I think the key there is display. The value of not having to switch software ecosystems is high imho. Basically once both isa's can operate for 8 hours or so on a single charge I suspect the less functional one will need a much bigger jump in hours per charge to make up for the functionality loss.

I don't often go more than 8 hours without easy access to power. Once I can do that and run windows an android tablet would have to last a week or more per charge to make up for it.

I don't think there were any good strategies. Having missed the iphone and android early leads and being linked at the hip to a power hungry x86 isa meant that any strategy was a lesser of several evils one.

That being said I'm sure they could have executed better. I don't have a problem with using the same brand since it emphasizes a break with the past level of mobility. Porting 25+ year old software to a new isa is NOT an easy thing to do.
 

Might still be valuable to keep around both as a hedge against future power efficiency changes. If arm devices can go a week om a single charge, or a month, then this cycle gets played out again.

Also good to get your high value software working well on more than one instruction set so you're not at the mercy of intel.

But it's a balancing act. And x86 doesn't have to be as efficient because they're way more functional (all that extra software you can run).

From a consumer viewpoint once you get to a certain amount of power efficiency more becomes less valuable. So if I can run a single light device for at least 6 - 8 hours on a single charge then being able to use a single stack (e.g., windows x86) increases in value.

If they get the surface down near android tablet thickness and weight then I wouldn't bother with an android tablet...

Amd's been dying since they went fabless imho... They've never matched intel in performance (not for long any way) and power on the desktop was less relevant (though still relevant in data centers).

The display angle was rational imho but the legacy jump (displayport) undermined that.

It's more than that though office is a big deal on the desktop sure.

Lots of internal it type apps target windows. And lots of utilities. Throw in enterprise concerna and fuggetaboutit - running full windows is a requirement, not an optional thing.

If the purpose of rt was to get intel to take power consumption seriously then it may well have worked. Battery life was a key differentiator and on ramp for non - windows (ios and android) devices. Getting rid of that advantage strikes me as pretty crucial for the windows camp.

The question is whether or not it's too late to restore hegemony to windows in the tablet space.

Not scary at all to me but I have very low paranoia...

It's a free festival. Internet access was kind of all or nothing. At the main stage speed test over verizon 4g clocked in well north of 5mbps. Over near the shore, on the rocks and the like I got bupkus. No signal at all.

Not really a big deal to walk a few feet to get coverage but this is seattle, we tech hard so going the extra mile to have a weed festival with great coverage is important-ish. :)

Yeah but the first part sounds kinda interesting. Anyone who works at any of those tech companies next to the park could probably plug in to their wired network. That'd be a trunk line onto the public internet. Getting that out of the building ... maybe run cat5 from the closest port near the roof then wifi it over to a main hotspot that relays to the rest.

Or wifi it through the windows to the nearest park hotspot.

They'd take a bump to their internet traffic but if it is mostly over a weekend and they're nowhere near their cap... hell put a donation cup in front of the parpark hotspot to pay em :)

You still hang with your friends. You just have much cooler stuff to share than ripped up magazines or broken-spined books.

Nice, good linkage.

Damn sorry to hear that! Jkjkjk :)

Oh and microwave, wimax and COWs strike me as the most promising/practical so far. Even here in seattle it might be hard to get the tech companies to sponsor (though maybe 429 branded beers and the like might?)

Definitely interesting imho. I'm a hobbyist, 1st time at festival this year, and would have defaulted to using hotspots as wifi backhaul but maybe that's not the way to go.

then again I'm used to bringing in stuff from home to work (pc components mainly) but enterprise hardware is like a superset of home hardware. SAS, fibrechannel and the like.