The windows tablet they're selling has some key problems that they didn't talk about at CES (obviously, why discuss your shortcomings?
The unit is about 5lbs with everything included: tablet, jacket, keyboard and power brick. If you're going to travel anywhere with it you need all 4 of these things to keep it useful. It doesn't get the all day battery life of an iPad, so you need the power brick. The tablet itself is hefty, 2.5lbs alone, heavier than an 11" MBA at 2.3lbs. This alone is failboat in my book. You can get 5 real hours of usage with a MBA or 3.5 hours of usage at best from a win7 tablet with no keyboard or mouse.
You could shave 1lb on the travel weight by leaving the jacket behind and maybe relying on keeping it in a backpack, but you just paid $1000 for a tablet... are you really going to trust that you won't drop it? Especially since it's a hefty 2.5lbs.
The screen is slightly higher res on the MBA too (1366x768).
It appears to have good horsepower, but by not compromising on speed at all I think they made a big mistake: this is too similar to the pc tablets from a decade ago. Too heavy, too little battery, software that isn't written or tuned for the form factor. Some people might be thinking this will be a good Photoshop tablet with the stylus, until they use one. Then they'll realize that paying $1000 for a tablet that's too heavy to be used in any practical fashion doesn't make a whole lot of sense, and they would've been better off just getting a notebook or a desktop. This is why these slates failed 10 years ago.
I don't have any of this criticism for the android based tablets ASUS is offering. Those will all be iPad 2 competitors, and their problem is they aren't shipping yet. They won't ship for several months, probably after the iPad 2 ships, and by then I believe they've already lost the battle. The ASUS android tablets will likely be comparable on weight, hardware, price and battery life relative to an iPad 2, and they'll differentiate on software. And for most people under most circumstances Apple will have the advantage in software.
Apple will have their 70-ish% share of tablets in 2011. I'm sure Asus will be a major player in the 'other' 30% category. But their win7 tablet is DOA for all the reasons outlined here.
For some strange reason the British Empire began considering companies and such as plural (in the late 1700s IIRC), so you see such jarring lack of agreement such as "Microsoft have...", "HP do...", and "Apple aren't...". Get used to it as you can't change a culture and its language (note that the "its" doesn't have an apostrophe!).
It?s the same vein as other plural nouns. For instance, ?People take issue with VAT increase? could be a headline, but you wouldn?t write or say ?People takes issue with VAT increase.? I believe this is standard everywhere English is spoken, the only difference seems to be in how Americans refer to plural proper nouns.
What is this nonsense about Android phones as "iPhone clones"? What does that have to do with anything? Does the person who wrote this article have any professionalism? I love Apple as much as the next guy, but it is not necessary to belittle the competition when you write an article. Leave it to the commentators.
Um no he does not. He is the most biased blogger on the internet.
Perhaps not, but that's a matter of style instead of being a grammar problem.
It could work. Cheney aimed a "scattershot" at a bird back in 2006 and just like ASUS it missed its target.
It's not about style, but context. It's contextually incorrect to take aim while firing scattershots at the target.
You might as well say, ``Asus is choosing a shotgun approach to blasting the competition, with a heavy dose of buck shot, by way of it's diverse line of embedded handhelds all intended to compete against the Apple iPad.''
Please proofread the titles. There's a subject-verb agreement issue in the title of this article. ASUS is one company so the verb 'to take' should not be conjugated plurally. Instead it should be in the singular.
And shouldn't there be an "a" before "scattershot?"
There's a bit of history behind whether the name of a company should be considered singular or plural. Since in the great American tradition I am making up this "bit of history", I will keep it vague and without references.
Several years ago a "tech journalist" was writing an article about Apple, Inc. [at that time known as Apple Computer, Inc (what else is there for a "tech journalist to write about other than Vista)]. Having just consumed a 5 liter box of wine, he managed to turn out a fantastic article which was widely plagiarized. Unfortunately instead of saying "Apple is" as the rules of English and human decency demanded, he wrote "Apple are". With "Apple are" now appearing all over the web and even showing up in notes placed in bottles and recovered from the ocean, the mistake spread worldwide and was soon mistaken for a bandwagon. All of those who are attracted to bandwagons immediately jumped on board and the bandwagon turned into a steamroller leaving a few of us behind in the dust. Short of applying interdiction of fire and wine to all journalists I see no way of stopping this type of activity.
