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No, this is actually THE Windows RT tablet. WinRT stands for Windows Runtime: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_RT
Welcome to the new Microsoft naming strategy.

the break with win32 on RT might prove to be a very good move in the long run. Devices where battery preservation is critical, are not served with lazily ported Windows applications.
Yes, this means there will not be a large number of apps in the beginning, but if these tables sell reasonably well this won't be a problem for very long.

DOSguy,

"the break with win32 on RT might prove to be a very good move in the long run. Devices where battery preservation is critical, are not served with lazily ported Windows applications."

Do you have evidence that battery preservation is a problem with win32s in the first place? It's a serious question since I've never seen anyone back this assertion with real data. At their core, win32 apps are event oriented, meaning that they generally only consume CPU when they're interacted with. Unless a developer has used a bad practice of polling, it's not at all clear to me how switching the API will help save the battery.

I might believe the possibility that bad practices are rampant on win32s, however even there I'd have to question this argument's validity since the win32 software I use rarely consumes CPUs in the background unless it's a daemon designed to do so.

If you're talking about foreground apps, there's nothing really preventing a metro app from wasting CPU.

If you're talking about background apps, there's no reason the OS could not have a policy to completely suspend or significantly reduce CPU to win32 apps in the background. Well behaved win32 GUI apps would not be affected during background suspension. I'd even expect the majority of "poorly" behaving win32 apps (like a ray tracer) to wake up and resume in the foreground without a hiccup.


My point is, I don't think there's any overwhelmingly strong technical reason a power policy for metro apps could not be applied towards win32 ones. And I've never seen any evidence to show that the new APIs are somehow more efficient. I don't want to assert that they are not, but I definitely need to see solid data before accepting that they are.

I agree about Windows on ARM being useless. I just don't see the long term advantages.

Look at Intels roadmap over the next few years and you'll see them rapidly scaling down power consumption and scaling up GPU performance to erase ARM's advantage.

Intel's SoC designs also incorporate connected stand-by which means that Win8 tabs with those chips will have decent battery life. If they can get even eight hours out of a charge then its already mostly close enough. (Note: This applies to Atom SoC designs only, not high end Win8 tabs with Core i7's)

I don't think Win32 will go away fast enough for Windows RT to outsell Windows 8. I think that in the long run, people will have their tablets be the center of their digital life and just dock them to output to a monitor, and use Bluetooth keyboards and mice to get productive stuff done.

Intel will win the architecture war. I have full faith in their expertise and their leads in fab technology.

Intel should be able to get some market share with their mobile processors, but they've got a snowballs chance in hell of becoming the dominant processor architecture for mobiles.

In order for them to win they'd have to convince the manufacturers of phones/tablets to limit themselves to a single manufacturer (since Intel own the x86 arch, to my knowledge the only others allowed to make x86 arch processors are AMD and VIA). So, they'd limit themselves to giving a monopoly to Intel where they can price gouge them versus the very competitive ARM market where you've got various fabs and manufacturers competing against each other making ARM processors.

Plus there's more than ARM: if ARM Ltd. would start to be unbearable one way or another, MIPS for example could swoop in easily - MIPS chips are also quite popular in ~embedded (just not in mobiles; XBurst close - in tablets), and PRC even supposedly builds its tech independence on MIPS Loongson chips.

Intel roadmap included, not a long time ago, also 10 GHz Netburst CPUs. And in ~embedded, Intel was supposed to "erase ARM's advantage" one or two times already...

Thing is, ARM doesn't stand still, and has many players heavily invested in it, and will offer more integrated, tailored to every imaginable usage scenario (it's about vast number of manufacturers) & less expensive solutions.
Intel can't and won't provide this, process lead is not so significant when you want to have low cost (where older processes are fine) with simply adequate performance, limited mostly by screen and radio module vs battery tech.

And there's more than ARM, also MIPS for example...


BTW, in early Intel presentations of Atom SoC there was a block cryptically named ~"32bit RISC system controller" in the ~southbridge ...I wonder what that was. Also, Infineon (acquired by Intel) radio modules certainly still use ARM cores.
Which means that in an "Intel inside" mobile phone there very well might be more ARM cores than x86 ones.

40% market share for Android tablets.

Nice twist. I was speaking about the premium market. Not the sub $200 tablet market that no one but Android really competes in.

A great, great majority of those are Kindle Fires and Nooks. If it even reaches 40% market share world wide I don't know, but I'd be incredibly surprised given that Kindle Fire is US only. I'd wager its something half that.

In other words, incompatible forks of Android which don't directly benefit Google.

When speaking about viable alternatives .. its not like ASUS or HP or somebody can just license the Kindle Fire, or necessarily replicate their success with vanilla Android.

Android has been utterly and completely beaten into submission at iPad price ranges, the premium market.

Windows 8 is the only alternative.

They run Android applications just fine. They can run Android-proper just fine. How are they incompatible?



Windows 8 is a clusterfcuk. Nobody is going to want to fcuk about with the desktop on a tablet.

Been using it for a development environment for some times now Thom and it works perfectly fine.

I know you don't like it, but clusterf--k it is not.

Edited 2012-10-18 18:34 UTC

Obvious troll is obvious.

They don't run any app using any kind of recent Android SDK. IIRC, the Android version that Amazon forked at is Gingerbread which is prior to Android tablet apps.

What exactly does this mean? It means that the #1 selling "Android" tablet, does nothing to further the Android ecosystem as a whole.



