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CNET has an article on the replacement of regular tablets with 2-in-1 hybrid tablet/laptop devices.
Apple CEO Tim Cook once compared a tablet-laptop combo to mashing up a refrigerator with a toaster. The resulting Frankenstein device would do an equally lousy job of chilling your food and warming it up. That was three years ago.
Today, these tablet-laptop hybrids -- which blend the mobility and touchscreen friendliness of a tablet with the capabilities of a PC -- are on track to becoming the fastest-growing computing category. Shipments of so-called 2-in-1 devices like Microsoft's Surface Pro 3 and the Lenovo Yoga 3 Pro, for example, are expected to grow almost fivefold this year. That's thanks in part to attachable or foldable keyboards and more-powerful hardware, such as Intel's Core M microprocessors, that let slimmer, tabletlike devices hit speeds on par with midrange laptops.
And tablet sales? The market for large slabs of glass that are used mostly for playing games, reading email and watching videos has begun to slide. Sales of slate-style tablets are expected to fall 8 percent, according to a report from research firm Strategy Analytics. Sales in Apple's iPad business, meanwhile, fell 18 percent year over year in its most recent quarter, the sixth consecutive quarterly decline.
Consumers can't seem to get enough of devices that let them have, and do, it all.
"I feel like this took about three years," said Patrick Moorhead, an analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy. "You now have very high quality 2-in-1s that are very thin, affordable -- and people haven't upgraded their notebook for a while."
Understanding the rise of the 2-in-1 means charting the decline of the standalone tablet.
Jean Philippe Bouchard, a research director at IDC who's focused on tablets, points to the 2010 Dell Streak, one of the earliest so-called phablets, or phone-tablet hybrids. Consumers and critics panned the Streak for its (then) ridiculously large 5-inch screen. Dell stopped selling it 13 months after release.
"At the time, everyone -- me included -- were all laughing about this product," Bouchard said. "When you look now, the 5-inch is the norm for smartphones."
Larger phablets, such as Apple's new iPhone 6 Plus and the devices in Samsung's Galaxy Note line, have become standard. And mobile software from companies like Microsoft, such as its Word document-editing application, have been tailored to work across devices as business users shift work between screens. Samsung has even managed to re-energize the smartphone stylus as a must-have productivity tool.
These phablets have eaten into the market for standalone 7- and 8-inch tablets, like the 7.9-inch iPad Mini. When your phone is only an inch or two shy, what's the point, Bouchard points out.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by zafiro17 on Sunday August 23 2015, @06:20PM
Just bring back the netbook and all will be forgiven. For me, that was pretty close to computing nirvana. Don't get me wrong, I like my other gadgets, and I've had over the past couple years a low-end Android, a Google Nexus 7 tablet, a Samsung Note III phablet, and a massive 12" Samsung tablet. The wife's got an ipad, and I've still got a Mac mini and a Linux desktop. I also bought a Chromebook, which isn't bad.
But I really miss my netbook: I bought it from System76, it had Linux loaded on it (I finally settled on Bodhi Linux, which was lightweight but great on small screens). It was about all I ever wanted in a machine, and the small keyboard never gave me any hassles at all. Great for traveling, in fact. I finally got rid of it when the cheap hardware (especially the battery) started to give me trouble.
All my other devices are good enough, but I was happiest on a netbook running Linux. Too bad that era is pretty much gone since hardware manufacturers all had a collective orgasm over tablets and decided to let a pretty damned useful hardware line wither and die. I can see why netbooks running WinXP weren't a great user experience, but fuck those guys: Linux on a netbook was awesome and I miss it.
Bring back netbooks and we'll forget this sorry little chapter ever happened, m'kay?
Dad always thought laughter was the best medicine, which I guess is why several of us died of tuberculosis - Jack Handey
(Score: 3, Interesting) by archshade on Monday August 24 2015, @11:58AM
I had an ASUS Eee 704 (basically the first netbook that was widely available iirc). It was great and actually did everything I needed (not wanted) a PC to do. About 7 months into my first year at uni my desktop died a catastrophic failure (think it was down to the PSU but HDD, and RAM where kaput, GPU did not seem to want to work either). After spending a weekend trying to breve some life back into the old box using any bit I could salvage from the uni's un-protected PC bits room I gave up and just started using the the EEE. Up until that point it had been a toy. Somthing to watch films on a train, or make little notes to myself. now I needed a computer to actually work on, almost all 1st year work was just typing up reports, and if it was not there was a dedicated computer lab so I could do the real work in there and write up at home.
In the end it actually worked better than my original set-up I plugged in peripherals (KB, mouse, speakers, USB-HDD etc..) for work at home then I could unplug everything and take what I was doing with me wherever I went (before I was using a USB drive to do basically the same thing).
That said I love my tablet its great for on the go. I also like having a small laptop for doing actual work, this is where the 2 in 1 really comes into play. I kinda want a surface pro 3 they look great from a HW perspective although I would like a hard KB cover with additional battery in. Two things are stopping me:
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Alternatively my "compute unit" idea (may not be original) I mentioned in an earlier post would also work. Essentially a core computer with a interface that lets you plug it into different chassis to make it work as different devices (phone, phablet, tablet, thick client, laptop, workstation etc)... Big part would be a an aware UI so taking it out of the phone and plugging it into the workstation would leave all the same programs open but reload it into a UI more appropriate for big screen KB+mouse.