News & Analysis
Slideshow: 10 things you should know about Win 8
Rick Merritt
10/25/2012 12:45 PM EDT
SAN JOSE, Calif. – The debut of Windows 8 on Friday (Oct. 26) marks the end of the Wintel duopoly, right? Well, yes and no.
Microsoft is rolling out its next big version of Windows and its own Surface tablet as its first platform. Yes, both Win 8 and Surface come in versions for ARM-based SoCs. But the Wintel duopoly is going strong despite this threat and ones before it.
Remember ACE? Compaq, Microsoft, NEC and a few other PC leaders got together in 1991 to define a MIPS-based desktop that would run Windows NT and SCO Unix. Motherboards from systems like the MIPS RC3230 (below) were supposed to be x86 killers.
[Get a 10% discount on ARM TechCon 2012 conference passes by using promo code EDIT. Click here to learn about the show and register.]
Click on image to enlarge.
The ACE PCs didn’t offer much more performance than Pentium PCs of the day, especially after Intel got more aggressive in the use of the latest semiconductor process technology. And the ACE systems were a bit pricey. So they never took off.
Today, most PC makers have already rolled out full portfolios of x86 Win 8 desktops and notebooks. Only a handful of companies—Acer, Asus, Lenovo, Samsung and ZTE—are expected to make systems (just tablets, so far) for Windows RT, and those probably will not be ready until early 2013.
Still, there’s a growing fissure in the Wintel duopoly, and it comes a touchy time with traditional desktop and notebook sales sputtering. ARM has built up a powerful ecosystem, riding the smartphone and smart everything juggernaut unlike the ad hoc ACE group of the 1990s.
If ARM gets a foot in the door (to mix metaphors) and uses its leverage in tablets, the 64-bit ARM chips that emerge could start appearing in notebooks, desktops and even servers. Who knows? Come the fall of 2015, we may see the debut of Windows Server for ARM, too.
This would have major repercussions for the semiconductor industry, especially its largest member--Intel. The x86 giant would not be able to sustain its average selling prices that now hover around $100 for client CPUs in the face of ARM SoCs that typically cost about $20.
The industry’s biggest microprocessor maker might become the new and largest alternative to TSMC. FinFETs, anyone?
Meanwhile there are plenty of interesting and awkward twists and turns ahead thanks to the advent of Win 8. We offer some examples in the following pages.
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SylvieBarak
10/25/2012 1:05 PM EDT
Love that IBM convertible.... :) But I'd kill for a coffee table with Microsoft surface on it!
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David Ashton
10/26/2012 6:58 PM EDT
Sylvie...you just might not have seen this yet?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Cf7IL_eZ38
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nicolas.mokhoff
10/27/2012 1:29 PM EDT
Cool! Corning has always amazed me as progressive company. One of my fist job interviews in the industry was on a cold February when they flew me to the city of Corning, NY, but after experiencing the weather I rejected the offer.
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kjdsfkjdshfkdshfvc
10/27/2012 9:24 AM EDT
I hear that!
http://bit.ly/IC4m9t
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GordonScott
11/8/2012 12:48 PM EST
Something like these:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VexgZSxSqI4
(mindstorm.com)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLUoZuupnpo
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Yog-Sothoth
10/25/2012 1:52 PM EDT
Bet you wouldn't. You'd be forever polishing it to remove all those greasy fingerprints.
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junko.yoshida
10/25/2012 2:20 PM EDT
Great slideshow, Rick. I, for one, however, would not cringe when I hear about the new hinge. It's a visible and tangible improvement everyone can see in plain sight...and what's wrong with that?
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rick.merritt
10/25/2012 2:57 PM EDT
Don't cringe over the hinge. Don't resist the twist. Could be a new song about hybrids!
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KB3001
10/28/2012 4:15 PM EDT
Not a bad idea but many people around me talked about it several years ago, it is not rocket science.
