Christopher Dawson
Yes
No
James Kendrick
Best Argument: Yes
The moderater has delivered his final verdict.
Opening Statements
Hybrids have a strong future
Chris Dawson: How many of us carry both a laptop and a tablet? Both are incredibly useful, but, especially for enterprise customers, tend to have quite different use cases. Tablets accompany us to meetings, lunches, conferences, and flights. They keep essential documents at our sides, let us store handwritten notes and capture video, and even function as interactive whiteboards.
Laptops, however, are indispensable for creating detailed powerpoints, writing white papers, composing lengthy memos, building websites, and writing code. No matter how powerful tablets become, enterprise users won’t be leaving full-blown PCs behind.
Enter the hybrid tablet, a growing segment of the PC market that gives users a detachable Android tablet when they want it and a complete ultraportable Windows PC when they need it. Largely ignored by consumers, it will be the enterprise that ensures hybrids have a strong future and continue to advance portable form factors for highly mobile users.
History will repeat
James Kendrick: The hybrid tablet, or convertible notebook, is nothing new. Those Tablet PCs with a rotating screen that exposed a touch tablet failed in the enterprise, and failed miserably. No doubt the Wintel bunch would like to believe that the new tablet-friendly Windows 8 will change history, but it wasn't just the OS behind the original failure.
The iPad is beginning to appear in the enterprise, in large part due to the thin, light form. Permanently attach a bulky keyboard to the tablet and you lose the draw of the light tablet. I have used many different tablets, and anything with a keyboard attached is simply too heavy and uncomfortable to use for any length of time.
Pure Windows 8-bearing slate forms no bigger/ heavier than the iPad have an outside shot in the enterprise. Add any weight to that like a keyboard and history is destined to repeat itself.
Talkback
I dunno
I dunno, but I'd guess not. Sure, they can be popular within the organization, especially if the organization pushes them or benefits from them.
But people [b]do[/b] tend to go their own ways outside of an organization.
I [b]wish[/b] they were more popular. I had an early one with XP Tablet Edition, long before the iPad. I thought it was great, and that it would catch on.
I was wrong. It never caught on.
I don't know why people don't like them, but they don't. So I'm not keeping my hopes up.
IMHO it was
It was price/performance, plain and simple.
Depends on what they really are.
To Chris's point I am really wondering at the choice of Win/Android as a hybrid - my guess would be no.
IF they looked like this: a tablet that can dock into a keyboard (aka Transformer) or a dock that contains additional storage and display functionality (secondary CPU/GPU/HDD/SSD) running whatever OS the enterprise runs.
This I could see. As a typical scenario:
During breakfast use tablet to quick view email / messages / calender.
At work plug into desktop dock and work on presentations, flows, programs, ERP, etc....
Go to a meeting take the tablet
Head out for an afternoon conference take the laptop (tablet + keyboard dock)
Back to the office and plug into desktop dock for wrap up.
Tablet heading for home.
I coould see this becoming very popular. I see this being tried disjointedly using an iPad or Android tablet (do it myself).
So yes, I can see this coming soon to an enterprise near you.
I think they may just work
hybrids
I carry both now.
My hope is to see a dual boot tablet running Android (or some some flavor of Linux) and Windows (that can log onto a domain) with performance and a keyboard dock similar or better than my Asus Transformer Prime.
I agree with rkwalters that price/performance issues held back prior attempts with the exception of some specialized markets.
The "Tablet PCs" of the XP-era were ahead of their time ...
The very presence of "keyboard accessories" for iPads and some Android tablets tells us there is a market and a need for that "in-between" device which sometimes acts like a tablet and sometimes acts like a notebook.
For most professionals, the tablet (usually an iPad) is an auxiliary device for when the Notebook is not required. The same will be true of the Windows RT (ARM) tablet. But what about the tablet as a true notebook replacement?
At the right price-point, a Windows 8 "convertible" Tablet PC will be ideal at meeting both needs. But, if it is more expensive than a tradition professional-grade notebook, it will be a hard sell.
I have one of those Tablet PC of the XP era
definitely