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Would You Use a Smartphone-Style Laptop With a Three-Day Battery Life? (king5.com)

An anonymous reader quotes USA Today: "Always connected personal computers" -- or ACPCs -- refer to a new breed of Windows laptops with three key features: a battery that can last multiple days; instant-on access when you open the lid or touch a key; and an optional high-speed cellular connection, to avoid hunting for a Wi-Fi hotspot to get online. In other words, your laptop is going to behave a lot more like your smartphone...

In fact, with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor, ASUS is claiming battery life of up to 22 hours of continuous video playback, and up to 30 days on standby. At $799, the ASUS NovaGo (model # TP370) will also be the first always-connected PC with a 360-degree flip hinge -- making it a "2-in-1" that can convert from laptop mode to a tablet by bending back the 13.3-inch screen -- and the first with Gigabit LTE speeds, for an always on, always connected experience.

ASUS's media relations director touts the high-speed cellular connections -- which consumers pay for separately -- as 3 to 7 times faster than broadband. "It allows you to download a 2-hour movie in about 10 seconds."

And Qualcomm's senior director of product management says there's more ways that it's like a smartphone. "Even when the screen is off, it's still connected, so when I open the lid, it does facial recognition, and I'm in."

4 of 194 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Counter question by Hal_Porter · · Score: 3, Informative

    A Windows 10 ARM machine running x86 code gets 818 on Geekbench

    https://www.windowslatest.com/...

    I.e. about level with an Intel Celeron SU2300

    http://browser.geekbench.com/p...

    Running native code it's about 2.5x faster at 2092

    http://weborus.com/snapdragon-...

    --
    echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
  2. Theoretically it could last all week. by MindPrison · · Score: 4, Informative

    I have a Lenovo Yoga Tab 3 pro that does this, add a bluetooth keyboard - and you have that laptop you're talking about.

    The key to long battery time, is to DISABLE WIFI. Bluetooth is okay, it uses a fleafart's energy of power, but WIFI is another beast, it sucks the batteries dry within hours of any device.

    When I disable wifi, it's not uncommon for me to have the device on for a whole week, and still able to just within seconds turn on wifi and go on about my business as nothing happened.

    The always-connected isn't really needed, and if it is - you'll be recharging it anyway.

    --
    What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
  3. Re:No thanks by LordKronos · · Score: 4, Informative

    If it's anything like the last ASUS I owned (a TF101 Transformer) the keyboard will be shit (half the keys will stop working within 12 months) and there'll be a half-dozen dead pixels that, with microscopic examination, turn out to be grass seeds under the glass. How the fuck do grass seeds get inside a screen at the factory?

    I came here with the same thoughts. My thought process as I was reading the summary:

    "Would You Use a Smartphone-Style Laptop With a Three-Day Battery Life? " Well, yeah that does sound like something I might...."ASUS is claiming"....you know what, I think I changed my mind.

    I had a Transformer Prime (the model after your TF101). I had zero problems with the screen or keyboard. On the other hand, the GPS was absolute shit. It wouldn't function unless you had absolute clear line of sight. I mean, even inside my pickup truck, with windows all around, including a sunroof overhead, was not able to acquire a reliable signal. It was so bad, ASUS went as far as creating an obnoxious hardware dongle we could connect to the device. Oh, but you couldn't use the dongle while it was docked to the keyboard. What an absolute joke. The wifi was also pretty damn poor with terrible signals and disconnects. Most of us stupidly held out because we were led to believe it would be fixed with a software update, but it got to the point that ASUS eventually refused to acknowledge there was a problem any more. There were so many customers upset about this device, Amazon was voluntarily offering 100% refunds, no questions asked, for the device something like 6 or 9 months after sale. You just called them up, told them your problem, and they were instantly saying "yeah, we've had complaints about this. We'll issue you a refund"

    Stupid me decided that I loved the form factor so much, I'll just take my refund from Amazon and order the newest model, the ASUS Transformer Infinity. Mostly the same device (and compatible with the old dock I had, which I had not bought from amazon) but HD resolution, and you could see they they redesigned the case so that there was plastic instead of metal over the place where the wifi and GPS antenna was. The hardware on this model seemed great. I was very happy. Performance was super snappy, and it worked flawlessly. Then every single update got slower and slower. And we're not talking the type of slow that you see with your normal cell phone with too many apps installed. After about 1 year it had gotten so bad, I factory reset the device so it was totally clean. Even with nothing additional installed, after boot up ( and give it a minute or 2 to finish booting, but don't start any apps) you would still experience anywhere from 1 to 10 second delays in registering touch screen input. In the span of about a year it became absolutely unusable for anything. The wife an I each had our own with keyboard dock, so that's $1300 down the drain.

    Fool me twice, can't get fooled again. FUCK YOU ASUS!!!!

  4. Re: Can you say by nospam007 · · Score: 2, Informative

    "The hatred of Christianity on Slashdot is on par with Kabul, Tehran, or Riyadh."

    Not at all. Those countries have their own invisible friend.
    We are sane and have none.