PCs learn new tricks, but can tablet/notebook hybrids resc

PCs learn new tricks, but can tablet/notebook hybrids rescue Windows 8?

Summary: What does a PC maker do when the PC market is shrinking and demand for tablets is exploding? One option is to design hybrid PCs, which can switch from conventional PC to tablet and back again. In this post, I look at clever hybrid devices from Samsung, Dell, and HP.

By Ed Bott for The Ed Bott Report
March 13, 2013 -- 01:00 GMT (18:00 PDT)

No, the PC industry isn’t vanishing anytime soon. But it has reached a level of maturity where year-over-year growth in sales has stalled, and most new purchases are replacements.

Devices that we traditionally think of as PCs - towers, all-in-ones, and clamshell-style laptops with a keyboard and pointing device - are still selling by the hundreds of millions every year. After decades of steady growth, however, those numbers are now declining year over year, as consumers (and to a lesser extent businesses) choose tablets and smartphones as secondary devices instead of buying an additional PC.

The net effect? The overall population of computing devices is expanding tremendously, with the mix shifting toward devices that are more mobile and require less management.

That’s the environment into which Microsoft released Windows 8 last fall. In a world where mobility is king, the single most important feature is the ability to work well as a tablet, when a touchscreen is the only input device. For this new generation, Microsoft and its partners are betting you want that same device to workas a PC when conventional input devices (and maybe a large monitor) are available.

It’s a bold attempt to redefine the PC. These new hybrid devices have the innards of a conventional PC, making them compatible with existing software and peripherals, while still being capable of acting like tablets.

Microsoft’s vision of this dual-purpose device is the Surface Pro, which can go from tablet to full-strength PC with a click of its innovative keyboard/cover combos. But it’s not the only competitor in this new hybrid category.

Last September, at the giant IFA tradeshow in Berlin, I saw three hybrid devices from three of the world’s largest PC OEMs. Each one tries to tackle the same problem as the Surface Pro, with very different design decisions. For the past month, I’ve been using the final, production versions of these three machines in real-world work settings.

see full 4 page report

 

[Night Hawk]

Here I could have easily shelled out for a smarty or "I wonder" Phone but simply spend less on a cell you can text, take photos with, use as a usb flash drive even as well as just being a plain old cell phone with a few extra fancy buttons! Should I ever say that will replace the desktop pc? Give me a hangman's noose before that ever happens!

Hand helds, tablets, laptops, desktops are all still going to be what they are! You can customize the appearance a bit to dress up the hand helds and tablets to look more like a desktop but never match them up and expect to win out with a portable there! Amd when christa mentions finding a 15" laptop awkward I can buy that right off always having to plug a mouse into one especially when the touchpad is virtually unusable at times being too touchy with the cursor flying off some place! Seen that one lately on an 8 laptop!

 

[BillWindows]

Here I could have easily shelled out for a smarty or "I wonder" Phone but simply spend less on a cell you can text, take photos with, use as a usb flash drive even as well as just being a plain old cell phone with a few extra fancy buttons! Should I ever say that will replace the desktop pc? Give me a hangman's noose before that ever happens!

Hand helds, tablets, laptops, desktops are all still going to be what they are! You can customize the appearance a bit to dress up the hand helds and tablets to look more like a desktop but never match them up and expect to win out with a portable there! Amd when christa mentions finding a 15" laptop awkward I can buy that right off always having to plug a mouse into one especially when the touchpad is virtually unusable at times being too touchy with the cursor flying off some place! Seen that one lately on an 8 laptop!

I wouldn't be asking for a hangman's noose, smartphones are already a lot more powerful than PCs were just a few years ago. The new Galaxy S4 has a quad core 1.9Ghz CPU, more powerful than some laptops coming out now.

There was a study done not long ago that pointed to the younger generation as having a smartphone as their sole device. Just because the older generation can't come to grips with these things doesn't mean the younger ones can't.

If I didn't have a few tablets I could do a lot of stuff on my phone and have done. I'm an older guy and I love new tech, the world is actually turning too slow for me, I wake up everyday hoping there's some new tech out there.

People say you can't do real work on a 10" screen, that is just utter rubbish, it depends mainly on the resolution of the screen, and I dare say a Core i5 is ample for most work.

Naturally if you're doing CAD and 3D Ray Tracing and making movies like Avatar power is never enough, but they're isolated instances.

 

[Coke Robot]

Feel the love:

View attachment 18310

I actually have/had one lying around.

That UI design of Windows Mobile was HORRID to use without a stylus. Horrid! That's more like Windows xp tablet PC edition, but condensed down.

Actually, for a brief period of time, there were legitimate Pocket PCs...

Feel the love!

