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

And they thought "iPad" was bad

[Quiet_Desperation]

I'm sure no one will stoop to the level of calling it a Pee Pad. Nope.

"Flash"

[nemasu]

Is it just me or does it seem ridiculous that "our device X supports flash" is becoming a major selling point??

The fanboys will scream

[Vinegar Joe]

And then whimper when they find out Asus has been making Apple products for years.

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1042363/asus-apple-building-tablet-pc

Re:The fanboys will scream

[man_of_mr_e]

I'm not a fanboy, but that's not exactly true. Yes, most of their devices do have a lot of stock components, however apple does do a lot of custom ASIC's in their products and supposed the new CPU is an apple modified version of teh ARM Cortex... so they do do their own hardware as well.

Re:The fanboys will scream

[cgenman]

And all of these are being built in the same factories overseas, contracted out from a few people. The actual LCD in your HDTV is made by either LG, Sony, or Samsung, no matter what the branding on the outside is. These are mixed with different technologies under the hood, circuit boards, etc, and sold by different brands. Sometimes a TV will come off the line and be slapped with stickers from multiple brands, or will be custom built to a particular brand's specifications.

Apple is no different. They contract out manufacturing to different factories overseas, with parts from some and other parts from others. They always invest a lot of time and effort into unique software interfaces. Sometimes, as with Firewire, they help develop and push hardware standards. They also create custom casings, motherboards, and hardware configurations. In the case of the iPad they helped develop the custom processor underlying the entire thing.

Apple participates in the realities of world manufacturing, just like everyone else. They can actually do this a lot more since they abandoned the rarer PowerPC platform and moved to X86, which specifically saved on the custom manufacturing. That's how it is done. To deride them for manufacturing this way would be like singling them out for making products with plastic, or shipping hardware in large cardboard boxes.

Android

[TBoon]

So, Intel or ARM is still not decided, but that it will run Windows is? Guess that must be WinCE? But why not put Android on it? To make a real alternative to those cheap/underpowered chinese android pads floating around, and give the WePad a run for it's money?

Re:Android

[0123456]

Hence "its better with Windows" being plastered on the promo sites for certain eee models last year.

The funny part is that my EeePC works so much better with Linux than it does with Windows... I don't even remember the last time I booted it into the Windows partition.

Day Late...

[0100010001010011]

Neither model is expected to hit the market until Q1 2011, with prices tipped at between $399 and $499.

At which point the iPad will have been out for an entire year. Every one else that can will have jumped on the bandwagon. If I *wanted* a *Pad, I'd go and get an iPad. I'm not waiting until Q1 of next year for something.

Reminds me of what PCWorld said about the Windows 7 Phone:
"If this were two years ago, Windows Phone 7 might even be a cutting edge innovation that could set the smartphone world on fire."

Re:Day Late...

[zmollusc]

iPad, iShmad. I am willing to wait until a tablet comes out that does what I want. Or (more unlikely) until Apple decide that it will allow the things I want to do with a tablet to be done.

Re:Day Late...

[pandrijeczko]

What about those of us who *might* want a tablet if it had a maximum price of $500 and could run what we want to on it? If it's made by Asus and has Windows installed by default, then there's a good chance it can be made to run Linux also.

Re:Day Late...

[jedidiah]

Plays EyeTV HD recordings without the need for a realtime transcoding server.

Plays HD HomeRun recordings without the need for a realtime transcoding server.

Plays Handicam home movies without the need for a realtime transcoding server.

Comes with 250G+ internal storage or allows me to connect external storage.

Connects to upnp servers and samba servers and netatalk.

Allows for management of the device in the complete absence of iTunes.

Asus have missed an opportunity here...

[pandrijeczko]

Asus should remarket themselves as "Snapple", call the device the "iPud" and appoint a new CEO with glasses called "Steve Jibs".

I'm sure if Steve Jibs of Snapple Inc. post some viral videos of the iPud showing its Adobe support, multi-tasking and USB ports, thousands of rabid fanbois would queue up outside Snapple Stores to buy one and part with their hard-earned cash before they had calmed down enough to realise they had been duped, albeit with a device of better capabilities than their iPads.

