Slate sticker shock: Asus Windows 7 tablet priced at $999 | Hacker News Reader

Slate sticker shock: Asus Windows 7 tablet priced at $999

itworld.com

37 pointsabennett69 comments

Wow, Microsoft still doesn't get it. Most people don't want stock Windows on a tablet! This is the reason MS has failed in tablets for a decade already; they refuse to change the OS to fit the tablet form factor.

Sure, there are a few devs and nerds who'd like Windows on a tablet, but the casual user definitely does not. That's why iPad won so early: nobody would have bought one if it ran stock OS X. The buttons would be too small and the whole thing would feel clunky.

The price of this thing doesn't matter, really. It'll fail as a mass-market device, while it'll probably sell a few to businesses and nerds.

Exactly. And what's really sad is all this talk of "Windows on ARM" when they've already got a new ARM-based OS that's quite nice for phones (WP7). I just don't understand why WP7 isn't their flagship "mobile" OS (phones, tablets, and beyond). It just seems like a no-brainer.

I'm guessing the ARM development focus started around the time smartbooks[1] were the Next Big Thing. Smartbooks have a form factor closer to netbooks than smartphones, so it would make sense for MS to try squeezing proper Windows onto them. Now that the iPad has stolen that market segment, MS has re-purposed the already-started ARM port for tablets.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartbook

IIRC they get something like $15 for each Windows Phone OEM license and something like $50 for each full Windows OEM license. That's probably a big part of the reason they'd prefer to stick with full Windows in as many markets as possible.

I think it's important to note they could sell more than 3x more $15 licenses than $50 licenses.

You have a potential success with a low margin and certain doom with a high margin. Which one would you choose?

Apple: 12% of the total personal computer market in the USA. 92% of the high-end (over $999) personal computer market, which is around 10% of the total.

If you're going to have 10% of the market, which would you rather have -- the bottom 10% or the top 10%?

(I'll concede your point about the choice between potential success/certain doom for Microsoft in the tablet field, but Microsoft obviously doesn't see it that way: they see it as a choice between success and success, and obviously they want the more lucrative version.)

> they see it as a choice between success and success

And that is absolutely baffling. It will be studied for decades after Microsoft is gone and be the ground upon countless doctoral theses are built.

Two words: "corporate groupthink".

Microsoft won't be the first huge company to succumb as a result of adhering to the very outlook that made them big in the first place. (Anyone else remember IBM in the run-up to 1994?)

Interesting that Google seems to be struggling with the same thing with Chrome OS vs Android.

The problem is that Microsoft is dragging behind it thousands (millions?) of existing applications. The argument that they should not support their existing application base (for better or worse) is a difficulty one to make.

It took several tries in the Windows Mobile world for MS to give up homogenizing the PDA and the desktop. By throwing manpower at it they think the tablet is "close enough" to a desktop that it can be solved. I don't know if it can or not, but I believe that's the mentality.

I think John Gruber nailed it in a recent Talk Show podcast: The problem with Microsoft is that they went from a "Microsoft everywhere" philosophy to a "Windows everywhere" one.

It's not even as "simple" as changing Windows to work well on a tablet. Look at what it took to make the iPad a success:

1) Release a really slick smartphone that is a huge hit

2) Release arguably the most seamless and well integrated app marketplace in history

3) Get boatloads of developers to develop for the new platform

4) Release the iPad to a willing, educated audience, with a huge catalog of existing apps

That's a lot of moves to be behind. Changing the OS is a start, but far from sufficient.

At one point I thought they were going somewhere with Xbox live on WP7 and then move that strategy to a tablet. It could be a huge platform if there was a gaming phone/tablet linked with the titles on your xbox.

But of course they shot themselves in the foot a couple months back when they crippled indie game developers.

Well then that explains why Microsoft is not changing the OS. They are hoping to go straight to #4.

To be fair, MS was seemingly riding the CE-train into the grave up until the day they pulled back the curtain on Metro.

So it's not unthinkable that they might have another tablet group either adapting Metro or starting fresh and this is just the choked sputters of work that was started back before it was obviated by modern tablets.

Microsoft has changed Windows to fit tablets. Many of the UI changes in Windows 7 are touch-centric:

* The big buttons and slide-to-expand of the new Taskbar

* Multi-touch gestures in Explorer, IE and more

* Aero Snap and Shake to make window management less fiddly

* A redesigned on-screen keyboard

It's not a total redesign, so obviously it will never be as smooth as iOS or Android, but I'd say they did a decent job without breaking compatibility.

