Thinkpad Tablet 2 looks good

[socialcarpet]

If I were to pull the trigger on a Windows tablet, I think that would be it. Seems like a great compromise of price, performance and features.

I'm keen on Windows RT, but Win 8 would be even better if they can keep the price down and get the battery life up, which it looks like the did with the TPT 2 pretty well with the Atom processor.

Atom seems like a perfect solution because it's able to run Win 8 and it will outperform any ARM SoC and at the same time the newest Atom can just about match the ARM for battery life.

I think the perfect storm will be when the "Bay Trail" Atom's come out later this year. It should mark the first really major upgrade for the Atom architecture. They will have quad core versions, much better onboard graphics and out-of-order execution (the lack of this is probably the biggest reason Atom's real-world performance falls so far short of better processors)

So... NOKIA.. give me a Win 8 tabelt with that Bay Trail Atom in it for under $700 and I will run to the store with a wad of sweaty $100's in my hand the day it goes on sale. :winktongue:

Questions? Comments?

 

[wpguy]

The only potential gotcha is if you ever need to use Hyper-V, say for playing with the Windows Phone 8 emulator, you will be out of luck on an Atom. Curious, since the AMD equivalent runs Hyper-V just fine.

Otherwise, other than a little bit of lag when starting up applications and during web browsing, Windows 8 runs just fine on an Atom, even on the current models. (I expect some of the lag I experence on my netbook isdue to using a standard HDD instead of SDD.)

I think you'll be quite happy trading a little speed for more battery life between charges.

 

[HeyCori]

I just read the review on Engadget. They really liked it.