Lenovo is pushing hard to be the first out of the gate with a Window 8 Tablet…

Speculation surrounds the Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga that Lenovo showed at CES 2012 a couple of months ago as to whether this will one of their tablets they will put Windows 8 on in the Fall. It was an impressive configuration with a 13.3 inch display, resolution of 1600 x 900 an with 10 touch points. The designed showed the screen turning around an axis 360 degrees allowing it to be turned from a notebook with a full-size keyboard to a touchscreen tablet.

Rumors have it that Lenovo is hoping to ship in October. It was the Verge that is speculating the Yoga as the product they will be dropping the operating system on. Basic specs make this a viable choice. My only concern would have been the screen size but minimum spec right now is 1024x768 which is more than met by the Yoga that was shown at CES 2012.

Windows 8–Are you interested?

There has been a lot of hype in the marketplace about the recent release of Windows 8 Consumer Preview and most people that you listen two have a very strong opinion about it. There are very few that are sitting on the fence with a wait and see attitude, they either love it or they hate it. There seems to be no middle ground.

With the advent of the Windows 8 Consumer Preview you are able to choose and in-place upgrade to install the product if you wish.I strongly urge you not to do this on a production system that is critical to your business of course. Paul Thurrot has a great guide that describes this process.

The big controversy is of course the new Metro Interface that is the primary startup screen that you will see when you boot a Windows 8 System. You do have both the desktop interface that we know as well as the Metro we don’t know at all. Why both interfaces? Microsoft doesn’t want to eliminate the legacy interface and force everyone into its simpler Metro App interface because we still need to accommodate business users and their applications. However, they see the writing on the wall and need to accommodate a touch interface that will perform better in a tablet environment. Having both interfaces provides the greatest degree of support for the widest range of applications. Just pick the application that runs best in the environment that you wish to use.

With this mixed environment the interface that you will primarily use will probably depend on what you do and what equipment that you are using. If you are primarily a tablet user you will probably live within Metro but if you are a power desktop user especially you will probably never see the Metro interface except when you boot up.

If you plan on using the touch interface you will need at least a screen that supports a minimum of five (5) touch points to take advantage of the the touch interface. You don’t need to think too much into this. Metro is a design that is going to be best used by consumer on a consumer device (in other words a tablet). The desktop as we know it now is mainly for PC’s that are going to be used for business. That’s it. That doesn’t mean that there won’t be some crossover but I do believe this is how the division will primarily work.

This duo interface for the most part isn’t going to be something that most people using it will even worry about. They will learn to use those pieces that make sense to them and not think anything more of it. It will be interesting to see how the Apps develop on the Metro side and see how we will be able to flow information between the two interfaces. I don’t think that it will be a bid deal but let’s begin working with it before we come to any final judgments.

I think that Microsoft really has a strong product here that can be something that will enhance the business side especially for tablet use and I am excited to work with it to find out how true that is.

Rediscover your mouse and keyboard video

A touch of brilliance

Make Windows yours

How Competitive can a Intel/Win8 Tablet be?

Can Tablet Manufacturers get below the $600 price barrier to successfully compete against Apple’s iPad line? Unless Intel and Microsoft lower their pricing on Clover Trail and Windows 8 probably not. So will the manufacturers opt for the less expensive ARM technologies and suffer the incompatibility of windows programs and ARM processors. This week we have been getting some tidbits from Microsoft talking about what Microsoft Programs will be available for their ARM based Windows 8 but unless other software manufacturers port their programs to this chipset they will not be compatible and thus will work on an Arm based Windows 8 Tablet. Will Microsoft Office be enough for user’s or not?

Ever since Steve Ballmer made that surprise announcement at CES 2011, there has been a lot of speculation about just how Microsoft would be bringing Windows to the ARM architecture. Would it be a whole separate line? Would it be compatible with old applications? Would it be cheaper? Many of these questions have been answered in a long and technical post on the Building Windows 8 blog today, as Steven Sinofsky explains how they developed (re-developed, really) Windows On ARM, or WOA, and why they made the choices they made. Some major points, for those unwilling to read: WOA will be totally incompatible with x86/x64-based applications; it will include a desktop only for Office apps and file management; it will be focused on portability, battery life, and "integrated quality."

Sinofsky describes WOA as “a new member of the Windows family, much like Windows Server, Windows Embedded, or Windows Phone.” It’s not meant to play games installed on operating systems from a quarter of a century ago. It’s meant to be a point of access for the current, and only the current, Windows ecosystem. It is similar to the “full” version of Windows 8 only in those parts that have been developed specifically for Windows 8.

Think of it this way. Windows 8 for x86/x64, in a way, includes Windows 7, Vista, XP, 98, 95, and so on. It is built with compatibility in mind, as part of a venerable line of operating systems. Windows On ARM includes only Windows 8. It’s as if the last ten versions of the OS never happened — though there are echoes.

This breaks the OS for some people — me, for example — but it could be a breath of fresh air for many. This OS is at once bare-bones and all-inclusive: it comes with a familiar version of Office, it will almost certainly be cheap and easy to deploy by the hundred or thousand, and it’s absolutely a known quantity.

Apps for WOA will all come from the Windows Store, and will all be Metro — except for Office (and a few other trusted programs), which will be able to run in the traditional desktop environment for productivity purposes. It’s a bit puzzling, this admission that the traditional desktop is superior for productivity, but it’s also the truth: an all-Metro productivity suite would be unfamiliar to Microsoft’s base. They’ll make it optional for now, and drop the other shoe later.

The focus on tablets is made plain: “you don’t turn off a WOA PC.” You don’t have sleep and hibernate modes. Like a phone or tablet, you just hit the button and it goes into a newly-developed low-power mode in which the battery will reportedly last weeks. These tablets, while they won’t run the “real” Windows 8, will be totally functional (it runs “super well”) access points to the Windows ecosystem. And with the increasing focus on cloud storage, web-based apps, and mobility, that limited access may start looking less like a bug and more like feature as time goes on.

It’s still early and this discussion seems to be changing daily right now. It will interesting to see what kind of price this type of tablet will be able to be launched at and how well it will be accepted by consumers.