sub-13 to match/beat Tab S iPAD Air 2?

here's an interesting topic - and I do have in mind to make this my main Windows 10 daily driver if and when I find such.
I have a new iPad Air 2 top of the line, and a Galaxy S Tab 10.5 on the way. Both are fast tablets with long battery life, don't overheat, don't have fans so you don't choke them to death with heat exhaustion, a "just right" size and carryability. The Android tablet has the huge advantage of accomodating a pointing device so it will get a case with Keyboard/touchpad.

I know of no notebook pc that can match the speed, portability, battery life and the display capability of these, but I could have missed one or two. There are many that have good specs but when you look at what real people are finding in them, they are buggy, unreliable, hot, slow, incapable of fast graphics, etc. I do not want ANYthing bigger than 12.5 display... I had a 13 HP elitebook and it was ok but way big. I currently have an older thinkpad x120e because I cannot replace it without taking a downgrade some way or other but I'm even willing to do so if it beats the above core requirements.

what have you found that beats? I paid under $400 for each of the tablets: one brand new, one "as new".

???

 

I've started shopping around for a windows portable as a replacement for my old asus c200 (RIP) and I was recently introduced to the Lenovo Yoga 11s (haswell). Its 11" notebook/tablet convertible and can be had for $400 new. It has a respectable 6.5h wifi internet surfing battery life, a 1366x768 IPS screen, a dual core i5-4210Y, 4GB of RAM and 128GB SSD. Heres the NBR review.

 

it is a worthy consideration except for being fanned [instead of fanless]: at that price it is close to the asus ux, which though to big for my pref, is fanless, high def 1920x1080, fanless http://www.amazon.com/Asus-Zenbook-...8&qid=1435842560&sr=1-3&keywords=asus+zenbook and http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B00SGS7ZH4/ref=dp_olp_new?ie=UTF8&condition=new
after using fanless devices, and being a tech that has to cannibalize dead overheated cadavers, i'm really sensitive to how one uses fanned devices. frankly they are antiquated except for high performance needs. Then, the displays have really spoilt me. after using the new tabs, it is painful to look at a notebook display. that said, if you read the reviews, though its only 1920/1080 the UX gets raving remarks about the quality of the panel. still a huge machine

 

another one as chum in the waters: http://www.microsoftstore.com/store...gnature-Edition-2-in-1-PC/productID.314145300
new transformer. I have no idea what the real world feedback is on it yet. at least it is sub-13 and probably fanless

EDIT: and a pristine example of what I see all through the PC industry: backdoor-flushing of slow moving inventory. I have bought several top tier notebooks for others [dell latitude, hp probook, et al] at half price, new with warranty
http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-ASUS-Tr...Signature-Edition-2-in-1-Laptop-/251988232111
[this is Microsoft Store: brand new]

 

Ah. Made the assumption you were looking for a windows tablet like device. That zenbook looks to be a yummy device though. But, I try to stay away from premium ultrabook devices as these devices really suffer from becoming outdated quickly. Instead of an expensive ultrabook I'd rather grab a cheap baytrail chromebook for a fraction of the price. Both devices can competently browse the web and do web applications and both devices will struggle on anything CPU intensive work. One is just a bit snappier and nicer looking than the other.

What I've been hunting for is a decent inexpensive windows tablet/convertible that can replace my deceased ASUS c200. This time around I'll pay extra for windows over chrome so I can play some of my visual novels on the go . A used yoga 11s seems to be the best compromise.

 

cognus, consider Lenovo Thinkpad Helix 1st gen, they're going cheap on eBay. Unless you have a very specific reason to use a device running mobile OS as your main machine, get a proper Windows convertible or ultrabook. I know what I'm talking about since I use Android device as my main daily driver. Decent keyboard that beats most current notebooks makes it quite good for typing, but it gets painfully worse when working with multiple documents thanks to ****ed up mobile software.