The browser is Opera

[hkmwbz]

I was about to say "surprisingly", but then realized that it isn't really that surprising after all: The Eee Pad seems to use Opera as its browser.

Joins?

[nurb432]

By announce a simi-vapor product with no concrete release date or price..

horrible

[yyxx]

A Windows 7 tablet and a Windows CE tablet, both lousy software platforms for tablets. They should be shipping Android, ChromeOS, and MeeGo.

Re:NT with a CE compatibility layer

[0123456]

It's a tablet, not a desktop.

But I suspect people will still want to run applications on it.

The only reason to run Windows is to run Windows applications, so if Windows applications don't run, why would anyone choose it over Linux or iWhatever?

Re:NT with a CE compatibility layer

[Seth Kriticos]

Finally, Linux achieves parity with Windows!

You got it wrong. This time Linux runs circles around Windows. Though Windows losses it's selling point, as existing x86 binary applications don't run on this thing (if it is ARM), existing Linux apps can just be recompiled and run just fine on ARM.

You basically have the inverse situation here.

Re:Half baked

[znu]

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!"

Meanwhile, these vendors seem totally oblivious to the all the things Apple got exactly right with the iPad (form factor, battery life, consistent touch-optimized UI, integration with the existing iTunes ecosystem, revenue generation features for third-party developers built into the system, ability to draw on existing iPhone/Mac developer pool obsessed with user experience, etc.). The companies doing this are going to end up with buggy, slow, awkward devices that consumers won't touch, and they'll be scratching their head saying "But we have more features! It makes no sense!"

HP is pretty much the only company that seems to have a coherent response to the iPad. It's rather obvious what happened to their Windows 7 based Slate device. They were planning to ship that as their response to Apple, but then someone at HP actually used an iPad, and said, basically "Holy $h!t, we're not going to match this by taking a Windows 7 netbook and ripping the keyboard off". And fortunately for them, WebOS -- which has the potential to be a very credible tablet platform with a bit of reworking -- happened to be for sale.

Disregard any tablet running a desktop OS; they've been on the market for years and nobody wants them. And disregard attempts by companies that know nothing about platform-building to adapt current smartphone versions of Android (or desktop Linux distros) to tablet use. They'll do it badly, and hardly anyone will write apps with such monstrosities in mind.

Watch HP with WebOS. Watch Google, when they get around to doing a real tablet version of Android. Watch Apple (obviously). And watch Microsoft, when it eventually occurs to them that they need to do a tablet version of Windows Phone 7 rather than pushing desktop Windows 7 on tablets.

Everything else will prove to be an irrelevant sideshow.

Agreed

[Weezul]

WebOS beats the pants off Windows Mobile. I'll hold out for Intel shipping a MeeGo tablet however. N900s are fucking awesome.

Re:Half baked

[Anonymous Coward]

There are already tons of Windows tablets with both a digitizer based stylus and multitouch. Apple just cheaped out on their touch screen.

Re:Half baked

[Draek]

Meanwhile, these vendors seem totally oblivious to the all the things Apple got exactly right with the iPad (form factor, battery life, consistent touch-optimized UI, integration with the existing iTunes ecosystem, revenue generation features for third-party developers built into the system, ability to draw on existing iPhone/Mac developer pool obsessed with user experience, etc.). The companies doing this are going to end up with buggy, slow, awkward devices that consumers won't touch, and they'll be scratching their head saying "But we have more features! It makes no sense!"

You mean like it happened with Android?

To paraphrase the words of the Apple loyalists... maybe it's just you're not in the target market for these tablets.

Disregard any tablet running a desktop OS; they've been on the market for years and nobody wants them.

Nobody wants them for $1500, this one is gonna be $500. If you ask people around on whether they'd like a Tablet PC or not, the most common response you'd have gotten was "no, they're too expensive", not "no, they're running the same OS as my computer". This one addresses that issue, it remains to be seen whether it'll be enough or not, but I don't think you're justified in dismissing it outright.

Now, I'm not in the market for this product either as I find the idea of Windows on a tablet to be dumb as bricks, but I hate this idea circulating around, that unless you don't copy Apple's designs 100% you can't succeed in today's market when reality has proven that wrong again and again for the last quarter of a century.