Several hundred boxes of wine later, the "journalist" developed a degenerative brain disease and went into marketing where he gained fame by referring to a notebook computer as being "1.17 inches thin". Recently he has interviewed for the CEO position of a software company with a market capitalization which rivals that of Apple, Inc.
Leaving the plural noun debate aside, the way I see it the grammatical issue with the title surrounds using an adjective in place of a noun -- probably a spelling oversight.
As written, "scattershot" is an adjective. Unless used for creative effect, "Aim" and "Scattershot" are incongruent.
Dictionary.com: "delivered over a wide area and at random; generalized and indiscriminate."
Written as a noun, "scatter shot" works. The "scatter shot" is composed of Android and Windows products.
Dictionary.com: Scatter Shot: "shot prepared for a weapon having a rifled bore or barrel."
But their win7 tablet is DOA for all the reasons outlined here.
I'm actually pretty excited about the ASUS Sandy Bridge Tablet. It'll be soon before someone will figure out how to install OSX on one of this thing. The big win of course is its IPS screen, far superior than any MacBook screens.
I don't see any of these devices... or anything Android/Chrome/MS/WebOS flavored denting Apple's iOS in the "consumer-device" category in 2011.
Many reasons have already been stated here across 100's of threads and comments, but I think the biggest reason that will emerge in 2011 (Summer) is viruses, trojans, phishing, etc. So-called "open" is well...open for any and all, and MS already has a wonderful track record. Android is catching up. You could almost include ?Vendor/Carrier apps? in this, since it forces some people to ?root? their devices. With fragmented and assorted ?stores? popping up all over, offering shared, cracked, pirated, etc., this will be a big problem for these devices.
Forget about "sandboxing" too. If an app is "re-built" for ?phishing your contacts?, and is available "free" from website "X" or Buddy ?Y?... and then further passed around from friend to friend over the internet or USB (#2 selling point behind #1 Flash)... well, you get the point. Sounds like the Windows experience all over again, just like ?The Register? article stated. IMHO, you gotta state the good with the bad on that very possible prediction of ?Android eclipsing iOS and having the largest marketshare?.
Re: Pirating: what will developers need to do to have a "pay-day"?... serve ever more ads throughout their Apps... many more! What happens when Flash get?s to play a part creating all of those ?interactive mandatory ads?. I shudder to think(!)
Flash: Can't wait to hear what that does to these Tablets. I'm thinking: "Upside-Down and Sunnyside-Up" scenarios. Could be a feature for campers(?).
How will any of the above be a better user experience, even "IF" Honeycomb is a really great OS, or MS can "really" get Win7 to work well on these devices, or WebOS is the most elegant competition to iOS?
On the positive side: I DO see these devices selling boatloads to the enterprise though.
Similar to IE6/Windows... they will be "good-enough" and cheaply priced in bulk to definitely be attractive to businesses running locked-down devices and vetted backend-systems and programs, with a full-time IT staff.
As an aside, marketshare statistics are useless unless categorized. I would hope eventually, that it would be broken down into consumer and enterprise numbers and graphs. Because just as with web browser statistics, saying that iE6 still dominates, is not telling the whole story. Just like including RIM in any statistics vs. iOS is misleading. How many "consumers" freely purchase RIM phones?
Summary:
1) I firmly believe that Android/MS/WebOS = ?enterprise device?, as with the Galaxy and Slate;
and
2) Apple will (continue to) dominate the ?consumer-device? category in 2011.
I don't believe that number for a moment. My parents' brand new Dell laptop running an i3 won't get 5 hours, I just do not believe a tablet with a smaller battery will get 5 hours on Windows whilst running any meaningful application. Also, name 5 touch-based Windows programs...
I think these devices miss the point of a tablet. A tablet brings the idea of being one-piece, solid, integrated. The iPad keyboard dock is not touted as part of the product itself, it's an accessory. This Asus device just feels like a laptop that snaps in half. The slide out keyboard one is potentially nice, but how would you rest it on something to work? Why would you? You want these in one hand while you touch them with the other, not balancing it to use a keyboard.