 

i think i'll pass on the helix - doesn't look like it has an advantage I'm interested in and is sold at UX305 price, used or otherwise . the Chi looks better for my goal and with patience won't be expensive.
but, what we are concluding is that one cannot beat the tech features of the top tier tablets at that price, except, as you say Star - the multi-simul-task ability.
to be fair, however, the 'real' notebook pc's typically have usable hinges, still lacking in the aftermarket for ipad/droid

none of these notebooks have really great battery life but if I can go a "day" before plunking on the charger, that would be ok, i guess.
its tempting to, in effect, punt PC and just use some throwaway like a stream 11 for the document work I do and or debugging stuff onsite. but from what I have seen of windows 10 [which I'm using at the moment], no way I'm going less than 4gb. one little hiccup and i'd be dragging feet

both the aforementioned tablets have displays that are so good I hate to look at anything else unless it is a big screen [like entertainment big]. some smart coder needs to come up with an ipad "pointer App" !! it can be done on a jailbreak, but you know how that goes. advantage android

 

I'm confused. What are you looking for? A tablet or a laptop?

 

a replacement "main Windows daily driver" per the original post - i don't care what the marketeers bill it as. what the industry seems to have defaulted to is: if it is limited to 2gb, its a "tablet" type device. 2gb is 1gb short [i'm looking at ram usage as I type this on Win10 build 10159]. reading hundreds of reviews, what people really complain about probably goes back to paging/swap

question: anyone know of another device using the panel on this one: http://www.amazon.com/Transformer-1...-Touchscreen/dp/B00TCUKWE8/ref=dp_ob_title_ce
?? 4 gb, significant ssd... ?

btw: the aftermarket/backdoor is selling the above in new condition sub-$200 - the Stream has set the bar pretty low despite a much superior panel on the above [and much inferior cpu]

 

Bear in mind that the amount of RAM used by windows varies with the amount available. I'm over 4 GB used with one program running, because I have 16 available.

 

i have not observed that on 8.1. 8.1 is well refined in mem management and I see no more being consumed on a 8gb sys, but I could be wrong. all I do know is that it is not hard to hit that 2gb restraint. huge mistake for microsoft to be implicitly promoting 2gb devices when 10 rolls out - if they stumble on this one, I have no pity for them whatsoever. it is do/die time

 

cognus, 2GB is actually OK for Windows 8.1, thus should be good enough for 10. Unless you play games or do heavy stuff, that is.

 

I can verify. I was running an old HTPC with 2GB on windows 10 tech preview. I was impressed at its ram usage, it wasn't as great as my openbox archlinux install but it was between 800-900MB with little additional software running. I quickly shoved more ram into the machine anyway, but what little usage I had at 2GB I felt that the performance was adequate.

 

In theory.. .. , you actually have several choices. You can figure out what you really need to do, ditch Windows, and get a Tegra 3 tablet (or wait for the next one after the x1 - maybe pick up one of the oversized phones instead, and use that with a bluetooth keyboard). Basically, the Tf201 is still a good product, it hovers around 5w on load, it performs at peak for a very long time on passive cooling, you get a day of battery, it plays hd video too long past bedtime, etc. It's still a solid product. On the downside, you would go over to Android, or a semi-functional linux boot.

Second option is a bay trail tablet. Or one of the newer intel broadwell things. What you need to know about either of these is that they employ a power-scheme based on.. like any intel processor.. based on burst performance. You have the new "intended to be" fanless options essentially being able to exceed the tdp budget by many watts until it hits the temp limits. Which helps place broadwell in a fairly high performance bracket, while still supposedly being ideal for tablets and nettops due to it's "possible" 3-5w tdps. While of course what actually happens is that the full package with mainboard and so on that comes with the "SoC" solution intel has, really has an ambient draw that very much does approach 3w (by comparison, your average haswell configuration with a full processor can easily idle with wifi and screen on, at 4w -- my god, it's a tablet!). And they simply offer one of their non-extended instruction set, underclocked processors that can run normally at decent speeds, but then requires normal power-draw in a more reasonable realm of existence than the one intel PR inhabits, and you get the following product: a stripped config with a power-balancing schema that allows for a lower average burst speeds and significantly reduced performance on the areas that processor excels, in order to technically speaking fit in a passively cooled system.