Speaking of clusterfuck. How anyone puts up with the absolute BULLSHIT that is an Android tablet is BEYOND me. That thing is such an inconsistent, slow, piece of garbage that I can't even fathom how anyone is not as irritated as I was with the poor experience.

Windows 8 is an infinitely smoother experience.

Well, I wanted a tablet because I wanted to be able to easily and comfortably read books and comics on-the-go, watch movies and do web-browsing. Also, I wanted the ability to run any apps of my choosing on the device so an iPad was not suitable for my needs. In my use my tablet hasn't been anything like you describe, but then again, I don't have an axe to grind or the need to try and bash other peoples' tastes unlike certain others here.

After dropping $400 on a slow, buggy, unusable piece of GARBAGE, I think I have the right to complain about my experience.

It is appalling that they let tablets like this into the market. Makes me wonder if execs at Google just use iPads, because surely they can't tolerate this shit.

Even tried putting CM on it, only to find even buggier ROMS with broken GPS, WiFi, or what have you.

So go ahead, enjoy the fact that you can run SSH or your HTTP server or whatever on your tablet, but I can't deal with such a shitty experience.

Just wondering : did you compare both OSs running on similar hardware ?

I'm asking because AFAIK there's only a handful of ARM Windows 8 tablets and x86 Android tablets around right now, so finding one Android tablet and one Windows 8 tablet that share a single SoC for comparison purposes sounds difficult.

Edited 2012-10-19 09:05 UTC

No, I didn't compare them on the same hardware. However, it is easy to get the gist for the dramatic differences.

Android isn't just slightly laggy, or a little sluggish, it is PITIFULLY slow. This just shouldn't happen. Period.

The Windows 8 tablet I use is the Acer W500. (W7 tab upgraded to W8). You can look up the specs and draw your own conclusions, but it is incredibly smooth.

Also most impressions I've seen online from Windows RT tablets show that the smoothness has carried over to their ARM SoC designs as well.

However, a comparison I can make is my Lumia 800 and my brothers Galaxy Nexus. There is just no comparison. The lower specced Lumia blows the Nexus out of the water in smoothness. Even with a CM'd JellyBean ROM.

Again, highly unscientific but make of it what you wish.

Wow, you have tested ALL of them to come to this conclusion. Absolutely awesome, thanks for your hard work.

WinCE (not W2k) XP, Vista, W7 tablet share combined: <1%. So, yeah, W8 will conquer.

Edited 2012-10-18 17:35 UTC

I remember about a year or so ago you saying that there was absolutely no way the iPad would have dominant tablet market share a year hence. This was said in the context of an expectation and projection that Android tablets would overtake the iPad in market share.

So what went wrong?

Technically, 40% isn't "dominant."

Of course, 60% isn't exactly dominant, either, if the other 40% belongs to one platform.

Actually it is if the other parties are less than 40% non-combined.

Citation? I don't mean to be snarky, I'm genuinely curious.

OEMs are going to sell more Windows 8/Windows RT tablets than Android tablets. Fast. - depends on the country. Don't see it selling at $500 in India. If nexus 7 and iPad mini comes around $300 it would make surface doa here

It still an encouraging start. Oh well, the haters are going to hate.

Why can't you Open source nutters stop infecting every bloody thread that mentions Microsoft?

*You ain't funny
*You ain't clever

You Microsoft Fanbois "Keepin' it real!" are?

Not in the least.

I am hardly an Microsoft fanboy, I buy OpenBSD releases ;-)

Your history of comment suggest otherwise

I play devil's advocate a lot of the time and actually correct some of the ridiculous things which are usually said.

If the surface does well ... then everyone will be claiming that Microsoft abused their monopoly position. "
Evidently, you've not been around more than 4 years in the industry.

Microsoft can't help themselves to NOT use it.

Sorry, you are just being intentionally naive.

No I was making a statement about how FOSS advocates change the goalposts when Linux doesn't do well on consumer computing devices such as laptops and desktops.

I don't care if Microsoft leverage their monopoly ... I worked with proper vendor lock-in (bespoke closed source applications by a third party that would do as little work as possible) and anything Microsoft do is no where near as bad as what I have experienced.

Do us a favour and spend 3 months coding in a html text box and the the System not giving you any feedback whether you have or have not done something correctly ... and then complain about their monopoly.

Edited 2012-10-18 19:31 UTC

Not everyone. I really have no interest in seeing it fail any more than I have in seeing it succeed. I find it somewhat silly how so many people choose one extreme or the other

This is precisely how I feel about it. I tend to play devil's advocate a lot of here ... and a lot of the anti-Microsoft stuff gets old.

We joke about it a lot at work. I joke about how I hate Macs and Linux ... and the guys joke about how I am Bill Gates's right hand man.

Also I didn't mean everyone literally.

Edited 2012-10-18 19:58 UTC

I'll go a step further and say I find it absolutely silly (to put it nicely) that people emotionally attach themselves, much like a parasite does, to these companies. People act as if they actually have a physical relationship or rivalry. It's beyond me why people choose to be such thin-skinned cheerleaders one way or the other. All of these companies have both good and bad qualities so to pledge allegiance to one while decrying another is nothing short of hypocritical.

Naturally but either way, saying "We sold out all our stock but, eh, we're not telling how much that actually was" is rather suspicious. It's all rather incredibly obvious and stupid so maybe it's just an oversight.