Windows 8 Tablets: Born to fail
Summary: I'm no Windows 8 fan, but I thought Windows 8 tablets had a shot of making it. But, $600 for an ARM tablet? $800 for an Atom-powered tablet!? If the prices we're seeing are accurate, these are dead tablets walking.
It's no secret that I don't like Windows 8 on new or old desktops. I really thought it might have a shot on tablets though. But at these prices!? Windows RT and 8 on tablets is as dead as a mackerel.
I mean seriously. Asus, a mid-range computer vendor, wants $599 for a Nvidia Tegra ARM-powerd Windows RT tablet? The Windows 8 tablet with an Atom processor for $799? Oh, and if you want a keyboard for either one, it will cost you an extra $199!?
Come on! My Nexus 7, the best tablet I've found to date, cost me $250. A totally maxed out iPad 3 runs runs $829. I'll take either of those in a New York minute over a Windows 8 tablet at those prices.
A friend of mine said the Windows 8 tablet with a keyboard would be worth the price since he could then use it as a full computer. My response to him was: "Isn't that called a laptop?" Actually with an Atom processor at its heart, the question should be: "Isn't that called a netbook?" And can't I get one of those for hundreds less? Why yes, yes I think I can.
Besides, with programs such as GotoMyPC you don't need a Windows device to run your Windows applications. They'll run just fine on a less expensive Android tablet or an iPad. And, of course, you can always use a cloud-based office suite like Google Docs on pretty much any device.
Leaving aside my dislike for Windows 8, even if this was the best operating system ever, I can't see anyone buying these devices at these prices. They're just too expensive for both consumers and businesses. In a world where Apple has an iron-lock on high-end tablets and Android is securing its place on the mid- and low-ends with devices such as the Nexus 7 and the Amazon Kindle Fire HD, I don't see anyone wanting to buy a Windows 8 or RT tablet at these price points.
Related Stories:
Asus Windows 8 tablet pricing comes in high; Demand likely low
Microsoft CEO talks Surface pricing, hints at iPad competition
Global tablet display shipments poised to jump by 56% in 2012
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Talkback
There are sheeple who will buy them
You keep telling yourself that...
Right. The haters always 'escape'
RFeply without knowing the facts a lot?
You and your equally clueless lycanthropic friend just go ahead and keep singing Microsoft's praise at a pro-FOSS blog, though, if it makes you sleep better at night.
God, why do i always forget what a trolling cesspool ZDnet blogs are?
Sorry you lost your job
Would not it be far more accurate to state that
Or have you turned a blind eye to the postings in Microsoft related blogs by other writers here?
There arealso many Microsoft
phone UI on a desktop
Mouth Breathers
Lulz
I've made a ton of money selling crappy Java software projects to universities because the base platform we used was vetted and partially written by university staff. FOSS does not mean good. You end staffing up the projects with hundreds people overseas who don't speak English worth a damn because you can't find anyone here who is better at a similar cost (even with a 5x factorization) or ambitious enough to leave their basement for a paying gig, while losing any benefit you had from "free" to costs associated with dev time spent filling feature gaps.
I've also made a lot of money selling Microsoft projects to large corporations. In the end the MS products provided more value per dollar spent, and usually cost significantly less, even inclusive of dev time.
RE: "go ahead and keep singing Microsoft's praise at a pro-FOSS blog
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source
which is the 'Linux and Open Source' blog that he shares with Paula Rooney.
Steven also posts blog articles at:
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/networking
This is where he posts his anti-Microsoft Internet Explorer rhetoric along with pro-Google articles (e.g., Chrome, Google+). Steven's Android articles mostly get posted at the 'Linux and Open Source' blog as Android and its various derivatives are Linux.
MS haters
Apple folks rip android apart for it's variations and non-standard ways they cater to each phone manufacturer and I have to agree. It is when they push Linux in the same breath I find it laughable. Even funnier is when they rip both
when all the skeleton is made of is BSD.
I will hop on the latest and greatest when it becomes that but until then I would love some professional business minded OS environment myself. That almost there talk with Linux has been there well before the first release of Ubuntu and it still isn't there.
RE: Trolls in the Sunlight
As for Tea.Rollins and her claim that Java projects need to be staffed from overseas because nobody in the US is as talented for the same rate - uh, let me point out that Southern plantation owners could not find people to pick cotton for free either, so they bought slaves and put them to work, beat them, fed them next to nothing, and treated them horribly. I am not saying that you are anywhere close to a slave owner, but think about it this way. You hired those people, paid them by the hour, and then had a ton of rework because they did not understand the requirements as they were written. Whose fault was it? It was not really their fault, after all, you hired them. Americans charge more for an hour's work because - and this may shock you - we have to pay for our education, our homes, our cars, etc. In the end, though, you get the Americans to do the work cheaper because they understand what you want. Oh, and by the way, I am currently working at a company where they do a lot of IT consulting, mostly in .Net, and the company is headquartered in India, not the US. In fact, here, non-Indians are a minority. English seems like a foreign language in this place. I have half a notion to start speaking German, Spanish, or Mandarin when someone starts talking to me in an accent I do not understand. (Yes, I speak a little German and Mandarin, but I took four years of Spanish in high school, over twenty five years ago.) My point is that Java is not the only language where non-Americans are hired to do development, and your insistence that .Net programmers are somehow better because you get more stability out of the simpler applications written in .Net does not hold up. Java web applications tend to be used on a much larger scale than .Net ones. When you go shop online at Home Depot or Sears, do you think you are hitting a .Net store? Nope, it is WebSphere Commerce - a Java application - written by IBM (a large part was written in Canada, by the way).
You worked for Mike Cox?
Heh
I loved it! :)
Sorry to hear that, but you sound like so many here
And you claimed you escaped. That's not the word one uses when they are asked to leave.
Though you also opened with the line "There are sheeple who will buy them", in essence saying that since you yourself don't like MS, anyone else who sees a benefit in going with MS products is just another person in a world of stupid people who can't think for themselves, basicaly trying to invalidate their reasoning.
Then ask yourself why SJVN spends so much time an energy writing decidedly negative MS related opinions in a FOSS related blog?
Though hopefuly you have found gainful employment by now, as no one should be forced out of a company for all the wrong reasons, if indeed you have been.
This isn't ZDNet's 'Linux and Open Source' blog
In fact, the topic of the blog article is ... drum roll ... 'Tablets'.
Ok will, maybe it's time to look in the mirror
But now that someone calls a MS fan or fans, sheep you get offended? Really? They name streets after people like you, " One way" is just one of them...
Agreed
And then the sheep pay for a service pack because they were told it was an new OS
You don't know what you're talking about
You should have learned to play nicely with others and maybe you'd still have a job.