Dell gives up on Windows RT

With Bay Trail CPUs, there is now a way to make inexpensive tablets and laptops. Low temps, longer battery life, are only a couple of the advantages.
Who would want to get less functionality when you can get a full Win8.1 OS on a 8" tablet. There are more Windows programs/apps available.
I don't blame Dell for dropping RT, MS may improve the RT OS and make it relevant, but they have some work to do.

Dave76 said:

With Bay Trail CPUs, there is now a way to make inexpensive tablets and laptops. Low temps, longer battery life, are only a couple of the advantages.
Who would want to get less functionality when you can get a full Win8.1 OS on a 8" tablet. There are more Windows programs/apps available.
I don't blame Dell for dropping RT, MS may improve the RT OS and make it relevant, but they have some work to do.

Click to expand...

First, Bay Trail is at least 3-6 months away yet. I don't really expect to see anything more than reference designs before next summer.

Second, Bay Trail is Atom based.. Intel claims 2x performance boost over the last Atom, but still.. that's SLOW. The best Atom performance I can find on PassMark is in the 500 range, compared to a mid-range i5 which is 3-4,000. Still, for a tablet that's not bad.. but running normal apps? You're going to be disappointed.

Third, bear in mind that most "normal apps" won't work very well on a tablet. Their interfaces will be difficult to use, if not downright impossible.

Finally, ARM is not standing still. There are now 8-core ARM processors and performance is increasing quite a bit on those as well. And ARM still has a significant power advantage over even Bay Trail in idle power consumption, although it's pretty competitive at peak power use.

The Dell Venue Pro 8 with a Bay Trail Z3740D is said to be available on 18 October, other Bay Trail models are scheduled to be released at the same time. We'll find out for sure in less than two weeks.

Intel® Atom™ Processor Z3740D
This says: Status Launched, Q3'13

The Wife has a Atom Z2760 11.6" convertible Win8.1 tablet and it is quite acceptable for consumption/average user scenarios. I haven't tested it under heavy loads, as it's not intended or designed for that. Normal apps run fine on it, I've encountered no issues.
Even at 2x performance increase the Bay Trail CPUs will be more than suitable for the average user, and for many uses for the advanced users.
I'll let you know when I get the Venue Pro 8, when they are released.

I have two ARM mini tablets (one each 7" and 8"), from the reports on the new Atom tablets, they should be very close in battery life.

Test comparisons: Intel Atom Z3770 ‘Bay Trail’ review: Strong competition for ARM