Is there still a mouse pointer?

It's optional. Instead you get this funky water droplet effect when you tap the screen, I guess to let you know that a click registered.

Indeed, the slogan I was hearing before launch was "Touch me, I'm 7!"

Two of my favourite points about the iPad are the battery life and the instant-on (including connecting to Wifi - OSX on my MBA is crap by comparison).

Arguably hardware features, but ones that won't work without deep software support.

Windows 7 tablets without those two features will still be a poor imitation.

I would have bought OSX iPad and many in tech circles hoped that there will at least be choice between iOS and OSX. Granted, we're totally irrelevant market for AAPL...

Try using Airdisplay on an ipad.

Traditional OSX is awful as a touch interface.

It's $300 more than an iPad. Sticker shock? Really?

It has USB ports. It runs Windows 7. For guys like me who are all Windows, this doesn't seem high priced at all.

Sure, it would be nice if it were $699, but it has Windows. For me, it's like having a tablet with all the comforts of home. All my programs (apps), all my browsers, all the control! (yay)

It requires a stylus too - which some of us big fingered dudes really miss.

EDIT: I've never touched the thing or seen it live, just checked out the tech specs. Maybe there's better / cheaper stuff out there.

For those who are scratching their heads -please read the ParentPost in the manner that it was meant - carefully crafted and worded satire. Only on HN will it get the audience it deserves. Upvoted. "It requires a stylus too which some of us big fingered dudes really miss" :-)

Er, the stylus thing is not entirely off the mark. My N900 has a stylus, and there are programs I cannot use without it (notably, the web browser is nigh useless without it, since text that's perfectly comfortable for reading means links that are way too small to hit reliably with a finger). So, a stylus actually can be a point in its favor.

I think “requires” is the important word.

Another way to look at that state of affairs is: the required stylus is a point against the n900's browser.

Styluses, particularly for navigation, have been rejected by the market. So relying upon them is simply a bad idea if you dare to dream of outperforming anything in the graveyard of Windows-Tablets-Past.

I've got small hands, and really hated using the browser on an iPhone due to how easy it was to click the wrong link by mistake on any sites that don't have an separate version optimized for mobiles. Switching to a Nexus 1 from an iPhone 3G was worth it just for the trackball. Unfortunately the Nexus S removed the trackball, making it a downgrade over the N1 as a whole :-(

It's a sad world when solving the problem counts as a black mark, while putting your hands over the ears and singing la-la-la-there is no problem counts as good user experience and paying attention to detail.

> "really hated using the browser on an iPhone due to how easy it was to click the wrong link by mistake"

You know you can zoom the page effortlessly and be sure the tap is properly placed amongst a group of links, right?

Sure, I can zoom effortlessly, but it would be a lot easier if I didn't have to, since that also involves zooming back out and scrolling the page once you go back. 4 steps instead of 1.

Except when you zoom way in and still miss, because what you're clicking on is a javascript implicit trigger right beside an explicit link, so the browser tries to be helpful and assumes you really wanted the explicit link.

I used to browse on my N810 a lot, and now use a Nexus S or an iPhone. The switch to a capacitive screen had many benefits and was the right move, but I sometimes do miss the accuracy of the old resistive screens.

I used to browse on my n800 a lot. I now browse on my iPhone a lot more. Because the convenience, rendering, panning and zooming far, far outweigh the lost accuracy of the stylus.

Sure, but a large part of that is because the current generation of browsers on current hardware is a LOT faster. On the n810 you had hardware buttons to zoom, so it's not as if that was less convenient interface wise, it was inconvenient because it was slow.

Oh, sure. There's plenty of kludges that you can use to work around the inaccuracy of the finger + capacitative touchscreen combo. The problem with zooming is that you can't pinch-zoom with just one hand, and the doubletap-zoom sometimes wouldn't zoom in enough. Also it makes the workflow of the really simple operation that little bit more complicated: doubletap somewhere nearby, wait for the zoom, find the link again, tap.

As another example, in the Android browser a long press on a link will highlight the link after half a second, and pop up a menu after a second. So you can start pressing on the link, wait for it to get highlighted, and then quickly either "commit" by lifting the finger or "rollback" by dragging it away from the link.

Pretty horrible, right? But at least I occasionally find even that to be more convenient than zooming.

Market be damned. I like it.

Finally a tablet that runs Outlook!

