sonofsanta Posted November 30, 2012 Posted November 30, 2012 As far as the consumer market is concerned, I think the Surface tablets are essentially fulfilling the role of the early Google Nexus devices - no chance of them actually selling in any great quantities themselves, but meant more to show the OEMs How To Do It Right. It's just pushing Acer/Asus/Samsung/Dell to up their game. As far as the enterprise market is concerned, which is the real target for the Surface Pro, money money money. Why sell them something adequate for cheap when you can sell them something overpowered for cash-monay.
Arthur Posted November 30, 2012 Posted November 30, 2012 shame it is not Haswell You might not have to wait too long... Rumors of Surface tablet successors and specs appear We're unsure of this latest rumor that's appeared in relation to Surface tablet successors, but the content as posted by well-known Microsoft leaker MS_nerd details plausible specs for upcoming Microsoft-made tablets. Here's what was leaked in the space of a 140 character tweet: There will be a Surface RT 2 that uses an 8.6-inch display and will have a Qualcomm chipset, as opposed to the NVIDIA Tegra chip used in the current Surface RT The Surface Pro will be updated to an 11.6-inch display, and will ditch the Intel Core i5 CPU for an upcoming and yet-to-be-released AMD "Temash" APU There will be a third Surface called the "Surface Book" that has a 14.6-inch display, and an Intel 22nm "Haswell" chip Both Haswell and Temash chips won't be ready until at least mid-2013, so there is still some time before anything will start to come together in regards to successors to Microsoft's Surface line.
localzuk Posted November 30, 2012 Posted November 30, 2012 I seriously doubt they'd make a 11.6" tablet - far too large. The 'Surface Book' sounds remarkably like the Courier project they scrapped.
gshaw Posted November 30, 2012 Posted November 30, 2012 As far as the enterprise market is concerned, which is the real target for the Surface Pro, money money money. Why sell them something adequate for cheap when you can sell them something overpowered for cash-monay. That's all it comes down to at the end of the day sadly. If MS wanted to take the market they'd make a mid range tablet, size and battery life of the RT and pitch it as a device to edit \ create your Office docs on and price it about £50-100 under the iPad... market won As it stands it's the IT equivalent of the trophy wife... you get it because you can not because it's the best overall package
k-strider Posted November 30, 2012 Posted November 30, 2012 I'm with Localzuk on this, they do look like good replacements for teachers laptop. I was considering similar asking for Samsung ATIV Smart Pro Tablet PC with Clamshell Keyboard / Intel Core i5-3317UM / 11.6" LED / 4GB / 64GB / Windows 8 Professional / Free 5 Year Warranty / Free 5 Year Warranty - www.misco.co.uk if the Atom ones could come down they could be good bits of classroom kit.
TotalGeek Posted November 30, 2012 Posted November 30, 2012 (edited) I am more inclined to see how I get on with an Atom device especially if they are priced right. I have a powerful desktop for gaming/video at home and decent workstation at work. This would be for everything else. Check out the specs on the Asus VivoTab some reports of pricing at Edited:$799 which blows the i-pad out of the water as it includes the keyboard/extra battery. Meet VivoTab? Series ? Three new Windows 8 Tablets designed for both work & play These will be great in schools 19 hours of battery life. Access to files/printers/flash/apps/old programs/usb. I would still keep my IWB Workstations why get rid of something that works? Edited November 30, 2012 by TotalGeek
SYNACK Posted November 30, 2012 Posted November 30, 2012 (edited) I am more inclined to see how I get on with an Atom device especially if they are priced right. I have a powerful desktop for gaming/video at home and decent workstation at work. This would be for everything else. Check out the specs on the Asus VivoTab some reports of pricing at $499 which blows the i-pad out of the water. Meet VivoTab? Series ? Three new Windows 8 Tablets designed for both work & play These will be great in schools 19 hours of battery life. Access to files/printers/flash/apps/old programs. I would still keep my IWB Workstations why get rid of something that works? Those look good, the 19h life sounds decent too and the build quality looks better than the Acer. Still waiting on these (x86) with 3G/4G data reception, have not seen any out yet with this feature. Like that it has a proper stylus to. Edited November 30, 2012 by SYNACK
TotalGeek Posted November 30, 2012 Posted November 30, 2012 (edited) I use a three usb dongle for my 3G so it is not a game changer for me. It's not an iPad it's got USB that modern thing that you can plug things into. Edited November 30, 2012 by TotalGeek
flyinghaggis Posted November 30, 2012 Posted November 30, 2012 (edited) I really like the look of the Asus Vivotab 'transformer' style Windows 8 tablets. Seems like a much better design then the surface and the additional battery life when using the dock would be really handy. Having said that there's nothing on the horizon that's really tempting me to part with my cash so I've decided to buy a 128Gb SSD drive for my existing laptop (Dell M101z) which it looks like I'm going to be hanging onto for a bit longer! Edited November 30, 2012 by flyinghaggis
Arthur Posted December 1, 2012 Posted December 1, 2012 Those look good The battery life is good in the VivoTab, but the RAM (2GB), screen resolution (1366x768), storage (64GB eMMC) and absence of any USB 3.0 ports are disappointing. The Surface Pro has 4GB RAM, USB 3.0, 1920x1080 LCD and a proper SSD! I suppose it comes down to whether you need performance or long battery life.
