Intel's Haswell Chips Pushing Windows RT Into Oblivion

SmartAboutThings sends this excerpt from Technology Personalized: "Intel has started shipping the fourth generation Haswell chips for tablets, which brings power-efficient processors and hence much better battery life to Windows tablets. According to IDG, Intel has now started shipping new low-power, fourth-generation Core i3 processors, including one that draws as little as 4.5 watts of power in specific usage scenarios. These new Haswell processors could go into fanless tablets and laptop-tablet hybrids, bringing longer battery life to the devices. This is a great news for Windows lovers, who have had to sacrifice performance for battery life (and vice versa) until now. Now, with almost 50% better battery life as promised by Intel for Windows tablets, the OEMs have no real need to come out with Windows RT based tablets and hybrids anymore."

Which OEMs?

[dingen]

Now, with almost 50% better battery life as promised by Intel for Windows tablets, the OEMs have no real need to come out with Windows RT based tablets and hybrids anymore.

Which OEMs would that be? Acer was already out, as are Samsung and ASUS. Does Dell still sell Windows RT products?

Look, a dead body

[gmuslera]

That Intel chips become more energy efficient have more implications than giving the last shot to a dead platform that Microsoft killed pretty efficiently already. In fact, could push more into oblivion Windows (RT or not), as could push other ecosystems that could become mainstream where Microsoft don't have presence or meaning at all, like in wearable computing, or pretty cheap devices where it would be better to install some linux derivative than paying the microsoft tax that cost more than the device itself.

ARM computers

[SpaceManFlip]

Did noone see the announcement today about the Apple A7 processors?

Here are the specs:
1.7GHz dual core, 64-bit RISC cpu, 1GB DDR3, quad-core GPU integrated... etc

All of that in the new ARM-based "Apple A7" cpu is inside of a damn phone! How many heatsinks and fans do ya reckon are in that iPhone?

Extrapolate all that with your brain head, and think what some GHz scaling with copper heatsinks and fans (etc) could do in a desktop machine? There is not long to wait before we do have laptops and desktops running on RISC architecture again, given these new published specs.

Re:Now..

[bloodhawk]

It isn't "In Theory" or "or if they don't leave out key features that business wants". The devices are dribbling out onto the market NOW, you can install whatever you want on them, they run a standard full copy of windows, no lockdown like RT, it is the same version that runs installed on a desktop.

Re:At the cost of cost of a diverse ecosystem

[hamjudo]

They claim 4.5 watts for the low power usage scenario. ARM will be with us for a long time. The ARM folks are climbing the feature/performance curve too. Don't worry about AMD, they are bringing out ARM chips too. Including the ARMv8, aka. ARM64. AMD describes more fruits of ARM embedded partnership [pcworld.com]

Cost

[puddingebola]

Isn't one of ARM's advantages cost?

Re:Now..

[tepples]

Why would a manufacturer buy an OS nobody seems to want instead of using Android? What's MS's advantage here?

The advantage of Windows and Windows RT over the Android ecosystem is availability of Microsoft Office.

Re:Now..

[Omestes]

Like what? Personally, I think the form-factor of a tablet is next to useless, and I'll stick with laptops and desktops,

You might be the only one, these days. In the beginning of the tablet thing, I would have agreed with you... but now my Nexus 7 gets almost as much time as my beastly desktop. My desktop reigns supreme for actual work and gaming (Android/iOS games suck, as a rule), while my Nexus 7 is for sitting on the patio with a cup of coffee while checking my email/news. The Nexus also spends a fair amount of time in the kitchen for recipes, in the living room for quick Googling, etc... I'm not going to use it for editing photos, transcoding video, coding, or typing anything about 200 characters, though.

Now if my tablet could run full-blown Windows, at a good speed (better than a shitty unpowered Windows Starter-only netbook) it would be a very nice thing. Then, for instance, I could have done some basic Lightroom work on my recent trip (the screen would still suck compared to my large wide-gamut IPS panel). My girlfriends Netbook can barely run Picasa, so its flat out. My old 14" laptop could do it, but it is another fairly heavy thing to carry around... A 10" Windows tablet would be perfect.

Hell having a tablet/phone with an OS that doesn't feel like a damn toy would be nice... I'm not just talking about Windows, having full blown whatever distro you want would be awesome. Especially if they were cheaper than Windows 8. And Ubuntu x86 tablet would be perfect. Hell, better, since it could be tailored to hardware (Like iOS or tablet Windows), avoiding Linux driver hell.

But then again, I'd own the Windows 8 tablet (not RT) right now, but for the fact that it is horribly expensive. $1000 for a convenience item is stretching it, especially when it is hardly as convenient as anything else on the market... It weighs two pounds, and has some unimpressive battery life. Fix that, drop the price by half, and then we'll talk.

Re:Now..

[larwe]

So I find these sorts of comments interesting. You use your N7 for "checking" your email. Do you use it for REPLYING to email? I find it amazingly annoying to write anything longer than a tweet on a touchscreen, regardless of the input method. The instant you add a keyboard to a tablet, it isn't a tablet, it's an incredibly non-ergonomic mini-laptop with pieces that fall apart. I have the email client set up on my tablet (currently a Memopad HD7, comparable to N7) and I *READ* email on it but I practically never REPLY to email on it. I save the replies for when I've got a keyboard. Consume on tablet. Produce on laptop.

Re:ARM computers

[cbhacking]

I actually know a guy who worked on the NT port (back when it was called "Windows NT", and this was shortly before he left MS for good) for Alpha. He still has the email from when his team supplied it to the test team, which had until that time been working mostly on x86, which said (of Windows on Alpha) "what kind of rocket fuel are you running these things on?" in reference to their speed.

DEC screwed the pooch on that one, no doubt; they priced it as a high-end workstation chip, and lower-priced commodity PC hardware running x86 ate their lunch.

well The PHB does not see it that way and may even

[Joe_Dragon]

well The PHB does not see it that way and may even do searchers on the way out for all workers.

Honest question

[bucky0]

Intel has a mountain of money, the various ARM SoC guys have a pretty large revenue stream (though it's fragmented...). Is it reasonable to say that Intel's money they have to devote to pushing their power usage down is large enough to overcome ARM's advantage, or does ARM have some sort of inherent advantage (+ ARM's supporters' money) that will keep them at least at parity?