Touchscreen Laptops? Yes, Please!

11:41 PM , 0 Comments

With all the hullabaloo these days about tablets and the enormous runaway success of the iPad, it has been predicted by many tech writers that the era of the PC and/or laptop will be over soon. I don't necessarily see it that way. I read an interesting article about Intel recently that has shed a bit more light on what is the logical third (fourth?) option. This option is the adoption of a seemingly hybrid "Touchscreen Laptop". Here's what I feel is going to eventually happen to get us there...

While a majority of people are currently enamored by their new wunderkind devices to the neglect of their laptops/PC's, there is a growing subset of people (at least from my personal observations) who will always think of a tablet as a secondary device. There are many reasons a person could believe such a reasonable thing, but the main argument will always come down to RAW POWER and PRICE.


RAW POWER
While dual and quad-core chips are just now coming into the tablet marketplace, they have been pretty much standard on mid-to-high range laptops for a while now. Tablets are also just starting to flex their muscles in the graphical processing power department, but they are constantly one-upped by the next "powerhouse" tablet to come out, which means they are quickly outdated.

Meanwhile, upgrading graphics on a PC or a laptop is a simple operation. As far as RAM and GHz goes [and I'll use an iPad (3) as an example] a tablet just can't compete. The newest iteration of the iPad, which is what some consider to be "best" tablet out right now, has only a scant 1GB of RAM and 1Ghz of processing power. Compare that to laptops where 3.3GHz+ is considered a good rating and RAM is available up to 8GB on most laptops. Those RAM numbers multiply even more if you bring home PC's into the mix. Comparing Laptops/PC's and tablets is really like comparing Excalibur to a pocketknife

PRICE
Simple enough premise. A nice tablet is the equivalent in price to a nice mid-range laptop. A laptop is cheaply upgradable. A Tablet is not upgradable and only REPLACEABLE. Eventually people will tire of replacing these devices every year, especially in a down economy as inflation slowly envelopes us all.





I think that with the imminent release of Windows 8, a touchscreen heavy front end OS for PC and tablets with all the usual Windows bells and whistles (compatiblity, no app stores, freedom!) available as well, the laptop and tablet will combine into a new unholy conglomeration that will truly make the next leap in tech possible. I personally can't wait for this!

Here's a link to the original article over at Tom's Hardware that inspired this rant (and shows a hopeful glimpse into this proposed future):
Intel Conducts Study to See If You Want Touchscreen Laptops
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