Intel wishes it could do what Androids already do

I had to chuckle reading an interview on the Verge, titled Ultrabook, round two: can Intel control the future of the laptop? (The text of the URL, however, reads, "intel-on-all-day-battery-life-we-really-mean-it-this-time.") The interview is with Intel consumer PC head Kirk Skaugen, and just about every promise he makes for future PCs is already established on Android tablets and hybrids, like the ASUS TF101 with keyboard dock that I currently enjoy.

All-day battery life

• 12-16 hours on Android tablets with dual batteries
• Intel founded the Mobile PC Extended Battery Life Working Group -- in 2002!

Touch

• Found on all Android tablets
• Found on very few Windows PCs and on no Macs at all

Connected Standby

• When my ASUS Android is sleeping, it is still connected to the Internet; when I wake it, email, RSS feeds, updates, and so on are ready for me to peruse.
• This is a new feature in some Macs, and apparently soon on Windows PC. "Even on the world's fastest tablets today, you power it on and you have to wait for your email, wait for Facebook to update. This will give you instantaneous access," Intel says. Notice how they leave out mention of Android tablets.

High Resolution

• My ASUS has a screen resolution of 1280x800, which I find ideal: high enough to see any Web page, yet low enough to enable accurate touching. 
• I feel that the drive towards ultra-high screen resolution is as pointless as high pixel counts for digital cameras. As the resolution increase, the touch experience decreases as UI elements become too small to touch accurately. Intel's silly solution is to dynamically change the resolution when the screen senses it is being touched.

This is a case of Intel pedalling furiously from behind, and probably not catching up.

 

Comments

[RobiNZ]

Apart from the performance\battery life compromise (same with ipad\air) and connected standby Win 8 is pretty much there. The Metro UI appears to be resolution independent, limitations do apply to the desktop

[Ralph Grabowski]

I now have two computers with touch screens, and I am finding it annoying using ones without touch screens.

[Ken Elliott]

High pixel counts for digital cameras pointless? That tells me you don't own a very big printer. I need 261 megapixels to print a 44" x 66" image @300ppi. Sadly, I make do with only 36MP. It takes a bit of effort in Photoshop to make an acceptable image.

Sure I'm an edge case, but I noticed your daughter wanted a 11x17, which is roughly 16MP at 300ppi (HP, Canon) and 24MP at 360ppi (Epson). Photoshop gurus want oversampled images to make their edits less visible. Even a 8.5" x 11" @360ppi oversampled 2X is 48MP. Phase One gets US$40,000 for their 80MP digital back, so there is certainly a market.

But I assume your mean "pointless for people who only post on the web" and you would be spot on. Most people don't realize HDTV is only 2MP, and web images are generally less than 1MP.

[Ralph Grabowski]

Your high-pixel-count efforts are admirable but puzzling. I made a 3-ft x 4-ft print from a difficult 3-megapixel photograph, difficult because it contained fine gradations due to the fog in the landscape. The large print looks fine.

The science cannot be argued with: Larger pixels mean better pictures; higher pixel counts mean smaller pixels.