The Velocity Micro VMUltraDrive looks like the perfect desktop companion for your Ultrabook.
If you’re using an Ultrabook on the desk I advise taking a look at your setup. How many cables are you pugging in and out each day? Do you have two 1080p screens for the best productivity and have you got an external HDD linked-up for the new Windows 8 feature – File History? This combi HDD/DVD and USB3.0 hub could really help with that modular desktop setup.
If you haven’t read our report on using an Ultrabook as a desktop, take a look now. Ultrabooks cover all the bases when it comes to daily computing and there’s some good options out there for making the desktop life even better. How about 4 screens for example? The Toshiba Dynadock U3.0 that we’ve been testing for the last few weeks gives you that and a whole lot more.
The Toshiba Dynadock U3.0 is the latest in a range of Dynadock products Toshiba have sold for the last three or four years. They combine a number of USB-based adaptors in a standalone unit that enhances the desktop experience and reduces the need to plug and unplug cables which saves time and wear.
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Thinking of upgrading a desktop PC? Upgrading a Netbook. A 10″ Tablet? Now that Ivy Bridge 2nd-Generation Ultrabooks are here and we’re heading into a period of marketing and competition it’s the perfect time to consider converging to an Ultrabook.
A few weeks ago I turned off my desktop PC. It’s the first time it’s been shut down and disconnected for the 3.5 years that I’ve had it. In it’s place is nothing, until I plug my Ultrabook in. The reason I’m doing this is simple; The Ultrabook is better than the desktop for all but a few use cases.
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As a long time UMPC (Ultra Mobile PC) user, having a single device that could function as a mobile companion and a desktop computer has been a long time dream. For years I used Sony’s excellent UX180 UMPC to facilitate this sort of usage, but cramming a full desktop OS into a handheld package was not a solution that could work for the mainstream. Trying to scale from big to small proved to be difficult for battery life and control schemes. In the end the UMPC never reached out of the niche category. The dream, however, has lived on.
Could Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich be the OS that not only bridges the gap between smartphone and tablet, but also extends to the desktop?
It seems that scaling from small to large may be a better approach for the computer-as-a-desktop paradigm, as is evident from this video demonstrating such usage with a Galaxy Nexus hooked up to a large monitor, wireless keyboard and trackpad:
If the demonstration above isn’t a compelling look at where the future of mobile computing could lead, I don’t know what is!
Seeing this really reawakens that dream of having a single device that can scale gracefully across multiple use-cases. Chippy calls this sort of multiple-scenario functionality ‘High Dynamic Range Computing‘ (HDRC); among other challenges, he warns that the industry may resist supporting HDRC because they want us to continue to purchase multiple devices instead of just one.
The author of the video makes a great point — this is already a pretty good experience, but it’s rarely even touted as a feature of the platform (maybe that’s some of the resistance coming into play).
We’ve seen similar multi-scenario computing with Android devices before. The Motorola Atrix has an optional ‘lapdock’ which gives the user a large screen and full keyboard, and even a full build of Linux Firefox to use. Alternatively, the Atrix could be hooked up to a dock with HDMI output for use with a full monitor. Though less broad in scope, Asus is leading the way with the ‘smartbooks’ form-factor by offering detachable keyboards to their line of Transformer tablets.
If Google started to push this sort of usage, they could give all Android users HDRC functionality which would provide a productive environment when the device is hooked up to the right peripherals. It seems like all of the core functionality is already built into Android. Google could get an important upper-hand on Apple with this strategy as Apple would likely shy away from this sort of power-user feature.
What’s your take on HDRC with Android devices? Is this something you’d like to see further developed, or would you rather keep your productivity and your smartphone consumption separate?
We’ve asked Intel about this before and they were rather coy about giving us an answer. If Ultrabooks take-over where tablets can’t reach and if Ultrabooks, or at least laptops running the Core CPU contain the power to do everything the average user wants, why would customers bother upgrading the old box in the corner?