 

[pparks1]

I wouldn't be asking for a hangman's noose, smartphones are already a lot more powerful than PCs were just a few years ago. The new Galaxy S4 has a quad core 1.9Ghz CPU, more powerful than some laptops coming out now.

I don't honestly feel like these new phones are "more" powerful. They might have a higher clock speed, but when it comes to the amount of memory on the CPU, the throughput on the motherboard, the faster hard drives on PC's and laptops, I just don't find the latest smartphones to be real powerhouses. They are plenty fast enough for what they have to do, though.

There was a study done not long ago that pointed to the younger generation as having a smartphone as their sole device. Just because the older generation can't come to grips with these things doesn't mean the younger ones can't.

I do use my Samsung Galaxy S3 a whole lot more than any other cell phone. I check these forums, I read my email, I rent movies from Redbox, i look things up on imdb. But I do use a pc every day for work, and when I come home I break out a computer with a full size keyboard for making responses such as this.

People say you can't do real work on a 10" screen, that is just utter rubbish, it depends mainly on the resolution of the screen, and I dare say a Core i5 is ample for most work.

Well, after having used a Surface Pro extensively for the past week, I don't want to work on a 10" screen. At work, I use my 14" laptop screen (1600 x 900) and 23" (1920x1080) display. And I'm making a play at work to get a pair of 24" (1920x1200) monitors instead and use my laptop just in a dock. That's where I do "real" work.

 

[Coke Robot]

Here I could have easily shelled out for a smarty or "I wonder" Phone but simply spend less on a cell you can text, take photos with, use as a usb flash drive even as well as just being a plain old cell phone with a few extra fancy buttons! Should I ever say that will replace the desktop pc? Give me a hangman's noose before that ever happens!

Hand helds, tablets, laptops, desktops are all still going to be what they are! You can customize the appearance a bit to dress up the hand helds and tablets to look more like a desktop but never match them up and expect to win out with a portable there! Amd when christa mentions finding a 15" laptop awkward I can buy that right off always having to plug a mouse into one especially when the touchpad is virtually unusable at times being too touchy with the cursor flying off some place! Seen that one lately on an 8 laptop!

I wouldn't be asking for a hangman's noose, smartphones are already a lot more powerful than PCs were just a few years ago. The new Galaxy S4 has a quad core 1.9Ghz CPU, more powerful than some laptops coming out now.

There was a study done not long ago that pointed to the younger generation as having a smartphone as their sole device. Just because the older generation can't come to grips with these things doesn't mean the younger ones can't.

If I didn't have a few tablets I could do a lot of stuff on my phone and have done. I'm an older guy and I love new tech, the world is actually turning too slow for me, I wake up everyday hoping there's some new tech out there.

People say you can't do real work on a 10" screen, that is just utter rubbish, it depends mainly on the resolution of the screen, and I dare say a Core i5 is ample for most work.

Naturally if you're doing CAD and 3D Ray Tracing and making movies like Avatar power is never enough, but they're isolated instances.

And yet that samsung galaxy won't be able to run android 5....

 

[Coke Robot]

I wouldn't be asking for a hangman's noose, smartphones are already a lot more powerful than PCs were just a few years ago. The new Galaxy S4 has a quad core 1.9Ghz CPU, more powerful than some laptops coming out now.

I don't honestly feel like these new phones are "more" powerful. They might have a higher clock speed, but when it comes to the amount of memory on the CPU, the throughput on the motherboard, the faster hard drives on PC's and laptops, I just don't find the latest smartphones to be real powerhouses. They are plenty fast enough for what they have to do, though.

There was a study done not long ago that pointed to the younger generation as having a smartphone as their sole device. Just because the older generation can't come to grips with these things doesn't mean the younger ones can't.

I do use my Samsung Galaxy S3 a whole lot more than any other cell phone. I check these forums, I read my email, I rent movies from Redbox, i look things up on imdb. But I do use a pc every day for work, and when I come home I break out a computer with a full size keyboard for making responses such as this.

People say you can't do real work on a 10" screen, that is just utter rubbish, it depends mainly on the resolution of the screen, and I dare say a Core i5 is ample for most work.

Well, after having used a Surface Pro extensively for the past week, I don't want to work on a 10" screen. At work, I use my 14" laptop screen (1600 x 900) and 23" (1920x1080) display. And I'm making a play at work to get a pair of 24" (1920x1200) monitors instead and use my laptop just in a dock. That's where I do "real" work.

What's the difference between a 10 inch screen and three different sized screens? What do you get out of it?

 

[pparks1]

What's the difference between a 10 inch screen and three different sized screens? What do you get out of it?