sted Posted December 1, 2012 Posted December 1, 2012 The battery life is good in the VivoTab, but the RAM (2GB), screen resolution (1366x768), storage (64GB eMMC) and absence of any USB 3.0 ports are disappointing. The Surface Pro has 4GB RAM, USB 3.0, 1920x1080 LCD and a proper SSD! I suppose it comes down to whether you need performance or long battery life. screen res on a 10" screen isnt bad you could argue higher would be worse as it makes things smaller ram wonder if its upgradeable ditto storage i have an unused 128gb ssd
flyinghaggis Posted December 2, 2012 Posted December 2, 2012 (edited) ram wonder if its upgradeable ditto storage i have an unused 128gb ssd AFAIK all of the clover trail atom based Windows 8 tablet only support up to 2Gb of RAM (which I doubt would be upgradeable anyway) and it's unlikely there's a drive bay to accommodate a larger SSD either. I suspect it'll just be NAND memory chips soldered onto the motherboard. In fact despite singing it's praises for the last month I'm starting to go off Intel's clover trail atom. The 2Gb memory limit is a serious problem and it only seems to officially support the 32-bit version of Windows8 which is a worry for future hardware and software support. Edited December 2, 2012 by flyinghaggis
Arthur Posted December 2, 2012 Posted December 2, 2012 AFAIK all of the clover trail Atom based Windows 8 tablet only support up to 2GB of RAM (which I doubt would be upgradeable anyway). I suspect it'll just be NAND memory chips soldered onto the motherboard. The Atom processors used in Windows 8 tablets are designed for smartphones so the 2GB RAM limit does make sense (unfortunately). It is also soldered to the motherboard. The memory controller remains a dual-channel LPDDR2-800 design. Most tablets will see two 1GB devices populating the channels. Package on package (PoP) stacks will be used for DRAM and SoC integration, similar to what you see in a smartphone. (Source) it only seems to officially support the 32-bit version of Windows 8 which is a worry for future hardware and software support. The reason for sticking with the 32-bit version of Windows 8 is due to 64-bit Windows not supporting 'Connected Standby'. Connected standby is only currently supported by 32-bit Windows 8, so although Clovertrail supports x86-64 the platform will launch as 32-bit only. There's no support for alternate OSes at this point. The use of eMMC is also a little worrying as performance tends to be quite bad. The platform supports true connected standby, meaning Intel's new S0ix sleep states (similar to what was announced in Haswell). I realized I haven't yet detailed what these mean yet but in short on DC power you can expect polling roughly every 30 seconds for new data (incoming emails, tweets, etc...) delivering an experience somewhat similar to a smartphone. Off-SoC device drivers need to support Windows 8 run time power management (RTPM) to support these new low power sleep states. Intel claims that in its lowest platform sleep state (S0i3) the SoC's power consumption is below 2mW. The SoC doesn't support SATA, just eMMC like most other smartphone/tablet SoCs. This is a bit of a disappointment as most eMMC controllers are pretty bad, but Intel tells us they've been working to improve things with the controllers that are out there. There's no USB 3.0 support, Clovertrail just supports two USB 2.0 ports (OTG + xHCI, although OTG isn't supported by Windows 8). OEMs can obviously integrate hubs in any docking stations they may build. (Source) In fact despite singing it's praises for the last month I'm starting to go off Intel's clover trail Atom. Me too, especially since Haswell-based tablets should be released in March 2013. That's not long to wait!
TotalGeek Posted December 3, 2012 Posted December 3, 2012 It all depends what you are shopping for. I am looking for a device that is similarly spec'd to an ipad but has domain connectivity. So battery life, portablity and useability are important. My school are never going to go for devices at the Ultrabook end of the market. Much as I would like one I could never justify it for cost reasons. Same reason why Apple devices cannot be justified for cost reasons but also because they don't fit it to your average schools infrastructure. We will be looking at mid-end devices that have windows pro but don't cost the earth.
zag Posted December 3, 2012 Posted December 3, 2012 Assuming your using solid state memory instead of hard disks which I think all these devices do, 2gb of RAM is plenty. Upgrading to 4gb RAM with give virtually no noticeable increase in performance.
sonofsanta Posted December 3, 2012 Posted December 3, 2012 Assuming your using solid state memory instead of hard disks which I think all these devices do, 2gb of RAM is plenty. Upgrading to 4gb RAM with give virtually no noticeable increase in performance. eMMC is far from the cream of solid state storage though :/ and 2Gb may be enough now, but with RAM so cheap these days I expect developers will start assuming more. Limiting a platform to 2Gb in 2012 is just stupid. Well, not so much stupidly as artificially limited. Yay Intel.
Arthur Posted December 3, 2012 Posted December 3, 2012 Assuming you're using solid state memory instead of hard disks eMMC sucks! http://s15.postimage.org/bz1b8hqkb/Nexus7.png
localzuk Posted December 3, 2012 Posted December 3, 2012 eMMC is far from the cream of solid state storage though :/ and 2Gb may be enough now, but with RAM so cheap these days I expect developers will start assuming more. Limiting a platform to 2Gb in 2012 is just stupid. Well, not so much stupidly as artificially limited. Yay Intel. More RAM means more power usage though. So they have created themselves a platform which they know the characteristics of. If OEMs then took that and started slapping 16GB of RAM in and only getting 20 mins of battery life, people would start questioning the platform, rather than the poor implementation. So, in a way, some of what Intel has done is to protect the product.
Arthur Posted December 4, 2012 Posted December 4, 2012 This is good news... Intel plans 10-watt Ivy Bridge processors for 2013, signalling longer battery life or thinner PCs
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