“It’s possible” was the only answer we got at IDF last month but PCR-Online got a more detailed answer.
I’ve been trying to use mobile operating systems for productive and full-computing scenarios for years and although things are getting better by the day, there are still major issues to be solved. Even the latest tailored hardware and software solutions are littered with unexpected restrictions, bugs, showstoppers and even costs. As I continue to test devices like the Acer Iconia Tab A500 and iPad I am making a list of functions that I can perform on a desktop operating system but not on a consumer or mobile operating system that you might find in a tablet. You’ll find an early ‘issues’ list here. I’m largely talking about Android or IOS here.
The issues fall into 3 categories.
The latter category is one we can ignore. If tablets or other devices based on mobile operating systems are successful, the software will come. Lets look at the other two categories though.
For discussions sake, i’ve included a few software issues here.
Having listed a bunch of items above, we have to now ask ourselves whether they are important and if they are, are they likely to be fixed. Certainly the web browser issues are serious, the CPU power issues are too where the operating system runs on an ARM design and you have to think carefully about multi-user and expansion through third party devices on USB. That’s a big market! Issues like IP stack, multiple audio modules and extended screen are less important. Third party software issues will solve themselves as devices move into different markets and the customer-based there becomes big enough to support the creation and support of the software. As for the hardware issues, don’t expect 500GB storage soon but do look for alternative storage solutions via local or remote wireless connections.
What about that keyboard though? Is it still an issue? For many operations, it’s a barrier. Tablets are popular now but is there still a desire for a keyboard. I’m sitting in front of a tablet writing this post now only because it’s got a full keyboard attached.
I want a mobile video editing system with blogging client and full browser capabilities. The video encoding hardware on the iPad has shown breakthrough capabilities in iMovie for the price and size . Keyboard input is important though so I would want a robust keyboard solution. Offline blogging tools are required. Full browser too. The ipad2 + keyboard is getting very close to a usable solution for me but it still has showstoppers. Cabled internet for high-speed video upload, full browser with flash, mouse-over, side-by-side windows for drag and drop, external screen, ability to edit non-iphone videos in iMovie. I’m still a huge proponent of the smartbook and hope that we see more work going into these because that’s where I see most of the gaps being filled for me. Windows 8 could be the stepping stone to an interesting smartbook / convertible / slider design. Like the TX100 perhaps!
What are the ‘gaps’ that you see between a full computing solution and a consumer mobile OS solution.
This has been bugging me for a long time: if any Android/WP7/iOS/etc. device out there is smart enough to change “im inch to “I’m inch or “theres inch to “there’s inch, why don’t we enjoy the same time- and keystroke-saving measures on Windows? Update: As pointed out in the comments, OSX has had unified spelling correction since Snow Leopard, and has just added iOS-like auto-corrections with Lion. Windows is sorely lacking these features! Does Linux has something similar?
It really amazes me that, in some cases, we’ve got better text input features on low-powered smartphones than we do on ridiculously high-powered Windows machines. The old guys have something to learn from the young’ins.
Sure, a select few Windows programs might give you that squiggly line underneath a word that you’ve spelled wrong, but it isn’t system-wide, doesn’t learn automatically, and is probably rarely updated to add new terms.
The few desktop programs that do make an effort to assist your typing often do an inferior job.
In iOS, if I misspell a word, the phone knows how look at my typing pattern and if its relatively certain that I meant “pants inch instead of “psnts inch (because A is near S and there’s a high likelihood that I hit the wrong key), then it will automatically make that fix for me. If it isn’t so certain, it’ll give me the squiggly line upon which I can tap to see a few suggestions about what I might have meant. It also highlights the word in question when I tap on it so that if the word is not any of the suggestions, a single press of the delete key will remove the word entirely so that I can try again, rather than having to spam the delete key until I get to the start of the word.
