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November 24
Form Factor and Functionality

In computing, form factor is affected by, and affects many things. For a long time, form factor was dictated almost entirely by performance, and the two factors went hand in hand. If you wanted to choose a small or convenient form factor, you often had to compromise on performance, and if you wanted a really high performance system, you were left with a single choice for your computer's form factor: big.

That same notion applies today, but a major difference is that in the space of a few years, the lowest-wattage CPUs have increased tremendously in performance, while at the same time, efficiency of software has remained approximately level for several years now, leading to a situation where not only is one of the new Intel Core M chips going to be twice as fast as a 35W chip in my laptop from a few years ago, but this is enough performance for nearly everybody's daily computing needs.

In that time, the PC manufacturers (as well as Microsoft and Apple) have gained the ability to create extremely powerful computing experiences in a very limited amount of space. The Microsoft Surface Pro 3, as a great example, is twice as fast as my existing laptop computer in every subsystem and is just a little tiny bit bigger than my iPad, which it's also many times faster than.

Because of the incredible generation over generation increase in efficiency we've seen, it's now easy to pick different form factors for computers, and it seems to be easier for the computer manufacturers to suggest that different things should be the "default" when you're looking for a computer. For example, most of the PC makers are building some kind of "2-in-1" computer, to help customers get both the desktop and tablet experiences of Windows 8, from machines that are patterned after the Lenovo Yoga family, and have hinges that open almost 360 degrees. The other primary version of this strategy is to build a system that is a pure slate tablet, with a docking station that allows it to be used as a laptop, and adds a counterbalancing weight to allow it to sit independently.

Microsoft's strategy, which is to build a pure slate tablet that can stand up on its own, and has a keyboard attachment that covers the display, has yet to be replicated by a PC builder that is still in business. (Sony's implementation in the Tap 11 was really interesting because it had a very small kickstand, and a wireless keyboard, and was completely obviously not aiming to replace laptops.)

This is one of the aspects of the Microsoft Surface that's the most interesting. With its 10.6- and now 12-inch tablets, Microsoft is pretty clearly targeting laptops, and use on people's laps. The solution they have isn't necessarily the best replacement for a laptop, but it's an improvement at many other different aspects of portable computing.

Over the past few months, while trying to use the Microsoft Surface RT and the Lenovo Yoga RT as my primary on-the-go computers (as I have since I got the Surface RT a bit over two years ago) I have been encountering the limitations of these specific devices and the platform itself, and have been thinking about the interplay between form factor and performance.

The Surface RT has a very good form factor, from a physical perspective. The screen is big enough to be usable with Microsoft Word and OneNote, as well as browse desktop web sites, and the keyboard is easy to use, but because of the 2-in-1 nature of the device, the keyboard itself is fairly flimsy and wears out quickly. (In fact, I am very certain I'll be buying it a new keyboard soon, the third it will have had in its lifetime.) On the other hand, it's also a very svelte device and it fits inside some very small bags and is usable in small spaces. The other big shortcoming of the Microsoft Surface RT and Surface 2 is that these devices weren't given a pen, meaning a really large reason to even have something that detaches from its keyboard or folds flat to become a slate doesn't even exist on that system.

One of the things that affects form factors is what consumers are asking for, and form factor is definitely a product of the times. A great example of this is that by and large, consumers are using fewer peripherals and more Internet services. This, coupled with the fact that most operating systems are getting more efficient with computing resources and consumers are moving toward cloud services means that we are seeing more and more computers using soldered memory, small solid state boot devices replacing large spinning magnetic disks, and fewer ports, and a trend toward smaller desktops that don't have internal expansion, such as the Mac mini and the Intel NUC.

