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Asus Announces x86 Transformer
MrSeb writes with the scoop on Asus's new Transformer tablet/laptop devices: "If you've ever looked at an Asus Transformer and wished that it was slightly bigger, had an x86 processor, and ran Windows, I have good news: At Computex in Taiwan, Asus has unveiled just that. Dubbed the Transformer Book, this isn't some wimpy Atom-powered thing either: This Transformer will ship with a range of Ivy Bridge Core i3/5/7 processors and discrete Nvidia graphics. Like its Android-powered predecessors, the Transformer Book is a touchscreen tablet computer that plugs into keyboard docking station, effectively becoming a laptop (or ultrabook, if you prefer). Rounding out the specs, the Transformer Book will come in a range of models (11.6, 13, and 14 inches), your choice of SSD or HDD, up to 4GB of RAM. All three models will have an IPS display capable of full HD (1920×1080). There's a webcam on the front of the tablet portion of the Transformer, and a 5-megapixel shooter on the back. There's no mention of wireless connectivity, but presumably there's Bluetooth and WiFi; on the wired side, there seems to be only a single micro-HDMI socket (on the tablet), and a USB socket (on the keyboard/dock). On the software side, the Transformer Book will of course run Windows 8. It all sounds great — but Asus kept one tiny tidbit out of its presentation: battery life."
Aside from the Nvidia graphics (which, from the looks of it, can be disabled for the on-chip output), perhaps this could be the first "tablet" capable of running fully Free Software? (UEFI evil aside).
in the photo? or do apple not enforce copyright or design patents anymore?
That’s 189 DPI. Not too shabby, and here I was looking at a 1366x768.
This might just be my new laptop.
If it's EFI setup is locked from the user, I wouldn't be surprised. Asus has done so for their later Transformer models, with no functionally equivalent alternative that does not have UEFI unlocked.
For those snarky folks who say "don't buy it", that doesn't work in practice. That requires a like-for-like alternative to exist which does not have the encumbrances of UEFI locks.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Hardly, for instance... take my tablet, a WeTab. It's a keyboad-less netbook, and has run Fedora 15, 16 and now the just released 17.
And it won't be the first, as if it uses nVidia, then it'll hardly run well with fully free software.
But will it be fanless? For me, that's the main attraction of the Transformer.
If you've ever looked at an Asus Transformer and wished that it was slightly bigger, had an x86 processor, and ran Windows...
... and then I wished that my boss fired me at work for being an Atheist, and I came home to find my dog run over by a pick-up truck parked in my drive way, and I went in the house to find my wife in bed with the redneck who owns the truck, and the redneck grabs his gun and shoots me in the nuts.
Well, on second thought, all of that would be better than running Windows.
Well firstly ASUS make Windows tablets equivalent to MOST of their Android ones, the A numbers are Android, the W numbers Windows, it's not new that they make a Windows tablet, they just don't have much market traction.
So the A500's equivalent was the W500 (which was based on AMD's low power chipset):
http://www.amazon.com/Acer-Iconia-W500-BZ467-10-1-Inch-Tablet/dp/B004SBI2PW
I'm waiting on the A700s (one coming from Acer, one from Asus, and maybe a Samsung unit too), which is the Android 1920x1200 screen Quad core Tegra 3. These Windows tablets don't sell, perhaps Windows 8 will help them, but they're really not so useful on touch screens or low power long battery life devices. Both the Asus and Acer ones are due this month. The Samsung one is rumoured but not released (I'm guessing that's because Apple screen is provided by Samsung and Apple probably got an exclusive windows on high res screens from Samsung).
I don't think so. It seems that the Microsoft tax will be mandatory. I don't mind the money wasted as much as being part of Microsoft's statistics. So I don't buy computers with Windows preinstalled.
And the first EEE PC's were so promising...
Hasn't the history of tablets taught you nothing? It's precisely the use of traditional operating systems grafted onto tablets which are the prime reason for their lackluster performance... at least until the iPad with a tablet-oriented interface.
Point being, the "playskool" interface makes perfect sense on a touch-based device. There's a reason most people believe Windows 8 has a much higher chance of success on tablets instead of on the desktop.
Most people on Slashdot are fucking idiots.
Not true.