Nevertheless, it is an option for a windows-based system that on average has a fairly low power-draw. I personally wouldn't have designed a laptop for this config, because it essentially means you will have inconsistent performance and inconsistent power draw over time. But Intel do know their users, they know their partners in sales, and they also know how to market - these guys can lure fish out of water, and have the fish happily dry to a crisp in the sun on the beach afterwards, believing they're on their one destined and promised ultimate vacation. Do not underestimate that factor.. what was it again.. "contra revenue"? They're basically subsidizing vendors to pick their products, allowing them to reduce the hardware cost significantly for each product.

Third option, which doesn't actually exist on the market, although it's been technically available for a very long time, is the "Mullins" apu.. A10 Micro something. This had a stable watt-drain at 4.5-5w for semi-consistent performance in tests, utilizing the long existing balancing scheme between the gpu/cpu performance that we know from other apus, in a power package where it actually would be useful. And this actually does approach a nearby realm of the ARM and Tegra alternatives, while also being a general x86 compatible processor. So if you had to go with Windows, that would have been the best alternative. It does however not exist on market, for various and very bad reasons.

So your real choice is to pick up a used Tegra device, or rinse out some leftover stock a store has - of these still full priced wonders, thanks to this mysteriously absent new generation tablets actually taking off. Or to get an intel device that works, but not in the way it's advertised, or how you imagine it would work in practice. I'll say this for it, though - it is better to get a device that relies on burst by design, than to go for a soc solution like Snapdragon, etc., that essentially breaks it's tdp budget whenever you actually do something with it. Which does make a slimmer "full laptop" with an as slim as possible chassis, with a good lithium polymer battery, that you can then run in power-saving mode, an actually fairly solid option in comparison. When not bursting, like I said, your average haswell i7 does idle at 3-4w. So you can actually use it as a typewriter at 4w. Which actually outperforms the tablet offerings combined with a wireless keyboard in practice..

In other words, as the market actually is in reality, the intel offerings really do compete here, in relative terms. But the competition at the moment isn't in hardware, it's in design and convenience, of course. How sleek something looks, etc. That's where the market is moving at the moment - on hardware, it's solidly stuck in 2008.

 

haven't seen a tegra device i thought was well done. the Galaxy S 10.5 I mentioned at the outset is the one to beat [rooted, debloated, leaned]. I use a Note for carry. the 10.5 with BT keyboard/touchpad is awesome except for the multi-task handling [what the poster spake of]... the 'droids will handle a lot of tasks marvelously, but navigating amongst them is clumsy. [for demo of this see .. and that's 2 years ago!].
So the question was how to match the hardware at the price point in a sub 13" windows device.
to me it appears the answer is "NOT". to come close takes more like $1000 and still not the display quality.

Win10 10162 is looking pretty good. on my 2 lab rats the base ram usage doing anything at all is about 1.3gb [that is DOING anything... pulling pages etc]. one ill-behaved program/application/app/device can send it to 2gb quickly, and suicidal PC industry players are STILL SHIPPING BLOATWARE on every device save the MS Store ones... .

 

cognus, memory usage depends on many factors. E.g. Windows x64 consumes like twice more just after install, however I managed to run Win7 x64 with antivirus and a lot of software with memory limited to 512MB, for lulz and to proove a point. It was terribly slow due to swapping, but worked. 1GB is bearable with x86, 2GB is OK. Unlike Android and iOS, bloatware removal is extremely easy, and so is tweaking as of now.