Never thought I'd hear anyone say that :)

What establishes the value of something is not what it has inside it, but what the user wants to do with it.

A $999 tablet with 64 meg SSD, USB ports, an x86 processor and an HDMI port is actually less useful than an ARM tablet because I do not intend to hook it up to an HDTV, plug USB devices or run Windows software. I prefer the longer battery life and silent operation. If I wanted desktop OS capabilities, I'd buy a netbook that comes free with a keyboard (which is how desktop OSs were supposed to be used). For the price of this thing I can get both a netbook and an Android tablet.

Microsoft lives in the delusion that Windows is something super-cool everybody wants in every computing device they own. How seemingly smart people fall for this will be studied for generations.

Eee slate: 12.1" 1280×800, 2GB ram, Core i5, 32G SSD, Windows 7 home premium: $999

Eee pad MeMO: 7.1" 600×1024, 512MB RAM, dual-core 1.2GHz Qualcomm ARM, 4GB Flash (?), Android 3.0 Honeycomb $499

Looks about right to me. What about Sony Vaio Z sticker shock - costs 4x as much as Vaio M netbook?

Isn't the point that Apple would never be dumb enough to sell a Macbook without the keyboard?

The article omits that the tablet's screen is Wacom, which is easily worth the markup in price.

Actually, I'm surprised Apple doesn't have a Macbook without the keyboard aimed at graphics people. Graphic design is supposed to be Apple's core competency, and it seems like they're rapidly losing ground to Microsoft. Of course, Apple's new market seems to be earning them plenty of money.

I wonder if Apple released the 16GB iPad just so that every article would compare every competing tablet device to that $499 price.

iPads range from $499 to $829.

I just posted an article about this whole issue today: http://www.lessonsoffailure.com/companies/2011-year-ipad/, although I missed this tidbit in the article and it would have been nice to mention.

2011 will be the year Apple basically takes the entire (tablet) market for itself since everyone else is clueless or incompetent to date...And woe be to those arriving late to the party.

> 2011 will be the year Apple basically takes the entire (tablet) market for itself

I don't know about that. I think 2010 was the year Apple did that, and 2011 is going to be the year that Android and iOS compete in the tablet market. With Gingerbread tablets coming out some time in the next few months at competitive prices, I think Apple will see some healthy competition. (Microsoft, of course, will not be a part of that healthy competition.)

I think by year's end, there might be some competition, but as I argued in the blog post, that competition isn't there today and doesn't look to be coming for at least 6-9 months. That's why I claim 2011 is the year Apple dominates. 2010 they clearly did, too.

Release date for the Motorola Droid Xoom is currently scheduled for Valentine's Day. Sure, it may slip, but I'd certainly take a bet that said less than 3 months.

If the Wacom stylus is high precision, then this is a much cheaper and better alternative to Wacoms Cintiq line. I'd buy it in a heartbeat.

The only real problem that I see is the interface. I have a Windows tablet. XP was pretty bad, 7 is a little better... Neither are anywhere close to the usability of IOS or Android.

But I'll be honest... I got a combo laptop/tablet with touch-sensitive pen and figure support both for $1200. Base price was $900. Why would I pay more for just a tablet?

The article's a bit silly. The author may be right that this product will fail, but in general Windows 7 is far more powerful than iOS or Android. The range of apps/games/tools/etc. accessible on a desktop OS dwarfs even that of the App Store. I don't know if people want that power on a tablet, but it is obviously greater power.

If the apps are available but difficult or impossible to use because they require a keyboard and mouse, what good are they?

> but in general Windows 7 is far more powerful than iOS or Android.

Not in this context it's not. How's the built-in support for multitouch gestures for things like maps, image editing, zooming, etc? How is the support for app discovery? How do users find new trusted apps that are designed for the device? What about built-in support for accelerometers and compasses? And does Windows have a GPS application to show your location on a map?

Maybe it does have all of those things and I've just never heard about it. But I doubt it.

Regular old Windows 7 seems like a poor choice for a tablet OS.

I think it has support for some of those. Here's an article on multitouch support in Windows 7: http://windowsteamblog.com/windows/archive/b/windowsvista/ar... I haven't used it (or even read the article) so I have no idea if it's any good. App discovery is the same as it is on a regular Windows desktop, presumably - that is, less hand holding but more freedom. I'm sure the tablet manufacturers will include drivers for whichever sensors they embed in their tablets. Perhaps there will be some standardization so that apps can rely on them, I don't know, that sounds like it would be in everyone's interest. I don't really understand why you're asking these questions, honestly...it's like you've forgotten how a full OS works.