Crucially, people aren't looking for a tablet for having a tablet's sake. The iPad has eaten into netbook market share, i.e. low-price laptops. For the prices of these Asus devices, people will just buy laptops.
There'll be people who like these, but I don't think they'll be big sellers personally.
My thoughts too. It is almost a sign of desperation IMO to try to soak up some of the sales of confused buyers. They, like many are in disarray running around like chickens with their heads cut off thanks to iOS and iPad.
What is this nonsense about Android phones as "iPhone clones"? What does that have to do with anything? Does the person who wrote this article have any professionalism? I love Apple as much as the next guy, but it is not necessary to belittle the competition when you write an article. Leave it to the commentators.
Are you kidding ? Perhaps get your fingers out of your nose and do some research.
They started off with a Blackberry clone and suddenly changed to an iPhone clone.
This action reeks of copyism in any language.
This is a fact and the author of the article can include this fact if they want to.
Oh come on! You are a brand new account but imply that you've been here before. Your name is "hahaha" and all you ever post is one liners full of hate and bile.
You're the very definition of a troll and clearly someone who has been banned and is just coming back here to grief everyone for kicks. Since I don't like to encourage your type, this will be my only comment to you so feel free to flame away if it makes you feel important (and I know it does).
Well said, like DaHarder, but a little less articulate, but has better concept of Mathematics.
Hasn't this been done before, and it failed miserably ? Why will it be any different today ?
Yes the avalanche of iPad killers is about to begin, it was predicated, so here it comes, no surprise.
But as we all know, they will fight it out amongst themselves, Apple will watch from the sidelines, and SJ will have a chuckle of the spectacle at hand.
There will be hundreds of these tablets out there, how will the consumer differentiate them from one another ? Settle on supposably superior specs ? Road test them like one can do in Apple shops ?
Just a race to the bottom, each outdoing the other until the profit margin is nano thin.
Comments
The unit is about 5lbs with everything included: tablet, jacket, keyboard and power brick. If you're going to travel anywhere with it you need all 4 of these things to keep it useful. It doesn't get the all day battery life of an iPad, so you need the power brick. The tablet itself is hefty, 2.5lbs alone, heavier than an 11" MBA at 2.3lbs. This alone is failboat in my book. You can get 5 real hours of usage with a MBA or 3.5 hours of usage at best from a win7 tablet with no keyboard or mouse.
You could shave 1lb on the travel weight by leaving the jacket behind and maybe relying on keeping it in a backpack, but you just paid $1000 for a tablet... are you really going to trust that you won't drop it? Especially since it's a hefty 2.5lbs.
The screen is slightly higher res on the MBA too (1366x768).
It appears to have good horsepower, but by not compromising on speed at all I think they made a big mistake: this is too similar to the pc tablets from a decade ago. Too heavy, too little battery, software that isn't written or tuned for the form factor. Some people might be thinking this will be a good Photoshop tablet with the stylus, until they use one. Then they'll realize that paying $1000 for a tablet that's too heavy to be used in any practical fashion doesn't make a whole lot of sense, and they would've been better off just getting a notebook or a desktop. This is why these slates failed 10 years ago.
I don't have any of this criticism for the android based tablets ASUS is offering. Those will all be iPad 2 competitors, and their problem is they aren't shipping yet. They won't ship for several months, probably after the iPad 2 ships, and by then I believe they've already lost the battle. The ASUS android tablets will likely be comparable on weight, hardware, price and battery life relative to an iPad 2, and they'll differentiate on software. And for most people under most circumstances Apple will have the advantage in software.
Apple will have their 70-ish% share of tablets in 2011. I'm sure Asus will be a major player in the 'other' 30% category. But their win7 tablet is DOA for all the reasons outlined here.
For some strange reason the British Empire began considering companies and such as plural (in the late 1700s IIRC), so you see such jarring lack of agreement such as "Microsoft have...", "HP do...", and "Apple aren't...". Get used to it as you can't change a culture and its language (note that the "its" doesn't have an apostrophe!).