The ability to have a number of different windows open at the same time. Outlook, Microsoft Lync, Web Browser, terminal windows for a few ssh connections, an RDP session or two, and a couple of VM's running at any given time testing in my lab. I do a ton of R&D at work and have 4 computers at my desk. Core 2 duo (win8 box), Core 2 duo (win 7 desktop), core i7-3770k (windows 8 running VMware workstation 8) and my Core i7-3667u laptop for all of my day to day tasks.

My laptop is connected to the external 23" screen, and of course it has it's 14" screen. My other 3 computers are all connnected to a KVM which is connected to another 23" display which runs 1920x1080).

 

[Coke Robot]

What's the difference between a 10 inch screen and three different sized screens? What do you get out of it?

The ability to have a number of different windows open at the same time. Outlook, Microsoft Lync, Web Browser, terminal windows for a few ssh connections, an RDP session or two, and a couple of VM's running at any given time testing in my lab. I do a ton of R&D at work and have 4 computers at my desk. Core 2 duo (win8 box), Core 2 duo (win 7 desktop), core i7-3770k (windows 8 running VMware workstation 8) and my Core i7-3667u laptop for all of my day to day tasks.

My laptop is connected to the external 23" screen, and of course it has it's 14" screen. My other 3 computers are all connnected to a KVM which is connected to another 23" display which runs 1920x1080).

From that, I would imagine the windows you have open on those displays are probably aren't smallish sized windows are they? They're probably pretty big, or maybe maximized depending on the app?

 

[pparks1]

What's the difference between a 10 inch screen and three different sized screens? What do you get out of it?

The ability to have a number of different windows open at the same time. Outlook, Microsoft Lync, Web Browser, terminal windows for a few ssh connections, an RDP session or two, and a couple of VM's running at any given time testing in my lab. I do a ton of R&D at work and have 4 computers at my desk. Core 2 duo (win8 box), Core 2 duo (win 7 desktop), core i7-3770k (windows 8 running VMware workstation 8) and my Core i7-3667u laptop for all of my day to day tasks.

My laptop is connected to the external 23" screen, and of course it has it's 14" screen. My other 3 computers are all connnected to a KVM which is connected to another 23" display which runs 1920x1080).

From that, I would imagine the windows you have open on those displays are probably aren't smallish sized windows are they? They're probably pretty big, or maybe maximized depending on the app?

maximized only rarely. Depends more on which display they are on. When on 14 laptop display, it's a bigger window than when on 23 inch display.

 

[BillWindows]

I wouldn't be asking for a hangman's noose, smartphones are already a lot more powerful than PCs were just a few years ago. The new Galaxy S4 has a quad core 1.9Ghz CPU, more powerful than some laptops coming out now.

I don't honestly feel like these new phones are "more" powerful. They might have a higher clock speed, but when it comes to the amount of memory on the CPU, the throughput on the motherboard, the faster hard drives on PC's and laptops, I just don't find the latest smartphones to be real powerhouses. They are plenty fast enough for what they have to do, though.

There was a study done not long ago that pointed to the younger generation as having a smartphone as their sole device. Just because the older generation can't come to grips with these things doesn't mean the younger ones can't.

I do use my Samsung Galaxy S3 a whole lot more than any other cell phone. I check these forums, I read my email, I rent movies from Redbox, i look things up on imdb. But I do use a pc every day for work, and when I come home I break out a computer with a full size keyboard for making responses such as this.

People say you can't do real work on a 10" screen, that is just utter rubbish, it depends mainly on the resolution of the screen, and I dare say a Core i5 is ample for most work.

Well, after having used a Surface Pro extensively for the past week, I don't want to work on a 10" screen. At work, I use my 14" laptop screen (1600 x 900) and 23" (1920x1080) display. And I'm making a play at work to get a pair of 24" (1920x1200) monitors instead and use my laptop just in a dock. That's where I do "real" work.

Look we could go on about this all day, some people say 27" is the must have, some say 22" some say 15" some say 11". What it all boils down to is what suits each person. I can look at a 10" screen all day everyday, but then I have various size monitors up to a 42" TV.

I just use what suits my purpose at the time, most of the time it's 10", when I watch a movie it's 42", when I work with video etc its 24", who cares, to each his own. And the most powerful PC I have at the moment is a 3 GHZ Core 2 Duo E8400 which is plenty for me with Windows 8.
The next one I build will be a fire breathing Dragon which will last me another 5 years or there abouts, but in the meantime I'll be buying all kinds of tablets.

 

[Ray8]

Feel the love:

View attachment 18310

I actually have/had one lying around.

That UI design of Windows Mobile was HORRID to use without a stylus. Horrid! That's more like Windows xp tablet PC edition, but condensed down.

Actually, for a brief period of time, there were legitimate Pocket PCs...
View attachment 18351
Feel the love!

