Next-Year’s Windows Tablets

Sept 13, 2014

During the last 12 months I’ve recommended two Intel processors for Windows machines, each for a different class of device:

• Haswell for laptops (any size) and mid-weight (1.7 to 2 lb) tablet/hybrids (like Surface 3).
• Bay Trail Atom for light-weight (1.3 lbs or less) tablets like the ASUS T100 or Lenovo Thinkpad 10.

The Haswell chip is very powerful–it has full computing capability but at the cost of a higher weight machine. The Bay Trail Atom is “good enough” for most light processing and excellent for tablet use–a good trade off for very light weight and long battery life.

Well, it was inevitable that Intel would march ahead with new processors, and so Intel is releasing a new processor that may merge these 2 functions. It’s called the Core M. Read about it here:

http://www.cnet.com/news/intel-with-core-m-theres-finally-a-reason-to-upgrade-your-laptop/

Note that even though some laptop makers have already announced machines with the Core-M, I’d say it’ll be 6 months or more before we see enough variety of models to make shopping easy.

I do hope they release some very light weight (1.2 lb) Windows tablets with it because as I switch between my very speedy Haswell laptop and my Bay Trail tablet, I am getting irritated with the lag in simple things like loading web pages on the Bay Trail–enough so that I am starting to reach for the laptop just to browse the web–which is sad.

Keep an eye on Core-M machines for a Spring purchase.

Michael