I had to chuckle reading an interview on the Verge, titled Ultrabook, round two: can Intel control the future of the laptop? (The text of the URL, however, reads, "intel-on-all-day-battery-life-we-really-mean-it-this-time.") The interview is with Intel consumer PC head Kirk Skaugen, and just about every promise he makes for future PCs is already established on Android tablets and hybrids, like the ASUS TF101 with keyboard dock that I currently enjoy.
All-day battery life
- 12-16 hours on Android tablets with dual batteries
- Intel founded the Mobile PC Extended Battery Life Working Group -- in 2002!
Touch
- Found on all Android tablets
- Found on very few Windows PCs and on no Macs at all
Connected Standby
- When my ASUS Android is sleeping, it is still connected to the Internet; when I wake it, email, RSS feeds, updates, and so on are ready for me to peruse.
- This is a new feature in some Macs, and apparently soon on Windows PC. "Even on the world's fastest tablets today, you power it on and you have to wait for your email, wait for Facebook to update. This will give you instantaneous access," Intel says. Notice how they leave out mention of Android tablets.
High Resolution
- My ASUS has a screen resolution of 1280x800, which I find ideal: high enough to see any Web page, yet low enough to enable accurate touching.
- I feel that the drive towards ultra-high screen resolution is as pointless as high pixel counts for digital cameras. As the resolution increase, the touch experience decreases as UI elements become too small to touch accurately. Intel's silly solution is to dynamically change the resolution when the screen senses it is being touched.
This is a case of Intel pedalling furiously from behind, and probably not catching up.
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