Windows 8 is just around the corner (I already have the final bits on one of my work computers) and a variety of really interesting computers have become available. One of the more interesting machines of course is the Microsoft Surface RT.
In terms of form factor however, the Surface RT is fairly uninteresting, it's fairly boring even. It's just a 10.6-inch slate with a kickstand. What's really interesting to me is the innovation (even if it's weird and slightly misguided) in the ia32/x86 Windows 8 space. To me, the appeal of most of the Windows 8 devices is that I could hypothetically have a device which I can pull out and use to view maps or read Kindle books while I'm on the bus or in a car, and when I get home, attach to a good keyboard and play WoW with, or join a domain and map drives, or run an autodesk product on it.
Don't get me wrong, I love the pure-slate form factor of my iPad (and even the smaller form factor of the new iPad mini and the various 7-inch Android tablets) but for me, having a tablet has almost always been about working, and figuring out what the balance is between desktop-style tasks, and tasks that can (and should) be accomplished on a purely slate or pad-style product, such as the iPad or an Android/WebOS/BlackBerry tablet.
The other element to the Windows 8 Pro devices (with ia32/x86 processors) is that they should (mostly, at least) be able to do tasks previously relegated to "Tablet PCs." I've loved the concept of the Tablet PC for a very long time, since I first got my hands on a (trial) copy of OneNote 2003 in 2004 or 2005. The idea that you can hand-write notes or draw diagrams on the display was great, and although those devices were generally not very capable outside of note-taking and office productivity, that's what I wanted to do at the time anyway. The biggest disadvantage of the Tablet PCs of that era is their poor battery life.
Today, though, Ivy Bridge has components with low power usage that are very high-performance, battery technology has gotten better, display technology is both better and lower-power, and the pervasiveness of solid-state disks means that a Tablet PC (or slate) now has a low-power, high-capacity storage media that's extremely fast and physically quite durable.
What this means for me is that Windows 8 has been (and will be for a while) a shining light that combines my favorite things about my iPad with my favorite things about my ThinkPad or Vaio. In service of this, a lot of the vendors have released very interesting hardware.
It's looking like Microsoft is going to be one of the best-reviewed, premiere Windows 8 hardware vendors. Their two tablets, the Surface RT and the Surface Pro are beautiful pieces of hardware, pure-slates when you're on the go, and desktops or dockables (with USB and display output options, and SDXD memory card slots) when you're in a stationary location. Add a fairly innovative keyboard-slash-screen-protector and you've got what looks to me like a pretty nice machine. I intend to buy a Surface RT promptly, and I'm thinking really hard about the x86 Surface Pro.
The other vendors have really interesting machines out, some of which I think are really uniqe and compelling, and some of which are re-hashes of old form factors, old machines, or straight-up reuses of existing hardware.
Lenovo has been one of my favorite hardware vendors for a few years so I'll start with their Windows 8 convertible, the ThinkPad Twist: This machine is basically a large X230T but without a Wacom digitizer. I honestly think this is its first major failing. After that, you notice that it's huge – probably too huge to pull out on a bus and do reading on, and that it's battery life is pretty middling. It's got modular memory and storage, and as a result has some longevity advantages, as well as cost benefits (by buying one with a spinning disk) but you'll really want an SSD if you're going to be using a laptop as a tablet.
The other interesting Windows 8 machine from Lenovo is the ThinkPad Tablet 2. This machine is using one of the newest variations of the Atom processor and has two gigs of ram. It's a pure slate, but there's a variety of accessories available, including a laptop/keyboard dock, a classy folio case and a desktop dock with Ethernet, a display output or two, and a bunch of USB ports. My mental problem with this machine is that I don't quite trust the Atom to do some of the tasks I'd like to do on the desktop side, such as WoW and (maybe) Autodesk and Adobe content creation and design products.
