Can you really imagine an average consumer being impressed that a tablet, identical in almost every way to the Android next to it, is running Windows? If not, it's really time to rethink Windows' dominant consumer marketshare.
No, but I can imagine an average consumer being happy that the device can run the copy of Home Landscape Architect 3D Pro Plus 2007 that they bought a few years back, work with their old Quicken data, and play that copy of Hoyle Card Games they have lying around.
People have accumulated stuff that runs on their PCs. Most people who buy iPads keep around their computer to do at least a few things, even if they don't use it very much. The sales pitch on a Win 8 tablet is that it docks to your desk, replaces your PC for everything, and you can still pick it up and carry it everywhere like an iPad.
can run the copy of Home Landscape Architect 3D Pro Plus 2007
I'll be impressed if they can pull that off and still make it so I can carry it around like an iPad.
What I fear, however, is that they'll make this a hybrid that fails in both scenarios: not powerful enough to handle "3D PRo Plus 2007", yet too power hungry to let my wife watch 5 episodes of Desperate Housewives back to back.
Until I see production hardware, I'm on the fence.
I'd be impressed if their copy of Home Landscape Architect 3D Pro Plus 2007 was even remotely usable with a touch interface it wasn't designed to support.
If they pull this off, it will be dream come true. All will then boil down to 2 device that you carry, your windows phone and a protable awesome tablet cum pc.
I think it will. Now show me a PC with that spec with the form factor and battery life - i.e. usage pattern - of an iPad. Your ARM tablet wont be able to run legacy software. Your x86 tablet wont have 12 hours of battery life and be thin and cool (in both senses of the word).
As a user it's a tradeoff. May be the x86 tablet won't have 12 hours battery life while still being as thin as the iPad but maybe I can trade a few hours of battery life or a few mm of thickness to get my legacy quicken app running on my tablet. What is cool is that as an end user I will have a choice to go either way.
Processors are getting better with each passing day. I don't think we are too far off from seeing x86 on a thin PC still getting a good battery life.
When you try to everything you end up doing nothing well. Zero percent of legacy Windows software was designed with touch in mind. The fact that Windows 8 will try and probably fail at letting people run this kind of software on a tablet shows me that the writing is on the wall.
When you try to everything you end up doing nothing well.
That's weird... PCs (Mac, Linux, Windows, etc...) have done this for the past 20+ years and a pretty good job of it.
Everyone loves to talk about the demise of the PC, but virtually everyone who has seen the ultrabooks has told me they want one. The only ones who don't are those that say, "Well I already have a MacBook Air". So, sure the Apple 5% may not continue down the PC path, but I think we're looking at a PC rennaisance. And in large part due to Apple.
Except we've already tried that. With pretty much every tablet that was ever made before the iPad. How many times are people going to go "but wait, mine is... a whole computer!" before they realize consumers don't want this? The reason the iPad won was because it wasn't a computer. It was a device, an appliance.
