they replace it with is more unpopular)
The reality is these machines are placed as direct replacements to windows Laptops.
Alternatively... (Score:3)
... pay the same for a 2 year old second hand laptop with far better specs all round. Its the same deal as with cars - if you don't mind using something thats already had someone elses grubby hands on it you can get a LOT of bang for your buck.
Except you can't (Score:2)
... pay the same for a 2 year old second hand laptop with far better specs all round. Its the same deal as with cars - if you don't mind using something thats already had someone elses grubby hands on it you can get a LOT of bang for your buck.
Ignoring the fact that you are comparing a second hand machine to a new one!? Or that Windows is runs badly on the same hardware. There is a massive drop of interest in Windows there have been 5 articles here in the past week, people want Android...they don't want Windows. The fact of equivalent machine with Android is cheaper than the Windows one id a benefit to everyone but Microsoft.
Does not amount to anything (Score:2)
People who think this means anything are forgetting one thing - it's Android but not ARM.
So it's going to have approximately ZERO software out of the gate. Even the Chromebook has a vastly greater capability in the near term compared to any Intel Android device.
Yes you could probably just simply re-compile any Android app and add Atom support. But who is going to realistically do that?
Love Android on ARM (Score:2)
Ignoring all the obvious fact that Android runs on Intel...and has done for a long time, and had already several phones and cheap ones too. Intel will offer *binary* compatibility of desktop applications.
Although I agree with you, I would love to see the rise of the Android Laptops, Which will have their own benefits including price and battery Life.
Why not Ubuntu? (Score:3)
Why not Ubuntu instead of Android, to get a more full-featured laptop?
Android doesn't even have official printer support.
Ubuntu is a success!? (Score:2)
Ignoring that Ubuntu is a success. Your question is the meme When will Linux be successful on the Desktop? The answer to most of us is obvious who see than Microsoft has no competitors left. Even if it backstabs its customers and manufactures causing a loss of 14% of Sales. It still celebrates its best quarter ever...and almost 80% Gross Profit Margin. In short because of Microsofts Abusive Monopoly or simply that it exists. The right question is why Android on the Desktop? This is Linus on Chrome (I know i
Heavy edit (Score:5, Interesting)
Add another platform to the test suite. (Score:2)
Awe crap. Atom? Seriously? Fuck. Don't get me wrong, I do still write some machince code in hex, and ASM code too (for fun, a 'hobby' OS from scratch project -- when I need to blow off steam from BS in high level languages, I can cuddle right up to the warm CPU and whisper sweet nopcodes in its ears...) -- for that x86-64 is great, but from a practical perspective x86 and friends are bloated and less efficient than ARM. ARM can be licensed by anyone, and it's trimmed down and efficient. Geared for com
some work left to do (Score:4, Informative)
I've been using Android on a Transformer for a while and it's decent. But the apps just aren't quite ready for it. Still, the overall experience is a little smoother than Windows 8 RT and there are tons more apps for it.
But Google is trying to push Google Chrome on laptop-like devices, and if they don't fix the issues with Android on laptops, it's just not going to work, since they control the market and they set the standards.
Re: (Score:2)
No, they are saying, "You know, Toots, you'd be quite attractive... if you lost a little weight."
It's an early public salvo in the negotiations with Microsoft over the unit price of Win8-for-Atom.
(Similar thing happened after Vista, with netbook makers chosing Linux. Microsoft responded with the cheap Win7 Starter Edition, and Linux fell off the netbook market. I'd expect something similar here. And government departments have floated the idea of a major open-source roll-out, immediately getting a lower pri
Re: (Score:2)
You're probably right.
But I'm surprised that we don't see more maneuvers like this. If Microsoft's reaction is so reliable, I'd expect a string of news like "General Motors eyeing Linux", "Walmart checking out RedHat" and so on. Usually, big companies are not shy about squeezing a supplier.
Re:In other words... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
But there have been $200 Android tablets for years; the challenge being discussed is to create a functional sub-$200 laptop.
Except Microsoft killed it. (Score:2)
Remember when just a few years ago Intel was pushing that one of the futures of mobile computing were MIDs:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_Internet_device [wikipedia.org]
I think Apple and a few other companies had a lot better execution for creating devices that consumers actually wanted and were willing to pay for ...
In reality the natural evolution of the MID rolled around http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_N9 [wikipedia.org] it was considered far superior to anything Apple at the time, it was simply killed as part of the Elop turing Nokia into a windows phone. In fact the Lumia range is a crippled version of the N9. In context of this Article Apple (well your post anyway) have long since given away their part in the future of Mobile computing. Apple should be leading this charge not google, not defending its shrinking profit (margins
Except they have been rebadged (Score:2)
Or at least that's what the pundits has been saying.
Except the tradition market was killed off to preserve the Windows Monopoly, and the higher priced laptops. Ironically simply handing the more mobile market to tablets...Giving both ARM and Android (oooh Google) a massive window (giggle) of opportunity (at least they Killed off another GNU/Linux opportunity).
Although its a guilty secret of PC industry that Surface/MacBook are are simply overpriced netbooks. The reality is https://plus.google.com/+LinusTorvalds/posts/dk1aiW4JjHd [google.com] this is Linux on Chromebooks.
Re:Android has no shell (Score:4, Informative)
Not only do you get a shell
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=jackpal.androidterm [google.com]
you get a complete command line based environment with compiler, editor, etc.:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.spartacusrex.spartacuside [google.com]
It doesn't require jailbreaking or root, and it's even free.
Re: (Score:3)
look at these
http://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-Google-Android-4-0-MID-10-inch-Netbook-with-Webcam-1GB-Ram-4GB-Memory-/350753904645?pt=Laptops_Nov05&hash=item51aa8fd805 [ebay.com]
(N.B. if you add a link you will get more clicks on your product; since for once the spam is on topic I added one for you - ed. )
There's always been a bunch of these interesting cheap things on ebay (and on some of the Chinese sites or other auction sites). Some of them even seem to come from top rated sellers who seem to sell quite a few of them (not this example.. but who knows). I wonder if the reason they don't get through to shops in the West is simply Microsoft? Has anyone tried them? (Search