Awesome little machine but this brings up questions for me:
1. Do consumers want what is essentially a modern netbook? Didn't this market die once the iPad and tablets took hold?
It would seem from recent consumer buying trends that most prefer a touch screen/tablet form factor at this price point/screen size.
2. How does this compare to an Android tablet (Nexus 10) with a high quality keyboard? Or even some of the "transformer" products with keyboards/additional ports already available?
It seems you pay quite a premium for touch, I wonder if this machine will help sway people back into this form factor without touch/tablet mode.
As a happy Transformer owner, I'd disagree. Adding the touchscreen is both useful and surprisingly natural. Sometimes the easiest and most intuitive way to do something is to touch something. Other times it's using the keyboard and trackpad. Having both in one package is delightful - to the point where I'm not mad I paid more for my Transformer than what a netbook costs, I'm mad I can't pay more and get a touchscreen for my laptop (outside of some niche models that don't otherwise appeal to me) or, for that matter, my desktop.
Then there's the insane battery life you get when you join the tablet and the keyboard dock. Aside from a time when I forced the screen to stay on (and didn't disable that later), I can't remember the last time it ran out of battery.
Even undocking turns out to be more useful than I thought. For example, using the tablet while walking or handing it to my daughter for her to play with.
No, I'm not unhappy I paid more than a netbook would have cost I'm getting plenty more than a netbook, too.
Would you like to try creating extensive content on a touchscreen?
I love my netbook, it goes almost everywhere with me. I can touch type on it fast enough to take notes in meetings or from church sermons, I can write music on it, I can even run Visual Studio 2010 and SQL Server 2008 well enough to be productive with them.
I can't for one minute imagine how I'd be able to do anything like that without a hardware keyboard and I'm yet to see the add-on keyboard that's as stable for typing on my knees, in the back of a car, held in one hand while standing (or whatever) as any netbook. I've got no problem with tablets as devices but they still seem to be firmly consumption devices to me.
I only recently got an opportunity to try using a netbook, and I like this form factor more than I would have expected. The size makes it more ergonomic than a full sized laptop, yet the keyboard is still usable.
I've never tried using a tablet computer, but I think these will suffer from ergonomic difficulties. For situations such as reading books/text or maybe browsing the web from a sofa they would probably be ok, but most web content isn't designed in such a way as to make the links/buttons large enough for a finger. On a touch screen the UI design needs to be quite different from those which are intended to be mouse-driven.
Also take a look around the various exhibitions and see how many visitors are carrying tablets with them as opposed to laptops or netbooks. That's probably a fair indication of how useful tablets actually are.
I'm still not convinced that tablets will be popular in the near future. The current paradigm of tablet PCs–make the screen touch sensitive and chop off the keyboard–has major ergonomic and usability problems. How do you hold it for more than 5 minutes? How do you input text without it being a complete chore? The software and hardware will require radical changes to solve these problems. Maybe Apple has thought of something, but a big iPod Touch won't work.
Voice recognition isn't viable either. Do people really want to talk to these machines all day–in offices, subways, coffee shops? Doubtful.
I have to agree with other comments here. The tablet form factor is not "winning" per say, just showing that technology has progressed to a point where alternate form factors are now viable for different situations. Tablets are selling like hotcakes because the market hasn't reached saturation point yet. For the most part typical keyboard/mouse style pcs have already filled the market so they are just selling at a standard new user /replacement rate. Tablets are a new form factor so that market is not yet saturated. I have 2 tablets now and I only use them for content consumption when I want to be away from the keyboard. I still find them frustrating to use though for content creation (edit: ...involving any serious degree of typing). This was typed on a touchpad but this is about the limit of what I would ever want to write on a tablet. I won't touch on the numerous ergonomic problems as others here have done that, but they are many.
