back to article Ultrabooks vs tablets: tablet demise greatly exaggerated

If you read stories on the interweb, almost all of them sourced from a DigiTimes article, that tablet sales will be whammed next year by Ultrabooks, consider. The claim is primarily made by Acer VP Scott Lin who, not at all coincidentally, announced Acer's Aspire S3 Ultrabook in Taiwan the day before the Digitimes article …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. Anonymous Coward
    Windows

    Macbook Air clones

    They're going to have to compete with the MBA - they're going to struggle to get prices down without some serious compromises somewhere (most likely case material). It seems most of the prototypes bear more than a passing resemblance to the MBA!

    1. Adam T

      If only they could manage a passing resemblance to the build quality of the MBA.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Or screen resolution - I was using a vertical resolution of 768 pixels over 15 years ago. Would have thought they could at least equal the 1440x900 of the 13" MBA...

  2. Tim 11

    It cuts both ways

    just because someone you don't trust says something, it doesn't mean that thing is necessarily false.

  3. Grozbat

    touchbook?

    I want a touch tablet with a proper keyboard. In fact I believe they are the future.

    1. Neill Mitchell

      Then buy an Asus Transformer :)

  4. Titus Aduxass
    Facepalm

    Eh?

    Why are the Toshiba tablets being displayed on a toilet seat?

    1. My backside
      Unhappy

      Because...

      ... they're crap!

  5. Adam T
    Happy

    Lin reckons Ultrabooks won't start to hit their stride until early next year.

    Sounds like a silly thing to say the day after launching an Ultrabook...:p

  6. Wibble
    Holmes

    Tablets != Laptops

    How many times must this be said: tablet devices - fondleslabs - are not the same as Laptop computers. This blindingly obvious fact is still completely missed by many PC manufacturers.

    A tablet device does not run Windows. It's very much the sort of device that Apple have produced; a stand-alone device with few if any peripherals.

    Interestingly Apple seem to have pitched the price and product absolutely right. All the others need to beat this. Given that they can't improve the product -- such is the standard that Apple have set -- then they must improve the price. As Apple have years of experience of building high-tech high-volume consumer devices, the iPod, the PC manufacturers are indeed batting on a sticky wicket.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      PC makers can't get settled on tablets because there is no point to a tablet. I have one and bring it to work every day. Why? No idea. I like having it around. All I do on it is look at emails (not even respond to emails) and check the web/fantasy team when I'm not busy. I could do these things on my PC at work. I don't. Why? No idea.

      Realistically tablets are around in the home environment because people are too lazy to hook their PCs up to the TV for couch browsing.

      Realistically tablets are around in the work environment because they are shiny and business types like poking at them while wasting time.

      How do you build a value proposition around that? You can't. No surprise that Apple is the only one with success, they're used to lying to their customers and having an over-inflated sense of self worth.

      1. Mark 65

        @Bullseyed

        You don't want to hook the TV up for couch based browsing as:

        1. It affects everyone else in the room

        2. Tablets probably get used for reading/browsing with the TV as background noise and/or whilst others are in the room using it.

        My PC is in the lounge of my house yet still I'm considering getting a tablet as I can then casually look things up/read without needing to crank up an i7 and move away from others in the room.

    2. N13L5
      Pint

      the only tablet of any use to me would be one that runs windows or linux...

      I already have a smart phone, why in the world would I need a tablet with a gimped OS, running the same apps of marginal productivity?

      If I could buy a (non-Fujitsu ripoff) tablet with regular windows, I could use it to let my children run Rosetta Stone. That would be worth it...

      But really, those phone/tablet app stores with their 250k apps or whatever the number is, there's a lot of stuff I regularly do that you can't do with any of them, regardless of finger or keyboard UI.

      Even the consumption of news / magazines on a tablet would be annoying to me... it wouldn't ever type a comment on an onscreen keyboard, no matter how much time I'd have to waste.

  7. Dibbles
    Facepalm

    Meh

    Storm in a teacup if you ask me. So small notebooks aren't going to replace tablets. Or they may do. But tablets don't replace notebooks. Or they may do.

    Seems to me (as a clear expert in this field...) that nobody has any freakin idea. Sounding off your own opinion I can appreciate - that's what the Reg comments are there for. Slating someone else's opinion on nothing more than anecdotal evidence - not so good.

  8. mudskipper
    Meh

    Not at the prices they're charging!

    I was saying that a cheaper "ultrabook" might be a good idea. ie a DVD driveless laptop. I can't see much of a market for mac air clones - competing on price/quality seems to be the way forward to me, rather than trying to mimic what makes mac airs succesfull.

    Not sure but it looks like that post got deleted for racism. wtf?

  9. Jolyon Smith

    ASUS Transformer - Survey says it da bomb!

    From an admittedly small sample size (me, the owner, and about a dozen friends, colleagues and associates who have had some "hands on" time with the device), the verdict is a resounding HELL YEAH that a tablet which can dock/transform into a netbook is a perfect compromise/hybrid.

    I myself used to enjoy browsing the web on my partner's iPad, and the eeePad is a world of productivity apart from that very passive media consuming fruit slab.

    I don't think much can be drawn from "sales falling back" of the Transfomer since launch - that happens with just about any new device... an initial rush which slows as more reflective and considered purchasers choose to part with their hard earned.

    And the decision to part with hard earned is also becoming harder... the success of the iPad was perhaps as much a result of it's launch coming at the end of the most recent period of consumer optimism, and the relative lack of success of more recent tablets equally perhaps attributable to the new era of consumer fear and pessimism.

    Just sayin.

    1. mudskipper

      Could be a steady seller

      There's a lot that makes sense about the ASUS transformer - it's a netbook and a tablet. I'd like to know how the Tegra processor compares with a netbook standard atom/intel graphics cpu/gpu on performance. (not per watt - just pure processing power)

      Pricing is good too.

      Call me old fashioned but I'd like to see windows version too. Would that bump the price.

      1. N13L5

        yep, windows or linux..

        just some non-gimped, non-cell phone OS, please.

        Main reason I haven't bought one is that neither OS is suitable to me.

        If I had a lot of money to burn, I might nail a tablet to the wall as a touch and select music player, driving high-end active speakers in the living room.

  10. Mark 65

    Question

    What I'd like to know is why do the Android tablets seem a bit sluggish in the UI when doing things? From just playing in an electronics store the iPad 2 seemed much sharper/more responsive to input, especially when scrolling and zooming. Is this hardware or OS?

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    mother in law

    has a notebook *toshiba, which she didn't like so much - she wasn't using it. trying the ipad in our home she immediately got the grips with it. now she uses skype, the ipod app and different apps for languages. she uses it at least once a day. i think the notebooks will stay, but people who had not a perfect fit with them might feel more compelled to move to ipad.

This topic is closed for new posts.

Other stories you might like