I guess it's a question of whether you want a big smartphone or a tablet-shaped computer. I lean towards the latter, and I don't dispute that in general a Windows 7 tablet is going after a different market than the iPad.

When did "powerful" start to correspond with "the sheer quantity of things that can be done at a minimum poor level of quality"?

If you have a Windows 7 tablet then presumably you can install whatever you want, execute arbitrary code, etc. That's what I mean by powerful.

Android can do that.

Apple's vertical integration advantage further reinforced.

Forbes called in in 2008:

http://www.forbes.com/technology/2008/04/24/mitra-apple-pase...

John Gruber summed it up a few weeks back:

"Today’s Apple has turned the pricing story on its head. Used to be thfe knock against Apple was their kit was overpriced. Now, even putting quality aside, competitors can’t match Apple’s prices."

Tablet marketplace shows most clear cut difference.

Comparing this to an iOS or Android device is silly. This is running a full OS and is not limited to an App Store. It's extremely portable being a tablet but the difference is you can pull out a keyboard and it becomes more than a large phone.

Edit: I think iOS and Android are great when on the run but when I'm stationary (most of the time), I want a keyboard/mouse and full OS. If this device could be booted into Android I'd be all over it. If iPad's could boot into OSX when docked, I'd be all over it.

Seems to me that when I'm doing the kinds of things that are better on a "full OS" (whatever that means), I'm usually going to want a real keyboard, too.

What’s tragic about this (at least from Microsoft’s perspective) is that Microsoft can make a pretty good mobile OS. I have no doubt that Windows Phone 7 would have been extremely competitive if it had been released a year earlier. They are just too damn slow and seem to lack focus.

It’s not yet sure whether Windows Phone 7 will succeed now in any way, will it be good enough to be similarly late to tablets? They certainly must have already started developing some sort of Windows 7 specifically for tablets (as unlike Windows 7 as Windows Phone 7 is unlike Windows 7), everything else would seem extremely stupid.

They are developing some sort of Windows 7 specifically for tablets. It's called Windows 8.

The important question is: What will they change, add or subtract? It’s obviously not in principle wrong to take a desktop OS and turn it into a tablet OS (Apple took OS X and turned it into iOS). I will, however, not have high hopes if Windows 8 on the desktop looks and behaves very similar to Windows 8 on a tablet.

Apple is _SO_ overprice.... err wait, what?

Seriously though. ASUS thinks they're going to sell an iPad competitor with an OS with lackluster touch technology for twice the cost, and less than half the battery life?

Great, Microsoft built the Lexus LFA [1] of Tablets. Pseudo-sleek, super expensive and no one knows or gives a damn about it.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexus_LFA

It's talking about this right? http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/04/asus-eee-slate-ep121-offi...

IT HAS A BUILT IN WACOM!!!

TEN times the RAM of an ipad. It runs on an i5core. This is not remotely in the same league. The audience is not your mom and pop who only has to use Facebook and skype, this is like a thinkpad for creative professionals.

This commentator is very ignorant.

FYI, Lenovo has had Thinkpad tablets with built-in Wacom digitzers for years.

They do indeed, and it's 1300 dollars.

>IT HAS A BUILT IN WACOM!!!

Suddenly this tablet sounds very reasonable. A fully functional Photoshop on a tablet would be nice. (And there's no way you'll see that on an iPad unless they have a similar price markup.)

Photoshop on a tablet without pressure-sensitive input isn't much of a step up from Photoshop with a mouse. And in the press so far I see a lot of mentions of pressure-sensitive input on the MeMo, but nothing about it on the Slate.

Yes the only category that is shared between the iPad and the Asus ep121 is the tablet form factor.

Its like comparing a desktop replacement laptop and a feather weight netbook. Both share the form factor but they are for different uses.

The features of the ep121 put it in that "desktop replacement" arena where power and flexibility are more important than light weight, instant on, etc.

I am excited about picking one of these up and doing more than playing angry birds. I'll keep the iPad (for the record I own and carry an iPad daily) for play time, convenience and for looking cool. I'll use a powerful windows 7 tablet for getting hard core work done in a small package.

Target: Businesses. Your executives can get a tablet. It will run windows so IT can lock it down. It will run ms outlook. It will piss people off after 2 days of using it.

Thats the strategy (xept for the last part).

I can't think of any other rationale that will keep my sanity.

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