Windows 7 SP 1 runs with secureBoot and EFI fine. Also every single EFI implementation has an option to disable it since XP is still heavily used and will be used for many years just like OS/2 options are still in many bioses today.
http://saveie6.com/
Looks to be fanless, but with lots of vents, more troubling is the battery life if it's sucking down 4, or 5 times the juice, are we talking 3 hours instead of 15? Presumably not that bad, but are we talking >8 at least?? Not much good if it can't handle a working day.
From the article, the air-vent comment:
"The tablet is positively riddled with air vents. If we assume that the Transformer Book uses the lowest-power Core i7 CPU, the 3667U (17-watt TDP), we’re still talking about a chip that uses at least 4 or 5 times the power of the A5X ARM SoC in the iPad 3. "
Battery life comment:
"Considering battery life was omitted from Asus’s presentation, I would guess “not a lot.”"
For me the Android tablets are a big win for two reasons:
1) Good battery performance.
2) I can pick the thing up and use it when ever I want with out the damn "Windows in installing update 1 of 18".. "Windows is restarting to finish applying updates"... "Please don't turn your machine off, windows is applying a critical update"..
This may sound frivolous, and the configuration can probably be changed to avoid this. But my last netbook (with Windows 7) was not used too frequently, but every time I turned that thing on, waited for what felt like 5 minutes for it to boot up then get nagged to apply updates, postpone them, etc, then a java update would pop-up, then some other update... What's worse, if I walked away after turning it on (while it was booting, perhaps to make a coffee or get a beer) I'd return and find I missed the opportunity to postpone the update and find the thing shutting down again to apply an update (without me asking it to) - really not a convenient way for a device like this to behave.
I see tablets and netbooks as a convenience machine not a workhorse, and Windows just sours that experience. Let's hope Windows 8 fixes these short comings.
I know you probably think I'm just a Microsoft basher, but I'm not, despite being a Linux user I find Windows 7 is a perfectly reasonable desktop OS and don't really have much to complain about. I'd suggest it to any non tech savvy user who didn't want a Mac. But on a tablet? Given past experiences, no-thank-you.
So I think the likes of Android is safe.
Never happened. True story.
Enough with the x86's already. Where's my ARM laptop, dammit?
They don't seem to be able to make a laptop ready CPU. Realize that ARM CPUs cap out right around where the Atom starts. Ok fine, nothing wrong with that there is a MASSIVE low end and embedded market and ARM rules it. However, it does mean that for laptops, it isn't so useful. It is also lacking features in that arena as well. Really 64-bit is what people are after for desktops and laptops today. The new Atoms can do x64 no problem, ARM for all their chatter about it can't.
This is all extremely low end, laptop wise too. As noted this particular product doesn't use an Atom, it uses a real Core i chip which is a good bit more powerful and is what most people are after in their laptop.
So have a chat with ARM about when, or maybe more accurately if, they plan on moving in to the higher end CPU space. Until they have something there, I doubt there'll be much interest in an ARM laptop.
They didn't mention price. With all that hardware, there's no way that this thing is going to be in the $300-$400 range that is the norm for Android tablets.
Metro is inspiring anger not for being a tablet interface but for treating desktop users as second class citizens and for essentially deprecating classic Windows altogether. I think Metro could work pretty well on a desktop if it offered functionality analogous to the start menu but it doesn't. Everything is shoehorned into the flat, linear tile metaphor and collision between the old and new world looks terrible.
Why? Really.. why? There is no reason Android needs to become a desktop OS.
I'm sorry, I don't buy the "everything must converge" theory and, quite frankly, when Win8 comes out it will probably kill the idea off once and for all. There isn't an institution that I can think of that will put Windows 8 on their desktops unless they want to drive their users and support people insane.
However I do believe Linux and Android apps should be ported back and forth... but for other reasons.
So the way it should work is Windows on the desktop runs with a normal desktop, mouse and keyboard UI. However Metro apps can run, and they run in their own window, or fullscreen if the user wants. Basically it adds functionality to your desktop. You can run smartphone and tablet apps, if you find a reason to. Wonderful.
However instead they try to treat your system like it IS a smartphone, despite of course it being operated by KB + M, and just throwing in classical desktop operation as an afterthought. They really seem to think full screen tablet like apps are the future. They aren't, of course, having multiple windows to work with is one of the big points of a modern desktop system.
Worse still? They are doing it on their server OS. Server 2012 has all the same metro-ified UI even though it is clearly of no use there.
This is marketing overriding reality. I'd bet a dollar that MS research has studies that show that Metro is great on touchscreens, not great on KB + M. Microsoft actually does lots of real empirical research on their UIs. However the marketing department probably decided they loved the idea of One UI To Rule Them All and that they could use it to push MS smartphones and tablets and so said "No, Metro is THE UI, make it happen!"