It?s the same vein as other plural nouns. For instance, ?People take issue with VAT increase? could be a headline, but you wouldn?t write or say ?People takes issue with VAT increase.? I believe this is standard everywhere English is spoken, the only difference seems to be in how Americans refer to plural proper nouns.
What is this nonsense about Android phones as "iPhone clones"? What does that have to do with anything? Does the person who wrote this article have any professionalism? I love Apple as much as the next guy, but it is not necessary to belittle the competition when you write an article. Leave it to the commentators.
Um no he does not. He is the most biased blogger on the internet.
Perhaps not, but that's a matter of style instead of being a grammar problem.
It could work. Cheney aimed a "scattershot" at a bird back in 2006 and just like ASUS it missed its target.
It's not about style, but context. It's contextually incorrect to take aim while firing scattershots at the target.
You might as well say, ``Asus is choosing a shotgun approach to blasting the competition, with a heavy dose of buck shot, by way of it's diverse line of embedded handhelds all intended to compete against the Apple iPad.''
Please proofread the titles. There's a subject-verb agreement issue in the title of this article. ASUS is one company so the verb 'to take' should not be conjugated plurally. Instead it should be in the singular.
And shouldn't there be an "a" before "scattershot?"
There's a bit of history behind whether the name of a company should be considered singular or plural. Since in the great American tradition I am making up this "bit of history", I will keep it vague and without references.
Several years ago a "tech journalist" was writing an article about Apple, Inc. [at that time known as Apple Computer, Inc (what else is there for a "tech journalist to write about other than Vista)]. Having just consumed a 5 liter box of wine, he managed to turn out a fantastic article which was widely plagiarized. Unfortunately instead of saying "Apple is" as the rules of English and human decency
Several hundred boxes of wine later, the "journalist" developed a degenerative brain disease and went into marketing where he gained fame by referring to a notebook computer as being "1.17 inches thin". Recently he has interviewed for the CEO position of a software company with a market capitalization which rivals that of Apple, Inc.
As written, "scattershot" is an adjective. Unless used for creative effect, "Aim" and "Scattershot" are incongruent.
Dictionary.com: "delivered over a wide area and at random; generalized and indiscriminate."
Written as a noun, "scatter shot" works. The "scatter shot" is composed of Android and Windows products.
Dictionary.com: Scatter Shot: "shot prepared for a weapon having a rifled bore or barrel."
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4085/a...-slate-tablets
. . .
Best. Post. Ever. ....
The ipad condenses what people do most of the time into a neat, powerful long lasting(battery-wise) package. Period.
But their win7 tablet is DOA for all the reasons outlined here.
I'm actually pretty excited about the ASUS Sandy Bridge Tablet. It'll be soon before someone will figure out how to install OSX on one of this thing. The big win of course is its IPS screen, far superior than any MacBook screens.
Many reasons have already been stated here across 100's of threads and comments, but I think the biggest reason that will emerge in 2011 (Summer) is viruses, trojans, phishing, etc. So-called "open" is well...open for any and all, and MS already has a wonderful track record. Android is catching up. You could almost include ?Vendor/Carrier apps? in this, since it forces some people to ?root? their devices. With fragmented and assorted ?stores? popping up all over, offering shared, cracked, pirated, etc., this will be a big problem for these devices.
Forget about "sandboxing" too. If an app is "re-built" for ?phishing your contacts?, and is available "free" from website "X" or Buddy ?Y?... and then further passed around from friend to friend over the internet or USB (#2 selling point behind #1 Flash)... well, you get the point. Sounds like the Windows experience all over again, just like ?The Register? article stated. IMHO, you gotta state the good with the bad on that very possible prediction of ?Android eclipsing iOS and having the largest marketshare?.
Re: Pirating: what will developers need to do to have a "pay-day"?... serve ever more ads throughout their Apps... many more! What happens when Flash get?s to play a part creating all of those ?interactive mandatory ads?. I shudder to think(!)
Flash: Can't wait to hear what that does to these Tablets. I'm thinking: "Upside-Down and Sunnyside-Up" scenarios. Could be a feature for campers(?).
How will any of the above be a better user experience, even "IF" Honeycomb is a really great OS, or MS can "really" get Win7 to work well on these devices, or WebOS is the most elegant competition to iOS?
