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Intel says get ready for $99 tablets, $299 Haswell notebooks, $349 hybrids
- andrewflnr 13y agoA small, light notebook with a good battery for $300 is pushing into impulse buy territory for me, with the condition that it's not an enormous pain to install linux on. I will be watching closely.
- vinkelhake 13y agoLike the $249 Haswell-based new Chromebook from Acer? The only problem there is the paltry 16GB SSD.
- fingerprinter 13y agoI'd buy that if I could put Ubuntu on it. Haven't seen that as of yet.
- recuter 13y agoVery doable: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Acer_C7_Chromebook https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Acer_C7_Chromebook What's even more intriguing is that you can now flush the firmware on the 2012 model and it becomes just a regular PC that you can install windows/osx/linux in the regular way with no faffing about. Hopefully the same will be done for these new models. Arch on an HP Chromebook 14" sounds for $299 sounds awesome to me. http://johnlewis.ie/pre-built-coreboot-firmware-for-chromebooks/ http://johnlewis.ie/pre-built-coreboot-firmware-for-chromebo...
- andrewflnr 13y agoThat does start to sound attractive. I'd rather not have to hack anything just to install an OS, though. It'll probably be bad enough learning UEFI.
- 6ren 13y agoIs there a performance problem with losing proprietary GPU drivers? Keeping them seems one benefit to dual OS (reusing the Chrome kernel). It's nice to be able to watch HD video without hiccups.
- mrbill 13y agoAnd the soldered-in-non-upgradable 4G of RAM.
- jjsz 13y agoI'd buy something similar: a convertable made from SONY that can run GNU / Linux / *BSD, except with much more RAM and SSD. For: $199- since we get taxed heavily for shipping here. I'll need to upgrade my Dell Inspiron 1121 soon.
- 6ren 13y agoIt has a USB 3.0 port, and 70MB/s cards/sticks are around. Not sure if that's fast enough, but at least it's better than the typical 20MB/s for USB 2.0.
- twotwotwo 13y agoThe cheapie Bay Trail convertibles seem like, potentially, the much more awesome--lighter, more touch-tastic and fun--revenge of the netbook. The 'problem,' such as it is, is that lots of the target audience already has tablets or faster small laptops, sort of squeezing the convertibles from either side. That and that Win8 can't seem to catch a break.
- ekianjo 13y agoIt's time for Linux on the Bay Trail :) Seriously, this could be a good alternative to Windows 8, especially with the increasing amount of games with Steam for Linux.
- eterm 13y agoIn my experience battery life is half in Linux (ubuntu to be fair) what I get in Windows. I don't know why this is but I don't tend to recommend Linux to laptop users because of this.
- ekianjo 13y agoHave you tried recently ? In the latest kernels the situation is not as bad as it used to be. I am not sure, however, how well the Bay Trail will be supported in that regard.
- dllthomas 13y agoI haven't tried Windows on it, but I've been more than happy with the battery life on my new System76 laptop.
- moistgorilla 13y agoPlan on buying the Dell venue 8 pro the day it comes out. -x86? check -bay trail? check -long battery? check -stylus support? check -high ppi? check -under $300? check Perfect notebook replacement. Not a laptop replacement but as a companion device it is perfect.
- DASD 13y agoHDMI? Nope. Also missing from the Lenovo Miix 8 but will be present on the Toshiba Encore 8. Miracast is not an equivalent.
- mtinkerhess 13y agoThe active stylus on the Venue might be the selling feature for me, which it looks like the Encore doesn't have.
- Paradigma11 13y agosame here.
- programminggeek 13y agoThis is a bad thing for the industry. Every time someone buys a junky $300 laptop filled with bloatware from HP, Dell, eMachines, etc. they are going to have a mediocre experience at best. Then they buy a $200 tablet from Amazon or Google, a $300 iPad Mini or a $500 iPad that while all of those devices should be less powerful, they deliver a MUCH BETTER end user experience. HP, Dell, Lenovo need to stop selling the bottom of the barrel hardware with bottom of the barrel Windows experiences. The end business result is they are working really hard to sell a zero margin product only to watch Intel and Microsoft turn a tidy profit. If HP, Dell, and Lenovo want to stay in the game long term, they need to stop catering to the low end.
- ivarious 13y agoWhile the article said about "holiday PC lineup", is the upcoming machines confirmed for Windows machines?