I agree with you and I think I could have phrased that better. I suppose what I was really trying to say was more along the lines of "I haven't seen such a device that makes sense yet" because really, so far, there hasn't been a single "hybrid" that blends the two worlds in a natural way. But I wonder what's the real purpose of such a device? Is it just about the touch interface for the sake of novelty or are they adding it because it somehow makes the experience of using a small laptop better? What I personally see, so far, is companies making these things to kind of capitalize on the whole tablet thing. If I were to imagine the perfect "hybrid" it would have pretty much the same form factor but the software would just be different. I picture an ultra thin, ultra light, device about the size of an 11" Macbook Air that works in two modes. When you open it up to reveal the keyboard you're in desktop OS mode. You don't touch the screen because there's no need. In desktop mode you need precision, multiple windows, and a UI that's easy to interact with for more than an hour. You'd code, write, organize, and just work in desktop mode. Then you'd somehow kind of swivel and close the lid so the screen is facing out and you've got yourself a tablet. The UI then goes into tablet mode where you're tapping, pointing, pinching, and swiping at your screen, focused on one task at a time. Those tasks are more recreational or more "read-only" like watch a movie or check email. I can't deny that there have been many times that I wished I had a keyboard when using certain apps on a tablet however those times are rare and I think sacrificing that one convenience for everything else that a tablet UI gives is worth it. Putting a keyboard between you and your screen automatically puts the device further from you, forces you to sit still often on a flat surface, and just generally negates a lot of the benefits of tablets in general like the ability to just carry a small screen around in one hand and still be able to effectively interact with the apps on it. I know people who use an iPad as their main computer because they thought they could get a keyboard and it'd be cool and it just fails miserably. "Normal" users often complain about how complicated a normal computer is to use and point to tablets as beacons of hope but there are times when you're trying to accomplish certain tasks that the same simplicity that was supposed to save them comes back to bite them and makes things even harder (having to switch back and forth between multiple apps to get one thing done sometimes).
I think that maybe for as long as each form factor lends itself to certain kinds of activities there may not be someone who gets it right without literally combining both the laptop and tablet experience into one device. This means more like a two-in-one device than a hybrid. There is a difference. A two-in-one has the complete features of each device and they are completely separate from each other while a hybrid is trying to be all things to all people at the same time.
Or, maybe, just maybe, someone really will get it right and I'll eat my words.
I totally agree it is an odd question, thanks for the thoughtful response. My thoughts are that even though it is established I still quite often wonder if using a tablet is an improvement over using a (very) portable laptop.
I often see people struggling using the touch keyboard to write e-mails or take notes and wonder about the cramped ergonomics. The games on tablets are often very uninspiring clones of (portable) console classics at best and exploitative money making schemes at worst. There is often no way to tell the difference.
I realise this all sounds very negative, I know there are plenty examples of applications where tablet-type interface shine. I like the idea of hybrid touch screens too and would be interested to see if Apple could be tempted to move into that area with the MacBook Air.
The problem is that outside of certain niche uses, tablets objectively blow goats. No one really likes poking at a touch screen for serious work, especially for typing stuff in; for that the keyboard and pointer have served us well and will continue to. If the tablet is to survive as a general purpose device it will be as thr CPU/display component of a more complete computer system, which can be plugged into, or wirelessly pair with, the other peripherals in a console or laptop form factor. I think Asus had the right idea with their Transformer line and if you take something like that and put a regular OS on it, you have a compelling portable device.
My smartphone contract isn't ridiculously expensive -- and lets face it, if you've got an Internet tablet you're still going to need that service contract to get connectivity.
The small screen is an advantage when on the move. The small footprint as well -- it's pretty hard to even remove a large device from your bag while standing on transit. If I can sit, I can use my netbook.
I work an web startup that provides business software for users who are typically not at their desks. An affordable tablet would be a huge boon for us -- we could distribute them to our users (or just recommend them) and they would love it. But at this price it won't work for us. I fully expect that Chrome OS is built entirely for this market and we'll see a lot of tablets from netbook manufacturers next year.
The market is the one of anyone that wants to use a tablet with keyboard, with a desktop experience when they need to.
I guess that makes sense, although I think we have a very different idea of what a "desktop experience" is.
Basically anyone that a few years ago would buy a netbook.
The conventional narrative is that tablets killed the eeepc/netbook. I didn't even know that this market still existed - I knew about Surface, but those start around the $900 mark.
The tablet w/ keyboard is interesting to me. The touchscreen laptop form factor was pretty bad; bulky and really unlikely to be leveraged as a tablet or touchscreen.
The newer surface pros seem to actually nail the form factor: small enough to be a tablet, powerful enough to be a laptop.
The Mac ecosystem is slower to adapt but I think the air & MacBook will be a single line; either a combo or one will get dropped. The iPad (really most of their products minus iPhone) need a significant upgrade in terms of computing power and batt life.
I honestly think the declne in tablets is surface pro style form factor winning over a tablet w/ aftermarket keyboard etc
To followup: today multi-touch tablets are primarily consumer luxury devices (toys if you will). But as mobile OS's mature and move into the business market this will change. Tablets and tablet OS's will be used in businesses. And yes, this will expose some of their current weaknesses, but there are straightforward solutions to many of them.