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nicolas.mokhoff
10/25/2012 2:57 PM EDT
I have the same sentiments about the comprehensive slide show and pertinent running commentary. And my hat is off to Apple for Microsoft trying to become a user-friendly company after some many re-boots in the hardware arena. Coffe table with a large interactive screen; no thanks. Some personal time is sacred and should be savored. Drink up and think up of new ideas.
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Bert22306
10/25/2012 4:54 PM EDT
I definitely cringe at (making a big deal about) the hinge, although it is what makes a tablet useful, as opposed to being an expensive toy.
All sounds good to me, though. Win8 RT should be evolved into running all of the familiar Windows apps, as far as I'm concerned. It would be really interesting if Microsoft could move some of its center of mass over to ARM, no?
As to Outlook? Naw. We use Outlook at work, we used to use Outlook Express at home, and we now use Windows Live Mail at home. It's perfectly fine, as far as I'm concerned, and is super easy to set up. You don't even have to know the SMTP and POP3 servers of your ISP! Try that with Outlook.
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KB3001
10/28/2012 4:13 PM EDT
I stopped using Outlook seven years ago!
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Traces
10/26/2012 9:05 AM EDT
Everyone, myself included, would love to have another viable innovator in the tablet space, but this product is stillborn. It's obvious by the tone of "well, this sucks, but I'll reserve judgement in hopes it might go somewhere someday" the technical press is taking.
M'soft just doesn't get it -- a half-functional cover keyboard isn't better than no keyboard at all.
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Gil Russell
10/26/2012 10:49 AM EDT
Rick, you've been watching too much Giant's baseball lately, "Cringe the Hinge".
The interesting part, "The good news is there’s some real system level design needed again. The bad news is, almost no one is left in PC companies today who knows how to do it anymore." is well worth pondering over.
The PC/Tablet market is moving into a "mixmaster" mode which will leave plenty to recycle before the right combination is found [i.e. something that sells].
This does not bode well for Microsoft or Intel though ARM appears to be positioned well...,
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EVVJSK
10/26/2012 11:30 AM EDT
Title of this article was pretty misleading. While the article itself was not bad, much of the information was not remotely related to Windows 8. Other than the cute pictures there was little need to make this into a Gallery/Slide Show other than to bump up the number of clicks for the website/article. I look for to more articles, but as the author here laments the lack of technical resources required to develop a hinge, some readers are hopefull that EETimes will continue to provide us with excellent technical articles.
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JeffL_2
10/26/2012 12:33 PM EDT
OK let's play the usual game...
Surface is to iPad as what is to what?
As Lumia 950 is to iPhone. Not much "there" there.
Wonder who will hire Ballmer for his next job??
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NimrodO0l1
10/30/2012 8:38 PM EDT
For fun:
Next Job?
I figure that Ballmer's net worth is N times greater than the net worth of all of us that have added comments to EETimes.
Sigh... and N is a depressingly large number.
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Wilton.Helm
10/26/2012 1:11 PM EDT
Microsoft is too large an operation to ever design an efficient OS. The competition has little to fear.
What is interesting is the tablet revolution. I took two years of typing in HS before I ever knew it would be useful for my career (CS degree). At the time it was predicted that typing was a skill that would not be needed by the time I got to the work force. That hasn't happened in the last 40 years. Instead the ASR33 became the input device for minis and later micros, followed by VDTs and then PCs, all with keyboards (QWERTY, no less--I learned DVORAK a bit once). With a little more effort, the keyboard may eventually not be an essential part of the personal computing experience. Certainly the tablet is a strong pointer in that direction, although it's present pop-up keyboard represents at least a temporary large step backward.
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vandamme
10/26/2012 1:24 PM EDT
I've converted to Linux, and won't look back. You people stuck on XP, you realize that it will be unsafe to use soon? Try Zorin, or Mint, if you want something that looks similar (but is more modern).