- dangrossman 13y agoSince it said Haswell-based with touchscreens, they're almost definitely talking about Windows. Android/ChromeOS tablets don't need that kind of power (and they won't pay Intel's premium where it'd be wasted). The "Ultrabook" moniker is also controlled by Intel which requires a touchscreen to use that label. Pretty much all the major PC makers have new laptops they announced at trade shows in July/Aug/Sept that they've been holding back until November. They'll be shipping with Windows 8.1 which they couldn't do if they put them on shelves in the summer.
- Mikeb85 13y ago> Android/ChromeOS tablets don't need that kind of power (and they won't pay Intel's premium where it'd be wasted). Wouldn't be so sure. Acer has a Haswell Chromebook out already, and if Intel really wants to stave off ARM, they'll come down... And while Chromebooks work with low powered CPUs, they're better with a faster CPU. WebGL is getting real, Google already has Nacl in the browser (examples are 'From Dust', 'Bastion'), and as web apps become more 'native-like', the extra power will be appreciated.
- dangrossman 13y agoThe high end of the PC laptop spectrum has been neglected for years. I guess the market is just too small to care about. I have no idea where they're taking their profits if they're pushing down on the low-end prices too. I've been looking for a new laptop for over 2 years, and nobody's been selling anything worthy of replacing what I'm already using, which was built in 2010. For a few brief months that year, HP made a wonderful MBP clone (magnesium alloy case, 1600x900 14" screen with edge-to-edge glass, SSD, etc). Soon after, that product line turned into the same plastic 1366x768 crap everyone else was selling, and that's been what's filled store shelves ever since. Meanwhile, my 2010 laptop is starting to fall apart, with dead pixels, an overheating GPU and lost battery capacity. I am looking forward to buying an ASUS UX301 this November to replace it. That's the first and only Ultrabook-class laptop I've seen since 2010 that'll actually be an "upgrade" without buying some thick "gaming" monstrosity. It'll have a Haswell i7-4558U, which comes with the Intel HD 5100 graphics, the first Intel integrated graphics chip to outmatch the 3-year-old Radeon in my current laptop. Plus 8GB RAM, 512GB of RAID-0 SSD, an all metal and glass case and up to 9 hours of battery life. Assuming this PC in that configuration actually makes it to market. What's amazing to me is that this many months after Haswell parts started showing up in stores, that one ASUS laptop is still the only announced product by any name-brand manufacturer with the i7-4558U/HD 5100 parts. Every other new/"refreshed" laptop that'll be in stores this holiday season will either have an integrated GPU incapable of playing games well on the higher resolution screens they ship with, or give up its thickness and battery life for a discrete GPU.
- npalli 13y agoI think Dell m3800 might be what you are looking for. Not sure how they will price it though. Specs seem pretty nice. http://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/04/campaigns/precision-m3800-workstation http://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/04/campaigns/precision-m3800...
- jelled 13y agoI agree with you 100%. If you're not a Mac guy there seems to be a lack of premium options. When it becomes available I'm going to opt for the UX302 which should have a 2560x1440 screen and a GeForce GT 730M GPU.
- dxbydt 13y agoI guess I wasn't the only one who parsed that as a $299 Haskell notebook ?
- eliben 13y ago... and I'm just sitting here, finding it horrible that even ZDnet articles make the its --> it's mistake these days :-/
- varjag 13y agoIt's not really a mistake, possessive forms of pronouns are irregular with often several valid manifestations.
- Dylan16807 13y agoI'm.. not aware of any pronoun with multiple valid manifestations. Your comment completely baffles me. How is it in the slightest bit not a mistake?
- varjag 13y agoBoth its and it's are grammatically valid possessive forms.
- mithras 13y agoAre you serious? it's is short for it is and not the possesive pronoun.
- varjag 13y agoYes, I am entirely serious. Up until early 1800s possessive it's was the grammatical norm. Today it's obsolete, but people who moan about the issue typically have no clue. http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/it%27s#Adjective http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/it%27s#Adjective This is one of the more common pitfalls that freshmen of Grammar Hitlerjugend step into.
- regularfry 13y agoI've ... never heard that. > it could be bad timing for Amazon and it's new Kindle Fire HDX tablet Is it valid here? If so, why? I've always been taught that "it's" was only a valid contraction of "it is" or rarely "it has", neither of which fit here.
