Acer's Iconia Touchbook takes on iPad, MacBook Air using Windows 7 - Page 2

Maybe MS bribed Acer ...

It's a DOA, as Jobs predicted.

It seems that Acer's reasoning (if I can use that word here) must be that if a touchscreen is a good idea, then two of them must be twice as good. I shudder to imagine where this kind of "thinking" could take us ...

Does your "harness" comment reference "Artery Of Fire"?

Sweet fancy Moses...

FrankenPad

They should have used that. Could have saved Iconia for a cool product. Neat name, now it is ruined.

If you remember the episode of Star Trek TNG with Iconia (the Iconians were gone, but their remaining robot sentinel scanned the Enterprise and destabilized all its systems till it was on the point of blowing up) maybe "Iconia" wouldn't convey the comforting impression you might want.

But seriouslyif this idea gains any traction at all, maybe Apple will see a chance to sell everybody two iPads. You stand one up as the display and lay one down as the keyboard. It'd still be cheaper, weigh 1/3 as much, and have 3 times the battery life of this thing. "Want a dual-screen tablet? There's an app for that."

I agree, in theory, that this thing is different at least from a curiousity standpoint. However, technology just hasn't caught up to this device. It's almost everything the average consumer wouldn't want, starting with Windows. There are really too many drawbacks. Two displays on a mobile device? Wow! And as weak as battery tech is at this point. If it was half the weight, three times the battery life and ran OSX, I'd consider buying it if I didn't already have a MacBook Pro.

ROFL. Couldn't have said it better.

This thing is the perfect solution to a problem nobody had. It is Acer's Folio. Except they actually made it.

My god, how many unicorns were sacrificed to make this thing?

You forgot to mention that it/they would also not run Windows - another considerable benefit of having dual iPads vs. owning this doorstop-waiting-to-happen.

Now taking guesses as to total number sold before they pull the plug. Xoom's done 100K so far - think this one will do better?

My guess is end total will be around 600-800.

and in a big way.

Classic Inventor's Dilemma:
http://www.amazon.com/Innovators-Dil.../dp/0066620694

Microsoft and Intel are so drunk on their profits, they won't see their lunch being eaten until it's way too late (ie, now).

All these half-assed attempts to dress up the Windows pig with mobile lipstick have been a comedy of errors for a decade... and Microsoft still doesn't learn.

I think it's part of their (now well worn and useless) playbook to forestall any innovative threat, and the fact that they're incapable of changing their response (Windows) or actually competing with the innovators (WP7) is nothing short of amazing.

This thinking isn't new. It's brought us factory farms, frankenfood and a US nuclear weapons stockpile that's far far more than necessary.

It's almost canonically big business to think that "bigger = better".

Wow, that's hilarious! People complain about having to type on a touch screen (iPad) because it's not a real keyboard, so Acer comes out with a 2-screen 6.2 lb laptop running Windows where you have to type on a touch screen? What in the hell are they thinking?

It's not an iPad, MBA, or MBP competitor - it's apparently trying to go head-to-head with the Xoom in a race to the bottom. No wonder they just fired the CEO there.

If it was 1/3 the weight, 2x the battery life, and ran OS X it would be my MBA 11.

I think saving FrankenPad and using Iconia makes sense. FrankenPad actually sounds kind of cool - much more memorable than 'Iconia'. (And I had to go look up the name since I had already forgotten it...)

I like your mix of Imperial and SI!

Clearly it's a competitor to an iPad because you now get to type on a screen, only on a heavy laptop. The Air... well, this thing makes me say 'Wow!' too, though admittedly in a less positive way. So there you have it.

LOL why even bother with crap like this?

You simply can't make this stuff up!! Truly incredible!!!

The problem with watching all this type of epic failure unfold in the digital world is that - if one were not careful - it may give the Apple fan a false sense of complacency. One wonders whether the truly introspective Windoz fan experiences an equally compelling sense of impotence.

I well remember the days of Apple wading into the thick of smirks and gleeful priggery from Intel/Windows fans who loudly trumpeted the speed competition of Intel over Motorola silicon.

How is this Microsofts half assed attempt? Acer pay for a licience, and stick it on an abombination.

It's obviously not a competitor. I'm not entirely sure what it is. But, if they shaved a pound and a half off the weight, and increased battery life to 6 hours, with the pricing this is at, it could be a viable product. But, as it is, it's a doorstop. Possibly if they went from 14" screens to 11" screens it might have worked.

That is a great idea. They need to be connected through a smart connector (using the magnets in the iPad) which would detect both pads and put them in the right screen mode. The device would be a quad core duo and have 32 gb of flash, 10 hour battery, etc, at $998.

LOL, I agree.

It would be a disgrace to say this device competes with anything made since 2000. 6.2 pounds and a touchscreen keyboard? Are you shitting me? Maybe this was an April fools joke or an Onion News Network story? Can anyone verify?

This product had to be a basis for firing the CEO.

DOA

Holy crap! 6lbs, $1200 and realistically 2 hours of battery life? Unbelievable. Just shocking that this would actually be produced by a major company.

