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.