with more than twice the grunt of the model shipped
No, because the problem is OS and GUI bloat.
Not lack of CPU power, though I'd say Moore's law started running out of steam around 2002. The annual upgrades before then were stunning.
Comparing a 2002 1.8GHz P4 mobile (2.2GHz existed) Inspirion 8200 with a 1600 x 1200 ultra sharp matte screen running XP and a Linx 1010 tablet with Windows 10 and a Lenovo E460 with Win7 and Linux Mint + Mate (1920 x 1080 screen, i5-6200U, 4x 2.3GHz cores).
The Dell Inspiron 8200 XP (optimised, SP3 and all patches and sensible GUI settings): Beats all above for ease of use and performance, except Linux on E460 for any application using single core or Desktop. It does have an updated 120GByte PATA IDE and 2G RAM, 40G and 1G originally.)
Linux on the E460 is about same speed for desktop response faster everything else. But not the sort of difference between the 8200 and the earlier Dell inspiron from 2000 with 450MHz PIII coppermine mobile and Win2000. It's 1400 x 1050 screen and really hugely slower, but can beat the 10" Atom Win10 tablet at times.
Perhaps Intel is rubbish at low power + decent performance? Browser on my Alcatel A3 XL phone is faster than any Atom netbook or tablet I have.
I have Linux on the Atom netbooks. I have an EEEPC, with 32G CF card instead of original Flash. Current Linux Mint on it (18.3 Mate desktop) not as fast as the original Linux on it. We did try XP on it, but it's ill-suited for cheap Flash and would periodically freeze for a while. Also it was before the CF card socket was shoehorned in by cutting away part of the internals of case.
Netbooks and Tablets often seem spoiled by being only 600 or 720 pixels high in landscape mode. Also why don't the tablets dock to keyboard in Portrait mode?
We reached peak PC on x86-64 more than a year ago.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
