Windows RT Devices Shipping with Office Preview

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Considering there are a lot of tech announcements in September, October seems a long way off.

I'm certainly holding out for an RT tablet to see if they can be competitive on price with the Nexus 7 and new Kindle Fire HD models. I'm interested to see what the OEMs will release in addition to the Surface.
 

waethorn

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[citation][nom]boiler1990[/nom]Considering there are a lot of tech announcements in September, October seems a long way off.I'm certainly holding out for an RT tablet to see if they can be competitive on price with the Nexus 7 and new Kindle Fire HD models. I'm interested to see what the OEMs will release in addition to the Surface.[/citation]

Competitive on price? Depends on your definition. I don't think there is any reasonable expectation for these to be in the less-than-$199 price range. These are considered to be as close to an x86 Windows PC as you can get without actually being one, and not just a media consumption tablet like the Kindle or Nexus. I personally expect that they would fit more in line with iPad pricing. It would be nice if I was wrong (and they were cheaper), but just don't honestly see that happening. I'm also waiting in the competition, but more to the point: I'm waiting for an OEM to produce an AMD tablet because Atom and PowerVR graphics don't thrill me, and I'm not putting down $1000 for a IB tablet with a faster CPU but still shitty graphics. I want respectable graphics on a media tablet, and that means it has to be able to handle modern D3D. This is to be my laptop replacement, and I want a GPU that is at least equal to what I get with a Brazos-2 APU.
 

ojas

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[citation][nom]waethorn[/nom]Competitive on price? Depends on your definition. I don't think there is any reasonable expectation for these to be in the less-than-$199 price range. These are considered to be as close to an x86 Windows PC as you can get without actually being one, and not just a media consumption tablet like the Kindle or Nexus. I personally expect that they would fit more in line with iPad pricing. It would be nice if I was wrong (and they were cheaper), but just don't honestly see that happening. I'm also waiting in the competition, but more to the point: I'm waiting for an OEM to produce an AMD tablet because Atom and PowerVR graphics don't thrill me, and I'm not putting down $1000 for a IB tablet with a faster CPU but still shitty graphics. I want respectable graphics on a media tablet, and that means it has to be able to handle modern D3D. This is to be my laptop replacement, and I want a GPU that is at least equal to what I get with a Brazos-2 APU.[/citation]
While Clover Trail isn't underpowered, i think the Atom tablets will really shine when the 22nm-based Atoms are released.
 

waethorn

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[citation][nom]ojas[/nom]While Clover Trail isn't underpowered, i think the Atom tablets will really shine when the 22nm-based Atoms are released.[/citation]

Clover Trail IS underpowered and this is why: it uses the same PowerVR chipset that ARM chips do (for the ones that do use PowerVR), and here's the thing: Microsoft only requires DX9 support for SoC's (originally only for ARM, but Intel got Microsoft to include x86 in a certification spec update) which Intel is only happy to oblige by meeting the MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS on x86. This sounds like a another repeat of Windows 7 Starter and Vista Basic all over again. Remember, both of those disasters were Intel's fault because they wanted to pawn off low-end chips based on obsolete technology. This is the reason why I'm waiting for AMD. AMD's SoC's will be based on full x86 hardware with AMD-V and 64-bit with DX11 GPU cores out of the gate. AMD has never produced a low-end CPU or platform chipset that didn't meet Premium certification specs for Windows. System manufacturers may have undercut their systems by selling it with a non-Premium Windows SKU to fit it into a low price point, but not because AMD wanted to sell an inferior chip.

Intel is the reason why Microsoft made those Windows SKU's. First it was for 915 chipset for Vista-Ready/Basic. Microsoft only wanted to sell Basic for the first year of availability and when SP1 launched, they updated the Premium requirements to require a DX10 GPU, but Intel still had 945G chipsets on the market, so Microsoft kept Vista Basic around. Then you have Atom coming onto the market, which was such an underperformer that Microsoft had to re-release a special version of XP for, which they wanted to kill off. Come time for Windows 7, and again it was Intel that wanted to continue to make inferior Atom chipsets still based on 945 chipsets, so Microsoft released 7 Starter to accomodate them. Meanwhile, AMD was matching all of the WHQL Premium specs as they being updated. See, this is why I don't care for Intel. They are the reason why there is such a specification difference between the low and high end. After not being able to profitize on the netbook craze, now they're trying the other end of the spectrum and try to profitize more on higher-end notebooks with the Ultrabook platform. The problem is, customers have already had a taste of mainstream systems selling for $600 and less, so Ultrabooks just having been selling well. Intel just doesn't get the mainstream consumer market one bit. I would say that this is also the reason why they keep pushing higher CPU speeds with little regard for graphics. AMD looks at typical consumer usage scenarios and it's all about media consumption (some creation), GPGPU, and standard (but not heavy) multitasking. So they take a more balanced approach to what they call "visual computing" and they seem to have a better grasp on the direction of computing. ARM is getting there, but quite frankly, they need more up-to-date GPU's and they also need to get the GPGPU integration done properly. And they also need 64-bit done right. AMD is the partner that ARM needs for this. An AMD-ARM SoC with ARM's low-power RISC cores, 64-bit technology built by AMD for ARM, DX11 GPU cores and GPGPU integration would be a market force to be reckoned with.
 
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