Intel Pushes the Swivel Tablet

Thusly you thought Apple was onto something with the ultrathin, touchscreen slab known as the iPad? Intel would beg to differ, rather seeing swivel tablets in its time to come.

More inside information about Ultrabooks — the company's freshly buzzword for ultrathin laptops with swiveling touchscreens — are awaited are expected along with new chips for laptops and tablets at the Intel Developer Assembly next week in San Francisco.

Other hints come from an Intel White House's remarks at the Citi Technology Conference in New York earlier this week. Intel hopes that it can offer both casual computing and productivity in one piece of ironware.

"Form factors in the notebook computer market have been somewhat stagnant over the last different years," Intel CFO Stacy Smith aforementioned, adding that new Ultrabook designs climax over the side by side 18 months should change that,

Of path, the swivel pad of paper is non a new concept. PC makers accept been dabbling in convertible reach into concealment laptops since the Windows XP era, with computers like the Acer TravelMate 100. More lately, Fujitsu's Lifebook T580 tried to put up the good of both worlds with a $1000 swiveling netbook, and Dell took a slightly different take out with the Inspiron Duo, which has a touch screen that flips pop on an outside frame.

None of those laptops sustain become sensations like the iPad. That's partly because Windows has never really been designed for touchscreens, and partly because the hardware is large and in many cases more expensive than modern tablets.

Microsoft may solve the first off problem with Windows 8, which bequeath come with a touch-optimized user interface that runs its personal tablet apps. But hardware may still be an take. The non-touch sensation Ultrabooks that Microcomputer makers have shown so uttermost are still quite pricey, hovering around $1000 for introductory configurations. And although Ultrabooks will be much dilutant and lighter than any other sofa bed tablets we've seen, they'll always be bulkier than the slimmest standalone tablets.

I prefer the approach Asus took with its Eee Plod Transformer Android tab. Instead of joining the keyboard and touchscreen permanently at the hip, the Transformer's keyboard/trackpad dock sells as a separate accessary, allowing the gimmick to slim down when users only want to use IT arsenic a tablet. Asus is rumored to be putting Windows 8 in its next Eee Slog Transformer.

At the Citi conference, Intel besides reiterated a take that ARM-founded Windows 8 tablets won't be able to persist legacy Windows apps, unlike the x86 architecture that Intel uses. Microsoft has previously dismissed those claims as "factually inaccurate and regrettably deceptive," but hasn't elaborated. Expect answers at Microsoft's BUILD developers league next hebdomad.

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