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Etmax
10/26/2012 11:58 PM EDT
:-) I use Ubuntu as a dual boot feature on my XP desktop. I like it a lot, so much more professional, less buggy and very snappy BUT: If my world revolved around an MSoffice type app and email an web I'd be on the Linux band wagon only. Sadly of the ~100 applications I use daily to make money only 2 are available under Linux. That leaves me and a large number of other people in the unenviable position of needing some flavour of Windows (see my other post below)
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Etmax
10/27/2012 12:13 AM EDT
Microsoft made most of their money being able to upgrade people at regular intervals while maintaining compatibility with existing Apps and to a lesser degree use models. When they got to Vista they really broke this model, and it hurt them. I read last week that with W8 they are looking to use a java type model where all apps run as byte-code so they can reduce/eliminate developer effort when porting from one win platform to another. The plan is that if an app is developed for W8 it can run on a phone, a tablet or even across the web. Sounds good on the surface (pardon the pun) doesn't it? Well I recently upgraded a bit of SW that I use regularly to a java byte-code version and found that it ran like it was running on a 4.77MHz IBM-XT. It was woeful. Espewcially because I am running a Pentium i7 at 3.2GHz. I quickly downgraded to the old version. If this is to be the W8 experience then I will stick with XP and maybe W7 and finally when no W7 is available I will hopefully be able to migrate entirely to Linux because developer have realised what a dead end strategy it is. Also re the new tablet I/F, I use CAD programs extensively they are driven most accurately and quickly with a combination of keystrokes (on a real keyboard) and with a mouse/trackball/3D joystick, finger swipes just don't cut it.
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kjdsfkjdshfkdshfvc
10/27/2012 9:24 AM EDT
The x86 version will put Apple out of business.
http://bit.ly/IC4m9t
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KB3001
10/28/2012 4:16 PM EDT
I am sticking to Android-based systems out of principle. Many people around me are doing the same. The public is not gullible nowadays.
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rick.merritt
10/29/2012 12:27 PM EDT
I have a friend who is a software developer who recently switched from iPhone to Android because he can tinker with his Android handset.
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bryawn
10/30/2012 12:04 PM EDT
As this slide show aptly illustrates, Microsoft's inability to "get it right" is astonishing. Same with Intel. Why is it so hard for winning companies from one era to make the jump to the next?
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Stephen_M
10/30/2012 4:32 PM EDT
I have a problem with the article's title: “Slideshow: 10 things you should know about Win 8”. It is 10 pages of mostly not Win 8 content.
Page 1 – Mentions Win 8. Talks about Win 8 running on ARM-based SoCs. Talks about microprocessors.
Page 2 – About Win 8. Discusses Win RT and Win 8 for x86.
Page 3 – Mentions Win 8, but it’s a trip down memory lane.
Page 4 – No Win 8. Another trip down memory lane.
Page 5 – Mentions Win 8, but it’s about the form factor of the platform.
Page 6 – Mentions Win 8, but it’s about selecting embedded hardware to run popular OSs.
Page 7 – No Win 8. It’s about Microsoft’s hardware.
Page 8 – About Win 8 and the user interface, window’s experience, and performance.
Page 9 – No Win 8. It’s about tablets.
Page 10 – Mentions Win 8 but it’s really about an application of Win 8.
Bottom line, this article has a bogus title and teaches you very little about Win 8.
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sixtysixscrews
10/31/2012 2:02 AM EDT
Oooh...the GriD - that was a fun bit of machinery back in the mid-80s. I did a fair amount of business doing custom GriDs for electric utility companies. They had two empty ROM sockets onboard and a nifty little link to MS-DOS to make them run the software embedded in the ROMS. Chuck out my last unit about six years ago - sob - could have used it to kill this *#$! squirrel that keeps coming in my Window(s 8) VM....
ss/wb
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richarddgary
10/31/2012 10:01 AM EDT
Wow! a misleading article...really expected new stuff on Win8 not a history lesson on Tablet PCs!
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uPlay Tablet
12/6/2012 2:17 PM EST
Smart hinge? There are keyboard cases that make iPad just like MacBook Pro, like the following one. Similar models have been on market for 2 years. I guess Microsoft copied the idea on their surface.
http://www.uplaytablet.com/sharksucker-aluminum-wireless-keyboard-case-for-ipad-make-your-ipad-becomes-macbook-air
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