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from the one-platform-to-rule-them-all dept.
New laptops are drawing upon features/attributes associated with smartphones, such as LTE connectivity, ARM processors, (relatively) high battery life, and walled gardens:
This year's crop of CES laptops -- which we'll define broadly to include Windows-based two-in-one hybrids and slates -- even show signs of a sudden evolutionary leap. The long-predicted PC-phone convergence is happening, but rather than phones becoming more like computers, computers are becoming more like phones.
The most obvious way this is happening is the new breed of laptops that ditch the traditional Intel (and sometimes AMD) processors for new Snapdragon processors from Qualcomm. So far, we've seen three of these Snapdragon systems announced: the HP Envy x2, the Asus NoveGo and the Lenovo Miix 630.
Laptops with lower-end processors have been tried before, with limited success. Why is now potentially the right time? Because these systems aren't being pitched as bargain basement throwaways -- and in fact, they'll cost $600 and up, the same as many mainstream laptops in the US. Instead, they promise some very high-end features, including always-on LTE connectivity (like a phone) and 20-plus hours of battery life with weeks of standby time, which also sounds more like a phone than a PC. The tradeoff is that these Snapdragon laptops run Windows 10 S, a limited version of Windows 10, which only allows apps from the official Microsoft app store. That's also similar to the walled garden of mobile OS apps many phones embrace.
[...] There's another take on phone-laptop convergence happening here at CES. Razer, the PC and accessory maker, always brings one or two inventive prototypes to CES, such as last year's triple-screen Project Valerie laptop. The concept piece for CES 2018 is Project Linda, a 13-inch laptop shell, with a large cutout where the touchpad would normally be. You drop a Razer Phone in that slot, press a button, and the two pieces connect, with the laptop body acting as a high-end dock for the phone. The phone acts as a touchpad and also a second screen, and it works with the growing number of Android apps that have been specially formatted for larger laptop screens or computer monitors.
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First ARM Snapdragon-Based Windows 10 S Systems Announced
Snapdragon 845 Announced
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Wednesday January 17 2018, @09:50PM (3 children)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday January 17 2018, @09:53PM (1 child)
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday January 18 2018, @08:55AM
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2, Disagree) by Grishnakh on Wednesday January 17 2018, @10:27PM
Fallacy: No True Scotsman.
These are laptops, like it or not.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 17 2018, @10:16PM (1 child)
I don't want a locked down laptop running some half-assed OS.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday January 17 2018, @10:32PM
Then don't buy it. This isn't the first time Microsoft tried hawking Windows 10S.
If people buy these things in droves and in a year or two everyone's forced to run Win10S with its walled garden, we only have ourselves to blame.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 17 2018, @10:20PM (2 children)
Or will it be a year of a source-based distro? (Assuming you can root the device.) Since no legacy binaries will likely run on it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 17 2018, @10:23PM
I certainly hope you can run your own OS on it.
This doesn't necessarily mean the year of Gentoo, though: Debian for example is compiled for the following architectures:
* amd64
* arm64
* armel
* armhf
* i386
* mips
* mips64el
* mipsel
* ppc64el
* s390x
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Thursday January 18 2018, @12:09PM
Legacy Win32 binaries will work on them, via binary translation. I've not played with one, but apparently the speed is pretty good. They do the same sorts of tricks that Transitive did, proxying a load of API calls, so time spent in any of the system libraries is running native code and only time spent in the application binary itself is emulated (this means things like text layout / rendering, most graphics drawing code, and so on is all native, and GPU shaders are, of course, compiled to native code for the GPU).
Not sure why you'd need Gentoo though, you just need an OS that provides binary packages for ARM, which a lot of Linux distros and BSDs do.
sudo mod me up
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 17 2018, @10:52PM (1 child)
Tablets and ebook readers. These devices seem somewhere between laptop and smartphone, but not suitable for work (laptop) nor portable communication device (phone). But it turns out to be a good form factor for media consumption - viewing ebooks and technical manuals, retail data for salespeople, browsing the web for recipes and other info, and watching videos.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by maxwell demon on Thursday January 18 2018, @06:49AM
A tablet will become a suitable replacement for an ebook reader when they start having comparable battery lifetimes, at least when only used to read ebooks.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 17 2018, @10:54PM (3 children)
All in all it sounds like Microsoft simply didn't learn anything from their Windows RT attempt back when Windows 8 launched.
(Score: 2) by Virindi on Wednesday January 17 2018, @11:28PM (2 children)
No, no! The real problem with "Windows RT" was that "RT" is not a cool enough set of letters. Luckily, Apple has already paved the way by naming a version "S" and all Microsoft has to do is follow. Success is guaranteed!
(Score: 3, Funny) by bob_super on Wednesday January 17 2018, @11:56PM (1 child)
S ? Seriously ?
Even Apple considers "S" to be low-end.
I demand these tablets run Linux FX GTO XP or at least Linux 2 Alpha Turbo Prime.
(Score: 2) by Virindi on Thursday January 18 2018, @01:46AM
I first read that as "Linux FX GTFO XP"...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by MostCynical on Wednesday January 17 2018, @11:17PM
phone
Laptop
Ipad
Tablet
Things that switch between (removable keyboards)
And now.. giant tablets that kind of act like phones.
Provided the graphics cards aren't crap, they will be okay for Skype and facetwitgram, so they really will be competing with "normal" sim card tablets.
If enough people hate typing on a screen, and these are better, they could take off in the over-60s non-tech market.
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 20 2018, @02:12AM
Every converged device I've seen costs *more* than the separate components would and delivers less.