 

i find no bloat on ios. turn off what you don't need. kill a task in about 2 seconds flat - better than android unless you're using 'pure' google. also a lot of ways to customize debloat android. my larger point [and I do tech work for pc and mac etc customers] is that 10 years deep into windows, with it declining fast, one of the main reasons has been the unbearable and destructive bloatware. the average user is less technical today than 5 years ago. I read a LOT of reviews. many of the complaints addressed to the device are bloatware issues but the user doesn't know it and should not have to deal with it. I worked Microsoft issues for a big hardware maker - they could have put the hammer down and killed the trashing of their OS but would not, and still do not, so I have zero sympathy for them. get what's deserved. windows 10 is good, and it will be tragic to see it blamed due to bloatware, but it will be.

back to the original issue: i'm inclined to pickup a T300 chi and give it a whirl. the display is not that great, but better than the rabble. the quads are simply way mispriced compared to AMOLED

 

No bloat in ios? Seriously?

It takes a second or two for people to hear you pick up the phone...

Windows does have bloat, yes. No excuses for it either.

But it does usually come with real hardware though - not handheld abominations that can't even do what is in their name correctly (i.e. 'phone').

 

cognus, iOS is extremely limited, you can't compare that even to Android, and Windows is just another galaxy. You can jailbreak to make it more usable, but what's the whole point of buying a device at ridiculous price to spend your time and effort tinkering with it every fracking update?
About T300 Chi - if no WWAN is OK with you, why not.

 

can't speak for iphone - prefer Note, as I said. the way I define bloat, ipad air 2 has none. there is nothing non-essential running in the background.
right about android: the video above demonstrates enviable multitasking that apple hasn't approached.
Back to the topic: Don't need wwan on this device. [haven't needed on tab s, ipads, handsets]
T300 Battery life unfortunately is reported to be no better than a 10 year old average laptop. can't muster a "workday"

 

On a clean install of Windows, there are very few processes running at all, let alone any bloatware. Only bloatware that you usually get is from whatever an OEM puts on there. Sure Windows is a fat install on a disk, for sure, but a clean install doesn't have bloat.

And since when can a 10 year old average laptop run a full "workday" on battery? Laptops of ten years ago, even five years ago, were lucky to make it 3 hours. And unless you're actually using the laptop every minute of the day, 6-7 hours of actual battery life is more than sufficient for a workday device.

 

Just for the record...

The (other) way I define bloat is an O/S that can't make itself disappear.

ios/osx...
When I can't turn off useless animations and other non-essential video 'effects' that slow me down, that is bloat.

When I press/click an onscreen button/link - I want instant response not a two second delay the 500th time that day. When I press an actual hardware button - I want response like, yesterday.

Instead I get more force fed, mickey-mouse, cartoonish slow, suicide inducing, time stealing, brain deadening, stoopid producing animations aimed at 6 month olds... which I can't turn off.

apple has no clue about making an interface disappear. It's in your face at all times showing you how pretty it is. Well, pretty is only pretty once. Twice and it's already annoying. Every single time is making my brain cells commit suicide by the billions.

Which is exactly what they want so you can buy the next mpos (magical pile of poo) from them.

When we talk about apple - the bloat is built in - and what is running in the background is a poor excuse for an os.

 

Lenovo ThinkPad X 220 with the bigger battery does all day fine. And will also run most software well. Beats any Apple made or any glorified smartphone or Chromebook for power, speed, and utility. Even if the screen is not the resolution you want. But it can be used outdoors far better too. Resolution is not the only thing.

 

sorry, I'm not going backward to a x220. there's no gain at all there for my personal use

tiller, I understand your animus for Apple - I've made a career or 2 living in the PC Wintel patch and am sad to see the spiral down. But you really need to get hands on a plain Air 2 with a good wifi pipe and see what the reality is. it is the fastest-responding device in my menagerie. Not as good a display as the AMOLED, but good [and faster than the sammy]. Look at the Geekbench 3 and 3Dmark numbers on it. I understand the OS arguments and jousting: I had responsibilities for some of the earliest X86 system 5 releases in 3 different companies and had to live with some real unix and linux gurus who were incredibly strident in their allegiances. Like it or not, the numbers don't lie: unix derivatives are indeed taking over the earth, finally! haha....
I guess we will have to agree to disagree about definitions of bloat. when tasks are not running, are not trapdoors to grayware, don't block normal network functions, they don't bother me. OEM add-on's that constantly sit on network bandwidth and chew cpu/i/0/mem do bother me, so I get to make calls to unbloat and disinfect and clean-install windows of several stripes. i unbloat and customize my droids [wish I didn't have to.... they're a bit too like the windows patch]