I don't think anyone is saying that the UI was great and it was specifically designed for use with a stylus, but it reflected what was available for the day and many fell in love with the devices and what they could do. They were simply overtaken by smartphones and the rest is history.

Love was shown in the day and I've seen them being used as recently as a few years ago. That does say something about the devices (or the owners).

 

[Coke Robot]

Feel the love:

View attachment 18310

I actually have/had one lying around.

That UI design of Windows Mobile was HORRID to use without a stylus. Horrid! That's more like Windows xp tablet PC edition, but condensed down.

Actually, for a brief period of time, there were legitimate Pocket PCs...
View attachment 18351
Feel the love!

I don't think anyone is saying that the UI was great and it was specifically designed for use with a stylus, but it reflected what was available for the day and many fell in love with the devices and what they could do. They were simply overtaken by smartphones and the rest is history.

Love was shown in the day and I've seen them being used as recently as a few years ago. That does say something about the devices (or the owners).

The last I've seen a hand held device like that, a Windows Mobile device, was about four years ago. Last I know of, I think in the States here, a home improvement store called The Home Depot that uses Windows Mobile 6.5 handhelds that do pretty much everything. I read recently they're actually replacing those old ones with Windows 8 Compact Embedded handhelds as the UI design lends itself out to be real nice as the live tiles can notify the person of new requests and/or orders right away.

 

[chrisa]

What's the difference between a 10 inch screen and three different sized screens? What do you get out of it?

I've played around with this on the Surface Pro because i was noticing significantly smaller windows at the same resolution. Its a bit technical, so Right-Click the desktop, go to Screen Resolution, then 'Make Text and other items larger or smaller'.

On a 24" monitor(like i'm typing this on), my PC will use Small so it will pack the most items into the screen as possible, and on a 24" monitor.. it looks good. On the Surface Pro, it uses Large. It does this to make it far more readable. If i switch over to Small on the Surface Pro, I get the exact same screen as my 24" monitor, except packed into 10" of space. This tends to makes it very hard to read for most people.

So what does the bigger monitor give you? The ability to use Small Items and pack in more stuff on a screen without needing a microscope to use the interface. On Large items, the screen displays roughly the same amount of space as a 1366x768 monitor would as everything is 150% bigger, but its far easier to read and use at 10". I would imagine this is also the case if you use a very high resoluton monitor(say 2560 x 1440). You'd probably use say Medium on that to enhance the readability, just depends on how small it makes the icons and text relative to the screen size you buy. Its why if you go that res... you would probably want to kick the screen size to 27" or 30" rather than keeping it at 24".

And at the same time, if you use the DisplayPort to output to a monitor that has 2560x1440, it will be displayed at that resolution, and you would kick the item size back down to small to maximize that screen space.

 

[Night Hawk]

Try running a full screen 1st person shooter game on any 10" while driving a vehicle over rough terrain and you will want a larger screen without question! For having multiple windows open all at the same time I have a matching pair of 19" Acer lcds in use since that is the largest screen size I have room for on the particular "computer desk" I use here. The desk has a cabinet section to slide the mid tower case into as well as printer, video equipment, and even a WiFi capable router on top.

After hours of staring even at a 14" display I would like suffer from eye strain trying to bounce back and forth between windowed modes of things while a dual display allows me to view multiple screens at the same time. I can monitor some live equipment or a video capture while reading this thread on the other. Back when programming CNC equipment before going onto the electronics field I could have used the newer model's almost PC screen for entering the programming commands the newer machine offered when seeing one shop buy their first!

So it will make a large difference at times depending on how the display is used. Texting on a cell or smart phone even a tablet is where you expect to be using a smaller display to begin with. While sitting at your desk or using one of the newer tvs for web browsing you definitely like the larger view those can offer while sitting back and relaxing. Personally when someone wants to keep a chat going I want to jump from tecting on a 1"diagonal cell phone screen onto WLM, Skype, or at least a social network's chat feature over trying to type on those tiny keys constantly.

Coming to grips with newer technology isn't an accurate assessment in the long run. Small screens are still going to be good for the fast and furious but not lengthy use where you sit in front of it for a good 8-10hrs.! The smaller screens simply server for the original purposes they were intended for which still won't be replacing the need for the larger screened desktop platform. Having come along from those old days running a 13" crt to the newer larger lcds where now stores only carry 20" or larger you follow technology suit when on the desktop.

When carrying a portable you do the best you can with what you have at that moment while knowing that is temporary for most when away from home. When buying a smart book as a gift it certainly wasn't the screen size that became the problem but the OS limitations being the embedded form of Windows where the person was "unable to" log into secure sites for things like online banking, making payments online. etc. Does that mean the user has a problem being too old school? Or was it that the small portable with small lcd screen wasn't capable to begin with?