Net result? People will refuse to upgrade to 8. They'll keep running 7. What's worse is it will create a mentality like with XP of not wanting to upgrade. People will decide 7 is the only "good Windows" and won't upgrade. So in 2020 we'll be trying to push people to Windows 10, which ill be a good OS, but they'll be resisting because "7 is the only good one."
I am really just getting sick of this fucking tablet/smartphone obsession UI designers have these days. We get it, the smartphone market is huge. That's wonderful, I love mine, by all means let's have good UIs for them. But stop trying to fucking force that shit on the desktop. It is a different paradigm. Hell you see it with Unity for Linux just as much as Metro for Windows. This "OMG SHINY TABLETZ!!!" attitude of UI development.
Of course in either case the shell can be replaced, I'm not worried personally, I'll upgrade to Windows 8 at work (I'm the Windows admin, I need to know how to use the latest Windows) and I'll just replace the shell with something that gives me a useful desktop, same as the Linux lead has done on his system. However neither of us should have to. These people should be smarter. They should save the tablet UI for tablets and have a good desktop UI for desktops.
I've spent a fair bit of time over the past years talking to manufacturers about supporting open source (FreeBSD specifically, but also in general) and I hear the same thing: they need customers to tell them that they want it to be able to devote any funding to it. This is easy for server stuff, as it's easy to produce customers who are going to say 'we want to buy 10,000 new machines this month that have 10Gig ethernet controllers with in-tree drivers'. It's much harder to find people saying the same thing about mobile hardware. No one refuses to buy an Android handset or tablet because it has blob drivers, for example. It's getting slightly easier with GPUs, because customers buying them for compute clusters want open source drivers so that they can verify correctness in certain code paths.
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I think for the people who do want decent battery life, the new Transformer running the latest low-power Core i3 CPU, built-in Ivy Bridge graphics, and 4 GB of RAM is all they need. Unlike Intel's past built-in graphics chips, the HD 4000 GPU built into the Ivy Bridge chipset is no slouch at even 3-D graphics, so for most users there is no significant advantage to offering an additional GPU unit.
So no nothing like GNOME.
Windows 8 looks pretty much like Windows 7, if you turn off the "Metro" Interface.
Windows 7 = ver 6.1
Windows 8 = ver 6.2
Edit "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\RPEnabled" to have a value of 0 and reboot. Now the start button works like you want. You don't have to leave the desktop. Put Metro back by setting it to 1, of course.
I think "metro" is an apt name - it is basic transportation for the smelly masses, and you only see it when it is in your way, or you want to be somewhere else. That said, it is a good interface for people who mostly do just a few things.
I haven't used Win8 much yet, but it seems pretty snappy - who knows maybe Microsoft made it more efficient for tablets, but you can get the benefits using it like a desktop.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
A major problem is that many capabilities of modern graphic cards are as much about software as they are about hardware. Think back 15 years, to a period when dialup modems still mattered. Remember the hell and grief Linux users went through over "Winmodems"? Here's the punchline -- the hardware itself actually WAS abundantly well-documented. For the most part, a HSP winmodem is nothing more than a cheap soundcard with an RJ-11 jack and some parts to match the signal level between TTL logic and a live phone line. Or, if it was a higher-end Lucent card, it had a fairly generic DSP whose own datasheets were easily available. The problem is, knowing how that soundcard (or DSP) works is 1% of the job in writing "Linmodem" drivers, because everything past that point is software. That's part of the reason why the Asterisk project had a relatively easy time repurposing Winmodems into "phone interface cards" for interactive voice response systems -- they didn't TRY to be modems, and literally used them only as simple soundcards.
If nVidia came out with a new, totally alien GPU architecture, then personally handed Linux Torvalds a 3,000-page datasheet with register reference and a brief "theory of operation" section -- but no working open-source reference driver, and no working sample code, it would be about as useful for the development of a modern open-source 3D driver as the latest New York telephone book. Even if they ended up with working drivers, they wouldn't hold a candle to nVidia's own binaries, because the people writing the drivers would have only the most minimal idea of how to actually USE the raw bare-metal hardware sitting under them to achieve the desired 3D outcomes.