It actually shows the sad state of affairs that CES is. For this waste of silicon to win a design award just shows that the cluelessness extends well beyond Acer.

Their products seem to cost a lot more now that they stopped using used parts.

It took 'til the very last post...dang nab it... I was going to say that!

@ All previous posters

This has got to be the funniest "one-liner thread" in a long time!!! Great stuff folks!

Love the post: "emoticon" reactions while reading the article. Clever indeed!

Should have know I was in for some early morning laughs when it started with "Train Wreck"... still laughing!

I seriously thought this was a joke when I saw the picture. Someone's losing their job for this monstrosity.

I'm not trying to "rag" on you ... honestly, Im not ..... but for the life of me, I still don't understand why a lot of people ... not just you .... insist on saying that Apple "needs competition to keep innovating and improving".


Apple's biggest pressure to succeed comes from .... Apple itself. Say it with me ... Apple's biggest pressure to succeed comes from .... Apple itself!

Did the lack of decent competition stop Apple from overhauling the MP3/ music industry? Hell no!
Did the lack of decent competition stop Apple from overhauling the cellphone industry? Again, hell no!
Did the lack of decent competition stop Apple from overhauling the tablet industry? You got it ... hell no!

Steve has said many, many times that the thing that drives Apple is the desire to to make the best products that they can .... not the cheapest , but the best .... and it just so happens that to the shopper that considers the "whole picture," Apple usually represents the best value as well.


Lastly, just ask yourself .... Has all that competition driven Apples competitors to make the best products possible ? Judging from this latest effort from Acer ... I'd say the answer is a very resounding ...NO!

Remember please, .... the competition doesn't drive Apple .... Apple drives Apple. (rant over)

This is hilarious! You would quite literally be far better off by buying two iPads and duct-taping them together: it'd be much faster, get much better battery life, run software which someone not being coerced at gunpoint might actually want to use, be more portable...and still be cheaper! The only thing you'd be skimping on is storage space, and that's a matter of usage habits. Someone really oughta develop some kind of dual-iPad synchronization software (maybe for jailbroken iPads, so that it can be used across any app) to transform a pair of 'em into a Super Laptop.

When it crashes you can't even CTRL-ALT-DELETE the thing either!

How come this monstrosity even made it to production? Didn't one person look at it and say WTF is that? I can see the board getting all uneasy and firing the CEO.

PC makers rested on their laurels way too long, and they will now pay dearly for this complacency. They and M$ never succeeded in improving battery life for notebooks and their stuff was always half-assed. Even windows 7, despite being touted as the chosen one, suffers from driver issues and crashes. My work laptop freezes at least twice a day and I have to hold down the power button to reboot it.

On the bright side, no one can say that Acer was an Apple copy-cat with this thing.

It was Bloomberg that was making the comparisons if you bothered to actually go out and check the article - in which they were trying very hard to be complimentary. It is a legitimate comparison as it is a full touch-driven computing device in what amounts to a "notebook" form factor, giving you two screens to provide input on instead of one. Since Acer themselves are trying to blur the device categories by doing this - it is perfectly legit to compare for example, to both the iPad and the Macbook Air, and also the Macbook and Macbook Pro. For that matter it can be compared to Toshiba's defunct Libretto, the naiscent RIM Playbook or any other offering from Dell, HP, Asus, or the rest of the PC makers vying for market- and mind-share. The comparison by Bloomberg to the iPad and the MacBook Air is likely because Apple has a lot of consumer interest with those devices, has a strong lead in the tablet category and is the only PC maker growing marketshare more strongly than the rest of the category.

And for the record just because Acer (or anyone else)brings out a variety of tablet format devices it is no guarantee that they will gain marketshare of any appreciable amount. The critical aspect of the new tablet category success is the establishment of a strong ecosystem to make using the tablet viable for day-to-day practical. Apple has the strongest ecosystem for this, followed by RIM and Google/Android. But even Google/Android is not necessarily a given, as ChromeOS keeps peeking out from behind the curtain and gives Google advantages for platform development that Android doesn't.

LOLz


Oh, I wish I'd thought of this first, and copyrighted it!


Oh, snap!


I would not be surprised.


Apple fans come up with the most creative pwnage, I think.


I absolutely agree, and I made this same point on another thread a while back. People need to stop with this "competition is good for Apple" meme. Apple were at their very worst when they were in "competitive" mode. They released underpowered, overpriced stuff that very few (read die hard Apple loyalists--myself among them) were interested in buying. Apple changed the rules of the game when Steve came back and introduced the iMac, OS X and the iPod. Since then, the industry hasn't been competing with Apple so much as they've been tripping over their shoelaces--and each other--trying to catch up.

You don't win the race by looking sideways at your fellow competitors. You win the race by looking at the finish line and moving toward it at full speed.

Here's the product that should have been compared to the iPad:



Here comes the Android tablet price plunge

I think it looks cool. No idea why its compared to the iPad and MBA, Apple obviously don't have an equivelent product.

Also if this thing had an Apple logo on it, I'm certain general opinion would be that its amazing and is the future of laptops.