Smartphones also have access to the names of all of our contacts, so they can auto-correct and suggest those, instead of putting a squiggly line under our good friend’s name and trying to tell us that we spelled it wrong, as would happen in your average Windows word processor.
Let’s not forget that smartphones are also better learners. They know how to pick up words that you commonly use even if they aren’t already in their dictionary. Once added, the term is added to the system-wide dictionary. On a Windows program, you’d not only have to manually add a term, but it’s on a per-application basis (that is, if that program supports a custom dictionary).
I have to type the word “resolution inch all the time for my writing here on Carrypad and in other places, but it commonly comes out as “resoultion inch simply because of the way my fingers sometimes get ahead of themselves. It would be so easy for a computer to realize what I meant and make the fix for me, and yet here I am, having to make the correction manually every time on Windows.
You might say that we don’t need auto-correct when using full desktop keyboards, but I disagree. Though I’ve had a fair share of typing on hardware keyboards, I still occasionally hit a key next to the one that I intended. What’s more, in my daily perusal of the web, I see lots of people who would benefit from such typing assistance — I’m talking about those who don’t seem to know that punctuation exists. And I must ask: why manually insert punctuation and manually add terms to non-universal dictionaries if computers are easily smart enough to do it for us? That’s like manually keeping track of the time instead of using a clock.
Agree/disagree?
This has been bugging me for a long time: if any Android/WP7/iOS/etc. device out there is smart enough to change “im” to “I’m” or “theres” to “there’s”, why don’t we enjoy the same time- and keystroke-saving measures on Windows? Update: As pointed out in the comments, OSX has had unified spelling correction since Snow Leopard, and has just added iOS-like auto-corrections with Lion. Windows is sorely lacking these features! Does Linux has something similar?
It really amazes me that, in some cases, we’ve got better text input features on low-powered smartphones than we do on ridiculously high-powered Windows machines. The old guys have something to learn from the young’ins.
Sure, a select few Windows programs might give you that squiggly line underneath a word that you’ve spelled wrong, but it isn’t system-wide, doesn’t learn automatically, and is probably rarely updated to add new terms.
The few desktop programs that do make an effort to assist your typing often do an inferior job.
In iOS, if I misspell a word, the phone knows how look at my typing pattern and if its relatively certain that I meant “pants” instead of “psnts” (because A is near S and there’s a high likelihood that I hit the wrong key), then it will automatically make that fix for me. If it isn’t so certain, it’ll give me the squiggly line upon which I can tap to see a few suggestions about what I might have meant. It also highlights the word in question when I tap on it so that if the word is not any of the suggestions, a single press of the delete key will remove the word entirely so that I can try again, rather than having to spam the delete key until I get to the start of the word.
Smartphones also have access to the names of all of our contacts, so they can auto-correct and suggest those, instead of putting a squiggly line under our good friend’s name and trying to tell us that we spelled it wrong, as would happen in your average Windows word processor.
Let’s not forget that smartphones are also better learners. They know how to pick up words that you commonly use even if they aren’t already in their dictionary. Once added, the term is added to the system-wide dictionary. On a Windows program, you’d not only have to manually add a term, but it’s on a per-application basis (that is, if that program supports a custom dictionary).
I have to type the word “resolution” all the time for my writing here on Carrypad and in other places, but it commonly comes out as “resoultion” simply because of the way my fingers sometimes get ahead of themselves. It would be so easy for a computer to realize what I meant and make the fix for me, and yet here I am, having to make the correction manually every time on Windows.
You might say that we don’t need auto-correct when using full desktop keyboards, but I disagree. Though I’ve had a fair share of typing on hardware keyboards, I still occasionally hit a key next to the one that I intended. What’s more, in my daily perusal of the web, I see lots of people who would benefit from such typing assistance — I’m talking about those who don’t seem to know that punctuation exists. And I must ask: why manually insert punctuation and manually add terms to non-universal dictionaries if computers are easily smart enough to do it for us? That’s like manually keeping track of the time instead of using a clock.
Agree/disagree?
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