The other thing the market seems to have done is mostly replaced the premium subnotebook (briefly: 11.6-inch UltraBooks) with ChromeBooks and inexpensive machines. Most of the 11.6-inch machines are a bit over an inch thick, which was totally svelte in 2004 but looks gargantuan compared to the Surface Pro 3 today. The market for really small laptops has essentially moved away from people using them for local applications and toward ChromeBooks, tablets, and semi-ruggedized systems really meant for K-12 students. It seems most of the remaining entries in this market, aside from the MacBook Air or systems that were quite experimental, such as the Dell XPS 11 and the Sony Vaio Duo, which itself only barely counts because Sony also discontinued the 11.6-inch Vaio Pro when they exited the PC market entirely.

Functionality and form factor are also closely related. One of the things that increasingly performant processors at ultra low voltages and wattages have enabled over the past few years is "tablet PCs" in the way Microsoft has been envisioning since the early 1990s when Windows 3.1 and 95 were available in versions optimized for tablet computers with pen driven interfaces. The biggest problems with these machines were that they were slow, really slow, and that they either had almost no battery life, or required the use of at least two batteries in order to provide a longer continuous run time, and hot battery swapping functionality. (And then you had a pile of batteries to recharge that evening.)

Today, pen and touch-based computers are prolific and Apple's iPad alone outsells the entire product lineup, and there are a number of Windows computers now available both with just touch screens and touch and pen screens. These devices have very usably long battery life, cost $250, and come with Microsoft Office, and are available in a few different sizes.

The question about these devices is how useful they are as a "PC" and whether or not anybody should be expected to use Office with a keyboard and mouse on an 8-inch screen, and as the devices grow bigger, at what point you should just get a laptop because the device isn't going to be a very good tablet. The machines at the far opposite end of the "tablet size" scale such as the Dell XPS 18 are actually interesting because they tend to stretch the new traditional definition of "tablet" pretty far, and a change that big in size and a few features makes them really interesting to look at for different things.

For example, the Dell XPS 18 has feet that flip out and it can stand up at an angle similar to a desktop monitor, or lay down similar to something you expect to be laying on the table. Unfortunately, few of the devices in this size class have pen functionality, because it seems like the positioning flexibility as well as the large size would lend themselves to a fairly powerful multi-modal (but stationary) computing experience.

Dell markets the XPS 18 as a small, premium all-in-one desktop that is also a tablet for things like, enjoying a newspaper at the kitchen table in the morning. The somewhat surprising thing if you look at user reviews for the system is that a lot of people buy it as a successor to a 17-inch laptop or instead of a smaller tablet such as the Venue 8 or 11. Those customers are massively impressed with the system's terrible (for a tablet) five-hour battery life and 1920x1080 display, and the fact that as a tablet, it's so easy to touch everything on the screen, which Dell probably ships configured at 150% scaling.

The question of form factor is a little bit more complicated today than it was a few years ago when almost nobody in the PC industry was making tablets, all-in-ones, or convertible devices, and where then-unique form factors, such as convertible tablet/laptops even existed, they often cost a lot more than their counterparts and used lower performance components, in a time when the entire industry wasn't shifting laptops and all-in-one desktops to ultra-low voltage parts, and when that performance difference mattered more.

There are a lot of form factors and concepts available at this point, and I think we're at a point in computing history similar to the release of Windows Vista in 2006, where the computing industry is trying a lot of things, throwing them at the proverbial wall (or market) and seeing what sticks. The launch of Windows 8 was a really exciting time for PC hardware. For a brief moment, it looked like the industry was about to come up with every possible form factor. There were laptops with screens on both sides of the lid, folding laptops, twisting laptops, different hinging designs, and tablets with different types of docks and docking mechanisms.

The PC industry settled down after the launch of Vista and it has since mostly settled down again after the launch of Windows 8. New features in the operating system make it possible to run on lower end hardware, which is the source of a lot of the least expensive tablet systems.

It will be interesting to see how form factor continues to evolve as platforms do. We're at a point where not only is there a lot of change in software and the form factors that the software we have implies, but where hardware is smaller, faster, runs cooler, uses less energy, and costs less, all at once. I think some of the systems we're seeing now are things OEMs wanted to build in the 1990s but couldn't quite make work, and some of it is definitely Microsoft's vision for the Tablet PC edition of Windows XP and OneNote 2003 finally coming true.

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