Odd Laptop-Tablet Hybrids Show PC Makers' Panic

jfruh writes "Taipei's Computex trade show has seen an array of strange devices on sale that are somewhere between PCs and tablets: laptops with screens you can twist in every direction, tablets with detachable keyboards, all-in-one PCs with detachable monitors. Some have Intel chips, some ARM chips; some run Windows 8, some Android. They all exist because of the cheap components now available, and because Windows 8 will make touch interfaces possible — but mostly they exist because PC makes are starting to freak out about being left behind by the tablet revolution."

Comments

WTF?

[Jaysyn]

My cousin has had an HP that did this before the iPad was a thing. It runs WinXP for Tablets.

Re:WTF?

[Colonel Korn]

My cousin has had an HP that did this before the iPad was a thing. It runs WinXP for Tablets.

Dozens or hundreds of laptops have done this for the better part of a decade.

Also, this post is one of the worst pieces of crap I've ever seen make it onto Slashdot. TFA is a garbage bloglike post with virtually no content. The paltry information it has includes major mistakes, such as "Yet another Acer laptop, the aptly named Yoga, has a screen that folds..." The Yoga is, of course, a Lenovo product. We've talked about it before.

Bluntly, James Niccolai and Michael Kan are both idiots who shouldn't have jobs. Soulskill was lax in posting a story that only linked to their garbage "article."

Re:WTF?

[cpu6502]

Well to set the record straight:
- Apple wasn't the first to develop a multimedia computer (music-quality sound and full-screen video).
- Apple wasn't the first to develop preemptive multitasking for home computers.
- Apple wasn't the first to develop MP3 players.
- Or tablets.
- Or smartphones.
- Though they were the first with laptops (I'll give them credit for that).

Re:WTF?

[bipbop]

Is the laptop bit some sort of humor I don't understand? As far as I can tell, they weren't especially early on the laptop front.

Re:WTF?

[sfhock]

BYOD is getting big in the corporate word. It means Bring Your Own Device, and its a way to let your employees use their favorite tablet, laptop, etc to access corporate systems and info. The security must be such that a non company owned asset can safely access company resources while still maintaining access to the outside world ( say through VPN or virtual desktop technology)

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

They were the first company with the latop as you know it. (Apple is responsible for a whole lot of 'as you know it's, not technical firsts)

There were lots of portable computers but nothing like the old 100. It was the first computer that was a true analog to it's desktop counterpart in the now familiar truely portable clamshell formfactor. It had the same performance as a destkop mac. Used the same media. Used the same software. Same operating system. You could even plug in the same ADB and SCSI peripherals. Macs at the time were already impressive, and to have a no-compromise portable was downright mindblowing.

All of the other portables at the time were significant compromises in one area or another. Many had no nonvolital storage. Many used a paired down OS or software implementation. Many were just plain big and heavy. The first mac laptop had everything, and it shook up the industry. That debut presentation where he simply pulled it out of a laser printer paper tray set the audience on fire for a reason.

Re:WTF?

[idontgno]

There were lots of portable computers but nothing like the old 100. It was the first computer that was a true analog to it's desktop counterpart in the now familiar truely portable clamshell formfactor.

Data General One. 1984 (predating Macintosh Portable by 5 years and Powerbook 100 by 7). Precisely equivalent to many desktop systems of the time (IBM PC/XT standard: MS-DOS, Intel 8088 processor, floppy boot) except portable, battery-powered, and clamshell laptop format.

Sorry. The Powerbook 100 represents an incremental evolution of the laptop idea, but it's not really ground-breaking by any unbiased standard.