again, MS did it to themselves. there is little if ANY gain in any of the add-ons that OEMs are STILL shipping on windows systems. users should not have to become geeks and reinstall windows 'clean' in order to use their overpriced Windows devices. [cheap hardware with ancient displays and STILL 5400rpm lousy mechanical disks].
What I see is that maybe a dell xps 13 or a late model ATIV or maybe even yoga 3 pro QHD+ have chops, but those are thousand dollar + machines, and don't get just glowing feedback from real users.

http://tabtec.com/windows/core-m-5y10a-benchmarked-lenovo-thinkpad-helix-2/
http://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench3/search?page=2&q=a8x&utf8=✓

 

iPad is fast. But it ought to be as it runs very walled garden apps. But it still is no X220, mine has survived things which would have killed 6 Apple devices. And with the SSD it's more than fast. And I can run real software on it which iPad can't run.

 

I have an iPhone and an (old) iPad. They're both great toys, but when I want to do real work, I reach for a real computer.

 

The Air2 fastest responding? I'll grant you that (sight unseen).

What I remember as fast in handhelds was a Nokia and soon after a Motorola flip phone I had. That was more responsive than any of my systems today.

But - I could only look a number up and call someone with them.

With the Air2? I would only give it to a non-deserving soul (that I want to torture with).




Seriously: there is nothing the Air2 can do that I need done by a computer. Nothing.

(No keyboard, no mouse/trackpoint, no Windows, no Programs? No go).

 

WingNut could you redo Boromir for me as a 'droid bigot, not Apple so much. I calls 'em like I sees 'em - it is a good discipline you all should practice!
I like 'droid thingies- very very impressed with Note 4 and its immediate predecessor. very impressed with Galaxy S 10.5 [to return to the original topic]... it could be a little more muscular but that will come.

so for around $1K i can almost match the latter in pc-world Wintel thingie much bigger/heavier/hotter/and with less batt life. That's ok, but that's why I posted. If I have missed something you guys will let me know
maybe alienware 13 will do the trick.... http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00SIJG8PQ

 

..actually, Windows has been notorious for doing exactly that since the first version was made. It's going all the way back to the beginning, and the origin of "DLL-hell", as it's fondly described. In that Windows happily ends up loading a very large amount of references to resources, that then will be read and crunched at run-time (on demand). A brilliant idea made up by an engineer with the foresight of a welder using sunglasses, of course - but it's made worse by the fact that each running process then had to be running copies of it's own version of the dynamic library. Which in turn then makes sure that on-demand loading (of resources)suddenly has no advantages over reading each file at run-time. With the added disadvantage that the actual resource you want is packaged in such a way that it may take very long to look up and retrieve.

It hasn't really been until Windows 8 (and the scrubbed Windows RT version that I actually know was scrapped because the foundation of that system was considered to involve too much work and too much "expertise" to make) - that Windows actually has a reasonable memory footprint compared to the tasks it can perform and what it provides. In theory, the dynamic library structure should actually allow Windows to be loaded instantly, without any pauses - and then simply shift most of the run-time over to each program execution. But as we know, that's not the case, and hasn't been the case since the beginning. (edit: for very good reasons - an intelligent on-demand scheduler is not as trivial to program as it sounds).

Once upon a time, you could actually buy this 64-bit land computer with a Unix-based OS from Apple, that had a consistent 5-6h battery run. Very good typewriter, and yes, it took about 10 years before something that only worked slightly worse than that turned up on the market.

Basically, if you wanted Quark to run for a full day on a computer, without hanging, and without spiking on the battery drain when you open a specific dialog to change a window-size, because that occupies a specific background process you have no idea what is, etc... If you wanted something better than that - then you would go back to 2003, and happily spend the ridiculous amount of money a powerbook would cost you at the time.