- eliben 13y agoAny hope for some of these to be running Ubuntu pre-loaded? Potentially they can be cheaper due to lack of Windows licensing. The only alternative today is Chrome OS (and there are quite a few new ones released already) and Windows 8 (oh the horror)
- brdrak 13y agoA bought a Dell with Ubuntu once. I recall calling tech support asking how does one update the firmware. If memory serves, support wasn't sure how to deal with it not being Windows. Since then, I'd just bought Dell laptops with Windows and either dual boot Ubuntu or replace Windows entirely. The Ubuntu Dell was lousy spec wise. It's easy to update firmware with a FreeDOS boot disk. For my next laptop, might get a System76. Slightly OT, but had money to burn for a work desktop and went with a Supermicro workstation. Very nice hardware. More expensive but much better than Dell/HP/Lenovo workstations. Ironically, still cheaper than a Mac Pro desktop. Also better -- Mac Pro RAID was a poorly thought through overpriced garbage, last time I worked with it up a couple of years ago.
- ChuckMcM 13y agoThis would not be an unheard of tactic for Intel (go for cheap) but it seems ill advised against ARM. I get the 'Quark' but I don't get trying to sell a Haswell CPU at Cortex A9 prices. That seems like it would be jumping the gun. Of course the issues at 14nm may be worse than we thought and Intel needs this for cashflow but still, I'm guessing ZDNet hype.
- ge0rg 13y agoI wish they stopped forcing touchscreens on their users. I would so buy a Haswell-based follow-up to the Asus Zenbook UX51VZ as a developer machine, but having fingerprints on a glossy display is a showstopper for me.
- Tichy 13y agoDo you have to use the touchscreen?
- yoodenvranx 13y agoI really really miss my 5 year old old Lenovo T61p! 1400*1050 is the perfect screensize for me and the Core 2 Duo would still be fast enough for most applications. Perhaps I will buy one on ebay for 220 Euro...
- devx 13y agoI said this here a while ago. Intel had only 2 options, and they are both bad for them: 1) keep going up market, and be disrupted in the most classical way possible 2) compete with ARM on price, which is unsustainable for a company like Intel Not only is Intel used to high margins on its chips, but it's also a very small player in the mobile world, and the PC world is shrinking continuously, so "making it up" in the PC market won't cut it. Also, if they're promoting "$300 Haswell notebooks", virtually nobody will buy $700-$1000 notebooks in the future, and Intel will never be able to raise prices, and their profits, again. Whether Intel will die like Blackberry and Nokia (yes, I consider the acquisition as dying, since it was a move out of bankruptcy desperation) or will survive as a tiny shadow of what they used to be, I'm unsure. I suppose it's possible for them to survive as a company that is 1/10 of what they used to be, if they really compete on price, and make radical changes within the company (end all unprofitable/low volume divisions and fire execs or engineers that are too expensive). But that really depends on how willing they are to make those hard decisions.
- kryptiskt 13y ago> Not only is Intel used to high margins on its chips, but it's also a very small player in the mobile world, and the PC world is shrinking continuously, so "making it up" in the PC market won't cut it. Your world seems to be missing servers.
- 6ren 13y agoThey are also fab leaders, at 22nm while everyone else is at 32nm. So, e.g. they could manufacture ARMs, and command a premium (say, for apple, leapfrogging them 2 years ahead of the competition). The striking thing is that, per Hz, x86 is still far more powerful than ARM (like, integer factors, I've heard x5). If they can get the power consumption low enough and/or more performance is needed in phones/tablets, they could possibly win (though it seems unlikely). Their best bet is to lead the next disruptive category - watches or glasses or whatever it is - but unfortunately their bias towards performance over power consumption doesn't bode well for them.
- vidarh 13y ago$99 tablets have been a reality for a long time at various sizes, or up to quad core CPUs for 7" tablets. In fact, ~$49 tablets (mostly 7") have been around for a while. Just not with Intel CPUs. Expect prices to drop again and specs to be revised up in the run up to christmas, which means Intel is still on the trailing edge in the low end of the tablet market.
- hershel 13y agoAt the $99 price point, price differences matter less , and if Intel can some how offer a more compelling product (maybe by using windows) , it could be interesting.