Asus Transformer Prime Tablet

[Octane]

Has anyone had a good look/ purchased one of these quad core tablets? They look very good and sound excellent on paper.

What can they not do that a windows netbook can? I don't quite understand why 1 GB ram is plenty for Android whereas insufficient for a windows based system. Is this because Android and its apps are lightweight compared to Windows? Also the battery life is more than double that of a windows device.

Is this machine a sign of the future and the beginning of a decline in Windows dominance?

Basically I surf the internet, email, use youtube and write the occassional document. I don't use heavyweight programs and am curious whether a tablet similar to this could replace my laptop completely?

Thanks for your thoughts

Cheers

Octane

[Bushfiva]

You'll be fine if most of your stuff (including your data) is on-line. As you surmise, it's a lighter-weight OS, apps tend to be simpler, and you see the benefit in longer battery life.

[Milo Minderbinder]

And everything is stored online....so you need a constant internet connection
A tablet is a viewing device, not a data processing device.

[mixture]

the beginning of a decline in Windows dominance

Windows dominance is going nowhere fast Octane.

Microsoft may well be reaching a plateau in terms of Windows platform adoption, but the stability and size of that plateau should not be underestimated. It's going to be a very long time indeed before you see the decline of Windows.

(And that statement comes from someone who would rather sit in front of a Mac than a PC any day, so I'm no Microsoft spokesperson !).

[Bushfiva]

And everything is stored online
it's got Polaris Office and up to 192GB of local storage.

[Octane]

Hi mixture,

By 'decline of windows', my feeling is that 95% of people including myself use the computer for surfing, email, skype, playing media and facebook etc only. I use open office occassionally to write a document and that's about it. Android systems do all the above comfortably. Simply, I believe many people have no need for windows anymore. Ditto Apple. Why tie yourself into a closed, rigid, propriortary and pay as you go architecture when an open source, free and functional viable option is on offer?

Or am I missing something?

cheers

Octane

[Mike-Bracknell]

Hi mixture,

By 'decline of windows', my feeling is that 95% of people including myself use the computer for surfing, email, skype, playing media and facebook etc only. I use open office occassionally to write a document and that's about it. Android systems do all the above comfortably. Simply, I believe many people have no need for windows anymore. Ditto Apple. Why tie yourself into a closed, rigid, propriortary and pay as you go architecture when an open source, free and functional viable option is on offer?

Or am I missing something?

cheers

Octane

Yes, you are missing quite a bit.

How about the whole "business" reason for a computer? 95% of business users don't "surf, email, skype, play media and facebook" (that's only the 95% of non-productive users!)

Also, you're completely missing the TCO aspect. You may feel you can survive without Windows/MS Office, but you'll find that companies that make the mistake of thinking that way usually have problems not only in finding staff who are capable of using open source software, but that the inter-company issues of coping with files and systems that don't work on the open source alternatives will generally cost the 'idealist' company MORE money than those who use Windows/MS Office.

That's then hitting on the issue of trying to source LOB applications that run on open source. 95% of my customer companies have at least 1 LOB app that requires Windows.

[seacue]

I was rather surprised to find that MS Word 2010 will read an OpenOffice Writer ODT file. Excel 2010 will also read an OO Calc ODS file, but makes a number of formatting errors in the conversion. MS seems to be working on accepting OpenOffice formats.

[mixture]

Octane,

I'll go with what Mike said. :cool:

Only thing I would add is, ref the following

Why tie yourself into a closed, rigid, propriortary

Unless you are a C/C++ developer, you might as well be using closed-source software since you'll be relying on the community to fix bugs and introduce enhancements.

There is also the support and sustainability aspect of open source.