Asus Joins Tablet PC Race

WrongSizeGlass writes "Reuters is reporting that netbook pioneer Asustek Computer Inc. has become the latest technology company to jump on the tablet PC bandwagon. The device will be called the Eee Pad, will run on Intel or ARM chips, and use Microsoft's Windows operating system. 'The Eee Pad can display Adobe Flash for the full web experience, has a USB port and a camera,' Asus Chairman Jonney Shih said. Asus did not release pricing details or a potential release date, and did not provide further details on the format or a launch date for the new app store."

Comments

Re:Half baked

[MikeFM]

Why would you want Windows on a tablet? Even if they somehow got the OS to work right with a tablet - which I can't imagine since it'd mean a total redesign of the OS and an actual understanding of usability (which no Microsoft product has ever shown) - then, either the apps would still have to be custom re-written to work correctly on a tablet or you'd just be using apps that don't function well at all. Either way the user would still have to learn to use a new system so where is the benefit over using iPhone OS or even Android or webOS? Why not just get one of the million existing Windows tablet PCs?

The only benefit I can see to a Windows tablet is that Windows developers that don't know C, C++, or Java, or are just to dim to learn a new platform in these languages, wouldn't have to learn to program. Well written C, C++, and Java apps can be pretty easily ported to either iPhone OS or Android anyway so it's really only a problem for poorly written apps and half baked developers. As a user I'd prefer to have fewer of these apps floating around causing trouble anyway; I don't need Flash using up 99% of my system resources to animate a button; I don't want to install half a dozen apps to find one that actually functions just to later learned that the others fscked up my registry; I don't need a virus, a worm, or spamware either.

And a stylus? WTF is wrong with you! ;) No actually what I want is for them to make a good multi-touch screen that also plays well with a stylus. I've seen some styluses that track pressure themselves and communicate that data back over BT. I guess that's okay but I wonder about battery life and bulk.

Silly transcoding requirements

[SuperKendall]

Plays EyeTV HD recordings without the need for a realtime transcoding server.
*other transcoding whining deleted*

I hate to call people silly outright, but that wishlist is silly.

Why would you want a TABLET, which inherently needs to be as light as possible with as long a battery life as possible, that plays video that far outstrips the ability of the device to display? It takes far more storage, far more processing to decide, and in the end you get the same video that someone who did take a small amount of time to decode only he gets a device that weighs half as much and has 4x the battery life.

Already the market is addressing the issues of transcoding - any media bought from Apple will work with the iPad directly. The latest EyeTV device already transcodes for the iPad in addition to the larger stream in real time. Any modern media PC can handle the transcoding easily and quickly behind the scenes, and it only ever needs to be done once since HD space is increasingly cheap -so why the fear of transcoding?

You don't want a tablet, you want a desktop in your hands. Which may happen in a few years but obviously you are going to be waiting at least five - while all the rest of us shake our heads and enjoy tablets the entire time. And even then, I'd have to say that I'd still rather have 4x the battery life and transcode on whatever media server I have, since being a fixed box it will always have far more power on tap for the job.

Re:Half baked

[TheNetAvenger]

All these companies seem to be saying to themselves "Wow, Apple sold 2M units and their product doesn't even have a camera or a USB port, and can't play Flash. If we make sure our product has those, we'll be rich!"

Or if you live in reality, you can find videos of devices like this in Microsoft 'future tech' presentations going back to 2002/2003.

The reason these devices are NOW becoming popular is a very simple economic concept. PRICE. Prior to this last year good Touch and Pen based display technologies were EXPENSIVE. Now that the quality of display has caught up and the cost isn't adding $1000 to the device, cheap and easy touch and pen tablet devices are NOW POSSIBLE.

As for the iPad, it got more WRONG than right. For example, the iPad is highly underpowered and THIS DOES MATTER when it is rendering web pages and navigating the web 10x slower than the cheapest netbook running Windows7. No design reasons, battery life reasons, etc are worth the total loss of performance a user gets when using an iPad.

Why even wait for the screen redraws on an iPad and the slow performance and loss of multi-tasking when you can get nearly the same battery life, on a faster CPU and a faster GPU run an OS that can run the new touch apps or even go old school and open up any application you have.

Just browsing the internet the difference between these devices and the iPad is laughable and it makes you feel sorry for the iPad users that think their experience is 'ideal' when touch based netbook users are flying around the net with a full experience.

1) If you think these are 'copying' the iPad you have been living under a rock.
2) If you think these even try to compare to the iPad you are living under a rock.
      (Heck they have full handwriting recognition and even voice recognition, does an iPad?)
3) If you don't understand that it is about the 'cost' of the parts to make these devices and the more powerful CPUs getting cheaper and more advanced for heat and battery, you are still living under a rock.

PS It is funny that you call these device 'buggy'. Do you realize how often an iPad crashes? iPads crash on average more than once a day, which is worse than Windows7 and even worse than Vista. They are inherently buggy and glitchy, as any review you will find on them has to admit.