Dell has taken a fairly standard approach to Windows 8. The XPS 10 is a decent looking Windows RT tablet and the XPS 12 is a fairly creative Windows 8 (for x86) tablet. These are both home-focused machines, but Dell is trying to tell business and institutional customers that XPS systems are high end enough to stand in for Latitudes and OptiPlexes in certain situations. The XPS 12 has a fairly unique hinge design, and I like the way it looks (a lot fewer unfinished edges than the ThinkPad Twist) but it has been pointed out to me that the hinge design it does have isn't proven, and it's also still fairly huge. Dell's other machines mainly include touch-screen laptops and iMac-similar touchscreen desktops.
HP has a few Windows 8 machines, but I'm still not over my general hatred for anything from HP that's not a server of a tape drive.
Sony is honestly where I think some of the most interesting innovation is. They've got one or two regular laptops to which they've added touchscreens, and then they've got the Vaios Duo 11 and Tap 20.
The Duo 11 is an ultrabook whose hinge has been re-constructed in a very interesting way. It slides open and up in a way a lot like the HTC Touch Pro2, and with an 11.6-inch display, it's a lot more carryable (and bus-usable) than the convertibles from Dell and Lenovo. The Vaio Duo takes it to eleven by including a Wacom digitizer (or at least something that has some kind of accuracy and uses a pen) and pumps 1920x1080 pixels through its tiny display. The keyboard has been moved to the front of the machine and it has a TrackPoint-Alike optical tracking mechanism for mousing. Is it insane? A little bit. Is it creative? Hells yes! It is at least a little bit interesting as an alternative to the Surface Pro? Totally!
The Tap 20 is an all-in-one desktop PC with a very large battery and a retractable stand. You can disconnect its power cord and take it with you to the couch or coffee table. It's intriguing to me because it reminds me that I don't necessarily need another x86-based mobile computer, due in part to the fact that I've already got several serviceable ones, and in part to my attempts to work more with remote machines on TECT. The Tap 20 is great though, because it has a large surface which might make some tablet apps or games very compelling. Plus, I'm a little bit in love with the "trans-portable desktop" concept, because who doesn't want to haul their desktop computer to the dining table in one piece while it's running for a little bit of WoW? The Tap 20's specs honestly aren't wildly impressive, but Sony says the display is totally gorgeous (even though it's running at 1600x900 instead of 1920x1080) and the unique form factor really does take the machine fairly far up my shopping list.
The biggest problem with most of the Windows 8 machines that aren't desktops or the Microsoft Surface is that they're really weird and nobody is completely sure why. The Lenovo and Dell machines are the ones that look the most like regular computers. Fairly common among Windows 8 machines are computers whose displays fold all the way around, putting the keyboard at the bottom of the machine, and laptops with displays both inside and outside the main machine. The machines that aren't weird are either gargantuan (such as the ThinkPad Twist and XPS 12) or look like they're totally unfinished (the Vaio Duo 11 has exposed ribbon cables hanging out between the display and the base.)
I guess the ultimate question is whether or not anything that gets built and released in the next few months can turn into the machine I was imagining a year or more ago when Windows 8 was first shown off: A tablet that sets in a docking station and is a usable desktop when you're at home or the office, but also a usable tablet when you're on the go. My original notion of Windows 8 involved its full retention of today's Windows 7 desktop, but with a tablet-only Metro interface that wasn't visible (by default, anyway) when you were docked. What we've got is a little bit more flexible, but this may be to the detriment of the platform. It's also worrying that the only Office app Microsoft has put effort into making available as a pure Metro application is OneNote. This may just be the result of Windows 8 and Office 2013 being transition products, but it still strikes me as something Microsoft could have done with at least one more app. Outlook as a metro app would be fantastic, especially if it had even most of the functionality of desktop Outlook 2010 and 2013, hidden away somewhere.
Having played around with various releases so far, I think Windows 8 is decent software, and I think Microsoft has released some good hardware for it, and is going to be releasing some more in the coming year. I believe time will tell whether or not anybody else thinks so. I don't think Microsoft will die, but they could be a very, very different company at the tail end of 2013. I believe that Surface and Windows 8 are going to change the personal computer industry, and it'll be interesting to see exactly how they do so.