On the positive side: I DO see these devices selling boatloads to the enterprise though.
Similar to IE6/Windows... they will be "good-enough" and cheaply priced in bulk to definitely be attractive to businesses running locked-down devices and vetted backend-systems and programs, with a full-time IT staff.
As an aside, marketshare statistics are useless unless categorized. I would hope eventually, that it would be broken down into consumer and enterprise numbers and graphs. Because just as with web browser statistics, saying that iE6 still dominates, is not telling the whole story. Just like including RIM in any statistics vs. iOS is misleading. How many "consumers" freely purchase RIM phones?
Summary:
1) I firmly believe that Android/MS/WebOS = ?enterprise device?, as with the Galaxy and Slate;
and
2) Apple will (continue to) dominate the ?consumer-device? category in 2011.
AAPL hits 400,- this time next year.
I don't believe that number for a moment. My parents' brand new Dell laptop running an i3 won't get 5 hours, I just do not believe a tablet with a smaller battery will get 5 hours on Windows whilst running any meaningful application. Also, name 5 touch-based Windows programs...
I think these devices miss the point of a tablet. A tablet brings the idea of being one-piece, solid, integrated. The iPad keyboard dock is not touted as part of the product itself, it's an accessory. This Asus device just feels like a laptop that snaps in half. The slide out keyboard one is potentially nice, but how would you rest it on something to work? Why would you? You want these in one hand while you touch them with the other, not balancing it to use a keyboard.
Crucially, people aren't looking for a tablet for having a tablet's sake. The iPad has eaten into netbook market share, i.e. low-price laptops. For the prices of these Asus devices, people will just buy laptops.
There'll be people who like these, but I don't think they'll be big sellers personally.
My thoughts too. It is almost a sign of desperation IMO to try to soak up some of the sales of confused buyers. They, like many are in disarray running around like chickens with their heads cut off thanks to iOS and iPad.
What is this nonsense about Android phones as "iPhone clones"? What does that have to do with anything? Does the person who wrote this article have any professionalism? I love Apple as much as the next guy, but it is not necessary to belittle the competition when you write an article. Leave it to the commentators.
Are you kidding ? Perhaps get your fingers out of your nose and do some research.
They started off with a Blackberry clone and suddenly changed to an iPhone clone.
This action reeks of copyism in any language.
This is a fact and the author of the article can include this fact if they want to.
Who's trolling?
Anyway...
I think it's great Apple is getting more competition. It will only cause them to get better, really.
You are boring, Apple needs competition so they get better blah blah blah.
I have read this crap so many times.
Let me tell you and others, Apple competes with itself, the others are irrelevant, have been and will always be. Now do you get it ?
Oh come on! You are a brand new account but imply that you've been here before. Your name is "hahaha" and all you ever post is one liners full of hate and bile.
You're the very definition of a troll and clearly someone who has been banned and is just coming back here to grief everyone for kicks. Since I don't like to encourage your type, this will be my only comment to you so feel free to flame away if it makes you feel important (and I know it does).
Well said, like DaHarder, but a little less articulate, but has better concept of Mathematics.
Um no he does not. He is the most biased blogger on the internet.
Your posts are so predictable, you wait for the troll to post and they begin your mini avalanche of hate and bile towards DED.
May I ask why ? Did he father your love child, and leave you to raise it alone ?
Did you have a high school crush on him, but he ignored you for the Cheerleader ?
I feel sorry for you as you appear to have some problems, full of hate, why are you like this ?
Hasn't this been done before, and it failed miserably ? Why will it be any different today ?
Yes the avalanche of iPad killers is about to begin, it was predicated, so here it comes, no surprise.
But as we all know, they will fight it out amongst themselves, Apple will watch from the sidelines, and SJ will have a chuckle of the spectacle at hand.
There will be hundreds of these tablets out there, how will the consumer differentiate them from one another ? Settle on supposably superior specs ? Road test them like one can do in Apple shops ?
Just a race to the bottom, each outdoing the other until the profit margin is nano thin.
Dejavu me thinks.
I have never seen anyone using an Asus product, and in fact never heard of them.
What ever they make will be a POS.
you don't know dick so why do you pronounce them 'pos'? stupid.