Judging by the latest from the rumor mill, Windows 8 won’t be out for another year or so. If this story by AFP is to be believed, then, Microsoft is getting things into gear early as far as Windows 8’s tablet implementation goes.
The story, which quotes an "industry source" cited by the Korea Economic Daily, says that Microsoft and Samsung have partnered up on the very first Windows 8 tablet, and they’re getting ready to show the fruit of their labors at the BUILD developer conference next week. The conference is taking place in Anaheim, California between September 13 and 16.
"This new product manufactured by Samsung will be the company’s first collaboration with Microsoft in its hardware devices," said the industry source. Since Samsung already has Windows 7 smartphones in its repertoire—see the Focus—that comment tells us Microsoft might be playing a more active part in the development of the upcoming tablet. That’s not too surprising if we’re talking about a reference platform.
Samsung has caught a ton of legal flak from Apple lately for allegedly copycatting its products, so it’ll be interesting to see how the first Windows 8 tablet differentiates itself from the iPad 2. At least on the software side, Microsoft has a pretty unique and elegant interface—one that I’ve been cautiously excited about since the first public demo. The question is, will the hardware be equally compelling?
Now the rumors are saying it has Intel in it:
[url<]http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-20104104-64/windows-8-tablet-from-samsung-has-intel-inside/[/url<] I guess we'll find out soon enough
The amount of power lost in that time is pretty small. Combine that with inaccurate power “bars” and it’s pretty easy to see how someone wouldn’t notice that.
Exactly. Do dumbsumers actually think that resume from sleep or low power screen-off mode is the same as booting? If so, don’t they wonder why their device loses battery power even when they think it’s ‘off’?
Current tablets and smartphones don’t boot up fast at all. My Droid and Touchpad take longer to boot from power off than my computer. What they do is have a very low power standby mode with essentially instant resume. And that seems to be more hardware related than Windows related. Ultrabooks are said to have exceptionally low standby power consumption. And some computers already resume from standby pretty much instantly. My Acer 1410 CULV laptop resumes immediately. It’s not universal, my ThinkPad takes 10 seconds or so, but I’m sure that any Windows 8 tablets will be optimized more like the former.
I read about the fast boot. It’s not instant boot and you bet that if Windows 8 doesn’t do it, you can bet that Android/Apple will hit on that aspect (especially Apple) and Joe Sixpack will understand the message.
check this out… it’s pretty damn quick…
[url<]http://www.pcworld.com/article/239736/microsoft_demos_super_fast_boot_times_in_windows_8.html[/url<]
My first question is: will Windows 8 allow an “instant-on”-type of functionality? I don’t mean fast-boot. I really mean “click on a button and the screen shows up” that all “post-pc” tablets have.
If Microsoft doesn’t implement that feature it will feel like they only moved half-way between the tablets of old and the new standard.
I’m frankly getting a bit tired of Android on my Samsung Galaxy Tab. Crashes, abrupt resets, bugs, and other weird behaviors. I applaud MS for making Windows 7 a far more pleasant experience than previous versions, and I hope that level of polish continues on with Windows 8. Perhaps the one thing Android and Apple can brag about is how secure their OSes are compared to Windows, but that may well change as more hackers try to crack Android and iOS open and as MS tries to improve Windows more and more.
Good news, nonetheless. Competition keeps these three OS players on their toes.
Not all of them – some variants will definitely come with Atom chips.
Besides, clock/voltage/memory/WiFi/allsortsofthings affect battery life of a tablet, not to mention how efficiently the OS handles all this.
I think you’re probably right that he’d be telling anyone who’d listen that Tegra 3 is the Windows 8 tablet reference platform, or some such thing. But whether that’s the case or not, I’m sure nVidia has been pushing hard to make that as true as possible. We know how good they are at reaching out to developers… I can’t wait to see the Windows startup splash screen with a TWIMTBP logo!
Report: Apple filing flimsy lawsuit next week.
If an ARM processor was all that mattered then all tablets would have equivalent battery life, or at least battery life/Wh.
Battery life shouldn’t be much of a problem since these tablets will use processors based on ARM just like the ipad.
The big feature that a Windows 8 tablet must deliver on is long battery life. Right now the iPad is getting a full day on a single charge. Not constant use mind you, but I really don’t have to think about the battery until I throw it on the dock at the end of the day. Anything less means that you might have to cable it and once you do it’s just another computer. If Microsoft and it’s partners can get the battery life right, they’ll have a good chance to compete with Apple, if they don’t, Windows 8 will go the way of the Zune, Kin, WP7, etc….
Doesn’t it feel good to be one of the only people in your city to have a Windows 7 Phone? (I’m one of them)
Metro is selling phones now? Have any links to back that up?
Lest ye forget NeXt and BeOS were also well ahead of their time.
Add me too.
Samsung is using Tegra 2 for their own cellphones/tablets. The device department is separate from the chip design/manufacturing arm.
I think it’s possible that this has Tegra3, but if that’s the case, wouldn’t JHH be giving interviews to everyone+dog about how Tegra3 is currently in 99% of all Win8 devices?
i got it. so add me to the 5.
Wasn’t Samsung making the ARM chips for Apple? If so, unlikely they’d go for a Tegra.
Tegra 3 ? if not, who makes the GPU in the tablet? (no mention of AMD or Intel…)
Yeah… But if you have a Windows 7 Phone (yeah, yeah, I get there are like 5 of us) then you’ll know that Metro is sweet and Microsoft actually has a really good chance of coming out strong in the tablet world.
you mean sp1?
Early adopters always lose. Bring on Revision B (or version 2) !
Fingers crossed this will be sweet!