Asus simply cannot be trusted with your money. My Transformer TF101 was sold to me on the belief--as Asus told review sites like Anandtech--that the dock would be compatible with other Transformer-series models going forward. That was a lie; it was specific to the TF101 and is now effectively worthless to me when I upgrade the tablet in the future. Had they told the truth, I wouldn't have bought the dock (and therefore, likely wouldn't have bought the Transformer in the first place.)
They followed that up with the TF201, a model so badly flawed that GPS didn't work at all, and Bluetooth / WiFi worked poorly as well. The reasons were twofold: poor design (metal casing that blocked radio, and pogo pin connectors that didn't connect properly), coupled with poor build quality. Asus' answer to the problem? Sticking its fingers in its ears, shouting "LALALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU", and then finally removing an already-advertised feature from the spec sheet rather than actually fixing the problem.
Then come the Ice Cream Sandwich updates, which have caused massive problems with random reboots, boot lockups, boot loops, and sleep of death. In Asus' own fairly substantial poll on Facebook, almost 90% of respondents have reported that they've been experiencing these issues, as many as several times a day. The tablet is essentially worthless, at this point; you can't do anything meaningful on it knowing it will likely reboot and lose what you were working on.
Simple enough fix, you'd think: let users roll back to Honeycomb while Asus fixes this problem, one they appear to have largely because they've requested combined builds for both Tegra2 and Tegra3 devices from Nvidia, where other vendors seem to be working on the builds in parallel. (These problems basically don't exist on other ICS tablets and phones).
But no. After THREE MONTHS, Asus is still forcing these bug-riddled, barely-tested updates on new TF101 buyers, still provides NO official way to roll back, and still considers your hardware warranty invalid if you dare install your own chosen operating system on the hardware you paid for. (And for most users, it's only even possible to install your own choice thanks to the hacking community. Even though the vast majority of production of this device lacks any mobile connectivity except WiFi / Bluetooth, Asus locks it down to prevent users exercising free choice, and patches exploits in new production as soon as they're found).
And after three months, the problem still continues for many, many people. This despite Asus publicly telling users the update was fixed after pushing several updates that didn't fix the problem. (But then why am I surprised? Months ago after the problems were first reported by the community, Asus flat-out lied to the media and said no such problems existed.)
Sure, you may feel the fact that this is an X86 version somehow avoids all this. Frankly, I doubt it. Asus will find some way to screw this up too, and you're naive if you think this is a product worth buying.
AVOID ASUS LIKE THE PLAGUE.
That's about all I can say as I've been seriously looking at the Acer Iconia W5xx. The interesting thing is, it's a Win7 Tablet that comes with a keyboard dock and is sized the same as a standard notebook at 8x11 inches. It's also spec'd/priced to compete directly with the same size/spec'd iPad unlike the Transformer and many of the other tablets I've looked at recently.
As I said, it's sized the same at 8x11 and the weight is almost the same as my 1/2 inch notebooks for school when they're full of paper/handouts and such. So I think Acer has really nailed the form factors and price point they needed to.
Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown
Nothing wrong with the idea of an application menu. It works. It's efficient, it's fast. The big annoyance for me with the windows start menu is the breaking of the cardinal rule of interface design: consistancy. Things move around. For example, I am in the habbit at work of bringing up a remote desktop client with ctrl-esc R. That used to work. Then I ran another program starting with R, and the menu rearranged itsself, and ctrl-esc R did something else entirely! That should not happen. Metro takes the thing even further though, with the whole layout shifting around unpredictably as the interface tries to guess what I want.
The best alternative to a menu would be an auto-completing text launcher, but tha wouldn't work well on a tablet at all.
the "playskool" interface makes perfect sense on a touch-based device
And Windows loses its one strong point - familiarity. Leaving it with short battery life and most likely scary heat issues.
By the way, I like my travelling arrangement with my Xoom a lot more that the transformer's snap-together concept. For me, operating on an airliner fold out tray is a prime requirement and the Transformer loses two ways: 1) the screen can't be moved around independently of the keyboard and 2) the trackpad adds a lot of real estate to the keyboard that I don't need because I can just touch the screen (and get out a dedicated bluetooth trackpad when desk space is available). The airliner compatibility issue is also why battery life is important to me and why this Windows transformer simply will not do, even if it had a real OS.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Thanks, asshole, that was at a -1 already. If you hadn't drawn attention to it I'd have never seen it. Mods, please mod me and the parent down to -1 so nobody else will see the damned GP's post!
Free Martian Whores!
It's a tablet, remember. It's supposed to be convenient to hold.