Hardware Requirements Will Drive Up the Price of Windows 8 Tablet PCs
Posted on 22. Oct, 2011 by Paul in Tablets
If you want to multi-task with snap in Windows 8's Metro UI you'll need a 1366x768 display. Image: Microsoft
After releasing the developer build of Windows 8 in July Microsoft has been actively updating their Building Windows 8 blog with reports on decisions and explanations of how certain aspects of the new Metro UI within Windows 8 will work.
Recently Windows lead Steven Sinofsky posted about how portrait mode will work with Windows 8 and the Metro UI. In his explanation of portrait mode enhancements Sinofsky hit on the screen resolution requirements for the full Windows 8 Metro UI experience on tablets and other touchscreen computers.
Steven revealed that to get the most out of Windows 8′s new Metro UI interface a tablet will need to have a screen resolution of 1366×768 at minimum. Sinofsky explains that Microsoft chose that particular resolution because “it can fit the width of a snapped app, which is 320px (also the width designed for many phone layouts), next to a main app at 1024×768 app (a common size designed for use on the web)”.
At the moment most of the tablet PCs with 1366×768 touchscreens are priced well beyond the $500 threshold, and the Samsung Series 7 Slate that Microsoft gave away to developers at the BUILD convention is over $1000. Hardware requirements for the best user experience are going to drive up the cost, I expected as much once Microsoft started to talk about Windows 8 at Computex 2011.
I think beyond just display requirements the price of Windows 8 tablet PCs will be impacted by storage costs. The best storage solution for a tablet has proved to be flash memory based storage, or SSDs, due to speed and decreased power consumption compared to hard disk drives (HDDs), but that option is more expensive for less storage space. I expect for a Windows 8 tablet PC to come with at least 32GB of flash memory storage so users have room for programs, but even 32GB of space won’t feed the storage needs of most Windows users.
For any potential storage problem I can see Microsoft really pushing folks to their Skydrive cloud storage service with offers of free big storage packages to Windows 8 tablet buyers (Microsoft currently offers 25GB of storage free to Windows Live users, but you can only put 50MB files using the free account).
We’ll be able to know if tablet makers like Dell and Samsung can create reasonably priced Windows 8 tablet PCs that offer a good user experience in 2012.
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5 Responses to “Hardware Requirements Will Drive Up the Price of Windows 8 Tablet PCs”
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Anonymous
30. Nov, 1999
I agree with Tim for th most part. Also, as time passes the price of tech goes down, SSD’s aren’t always going to be so expensive, an obvious shift will occur once the market is saturated with WIndows 8 Tablet PC’s. Fruit for thought.
Tim
30. Nov, 1999
Writer has no Idea about tech world. First of all LCDs are dirt cheap and they only add very little to the overall cost of a device. Also note that Win8 tabs will run on ARM processors which are cheaper than X86. Microsoft is also making efforts to minimize the hardware requirements for Win8.
Keep this in mind: Win8 tabs are full computers unlike iPads and Android tabs which are just hobby toys and they require a PC to work properly. So spending a tiny bit more on a win8 tab is justified.
Still we don’t have any official word about pricing policy so this entire article is invalid..
NickG
07. Nov, 2011
The author is actually pretty much spot on, you’re the one lacking technical knowledge here. The active digitizer and capacitive touchscreen of modern tablets drive the price up exponentially as resolution increases.
Also that current and future Win8 tabs have in large part still been shown to be running on x86 hardware, notably the //Build// tablet and the Series 7 Slate from which it was adapted. There will likely be a slow migration to ARM, but I think x86 Windows tablets will be with us for awhile yet.
Dakoda
23. Oct, 2011
What your forgetting is that there will also be an ARM version of windows 8.
TabletMan
23. Oct, 2011
Tim,
If high-resolution (1366×768) displays in the 10-11″ range why do the tablet pcs with such displays cost more than $600? Also remember that ARM powered Windows 8 tablet pcs aren’t going to be able to run most of the applications that are available now for x86 powered Windows computers if the programs aren’t recompiled for ARM.