For example, a docking station in the form of a monitor stand which turns a tablet into a monitor for a traditional mouse & keyboard. Or, laptop/netbook form factors with attached keyboards (this is not a new form factor, there are already touch screen tablets of this sort).
What makes the new generation of tablets novel is not merely their particular physical characteristics today, it's the method of interaction, the simplicity of the interface, and the simplified and streamlined methods for managing applications. All of those things will still be relevant if you add a mouse and keyboard.
Because it doesn't make sense to get any "real" work done on a tablet OS / touchscreen for many people. They have the MacBook if you want a small productivity machine.
Why didn't they just turn it into a tablet? The trackpad seems almost extraneous, and the keyboard could be an add-on. Not to mention the square form factor that makes it look bulkier than it really is.
Okay. So I don't own one and don't plan to, and here is why:
> 1- it's a design that is far more open than iPad. You can move files in and out of it and have full control of the user directory structure. Want to move a bunch of your spreadsheets, recipes, python scripts and chess games into it. No problem. You don't have an Apple-like overlord prohibiting any of that.
I don't want to control my tablet's directory structure. As long as I can put my files on it (and I can) I'm good.
> 2- Need to install XAMPP, Python and other dev tools? No problem?
I can do that, better, on my laptop.
> 3- Want to install VMware and boot Ubuntu 12.04 LTS on a VM for a full command-line dev environment and even virtual host a few sites? No problem.
I can do that, better, on my laptop.
> 4- and, after all that work, do you want to create a restricted user account for your 5-year-old to be able to play some games and educational apps? No problem at all.
I'm going to hand my $1000 Surface Pro to my five year old? The five year old is getting a $200 Nexus 7, which is rubberized and cheap enough that I don't care when he puts it in the sink.
> 5- How about accounts for guests and friends so that they don't accidentally mess with your stuff? Yup.
Have you seen how my wife treats electronics? I can't say I didn't have notice--when I met her her computer was a netbook with three keys missing--but there is no way in hell she's touching my Surface Pro. No, she's getting an iPad, which I don't care when she puts it in the sink.
> 6- Need more hard drive space? How about attaching an external USB hard drive and, perhaps keeping all your dev work there for easy transport to your desktop? Yup.
Dropbox + Wifi?
> 7- Can you use that really cool RC Flight Simulator that comes with a custom USB interface to your JR9505 transmitter? Of course you can.
Why would I want to run this on my tablet?
> 8- Or, how about that receipt or business card USB scanner?
They have ones that connect to WiFi now.
> 9- That neat Logithech keyboard you use on all your PC's? Of course.
Bluetooth.
> 10- can you run SolidWorks, AutoCAD, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Dreamweaver, CuteFTP, Komodo, WinForth, Keil, Eclipse, Photoshop, Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Fritz and a whole host of other software you might already be using for fun and work? Sure looks that way.
I wouldn't want to run half of those on a tiny 10" screen, and the other half have perfectly good iPad replacements.
With an 11" or larger screen, better keyboards, and under 2 pound form factor, something like a netbook will still be able to give the tablets a run for the money. The problem to date has been keyboards/touchpads that have been too cheap and uncomfortable and screens that are too small. Optimize for surfing from the couch or the bed, and netbooks (w/physical keyboards) will still have a place. (Especially for those who post lots of comments!)
Interesting that your chosen alternative was a laptop rather than a netbook. Along those lines, if you think in terms of the evolution of personal computers as desktop -> laptop -> netbook -> tablet, that last step is a puzzler.
If you take the author's 10 reasons and strip out the stuff that's a retread of previous products ("Look, it's portable! And OMG you can watch movies!") it seems to me you're left with one key point: the user interface makes it fun & easy to use. I don't think it's an accident that the only two tablet platforms that look viable so far, Apple and Android, are based on years of usability testing in the smartphone arena. Tablets may be computers inside, but in terms of product design they're consumer entertainment devices.
1. Do consumers want what is essentially a modern netbook? Didn't this market die once the iPad and tablets took hold?
It would seem from recent consumer buying trends that most prefer a touch screen/tablet form factor at this price point/screen size.
2. How does this compare to an Android tablet (Nexus 10) with a high quality keyboard? Or even some of the "transformer" products with keyboards/additional ports already available?
It seems you pay quite a premium for touch, I wonder if this machine will help sway people back into this form factor without touch/tablet mode.
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