The Glade 4.0

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Holy shitsnacks!

Interesting. Does the laptop have real processing capability over the tablet or is it just a glorified dock?

If I can't run Photoshop or Wow on it then it's just a glorified dock.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

I've been using a tablet for about a year, now. I would not switch to a laptop where the keyboard was a tablet.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

What do you mean?

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Some people like keyboards with good tactile feedback. Typing on a screen is less accurate/slower due to the fact you can't feel where your fingers are to type by touch.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

If I'm going to do any large amount of typing, I'm going to use a physical keyboard. The virtual keyboard of my iPad doesn't cut it.

You should use devices for the purpose they were designed for. Virtual keyboards were designed to be a substitute when space constraints prevented you from including a physical keyboard. As such, they are not a replacement for them.

Look at what's going on there. The only real difference between this product and a regular laptop is that I'm giving up a physical keyboard to put my tablet in its place. It hasn't solved any of the issues it claims to address. You still have separate physical devices for a tablet, a phone, a camera, and a laptop. The laptop just has phone, tablet, and camera-shaped holes cut out of it. You're using the same hardware, otherwise the tablet and phone wouldn't run independently when separated from the laptop. So, you're still "wasting hardware."

Literally, the only thing that's different about this device, and the setup I already have, is the laptop has no keyboard.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Yeah, I'd much rather use my tablet as a screen paired with a physical keyboard than as a keyboard with another screen attached.

I like touchscreens as much as the next guy, but until they give the same feedback as a keyboard there's no way I'd want to type on a flat, glass surface. It sucks on the iPad and it would suck on this. I can't type properly (see: quickly) without feeling the press of the keys.

What if your laptop monitor could pop off and be used as a tablet?

Everything about your laptop remains unchanged, except that you have a 15-16" tablet for a monitor.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Yes, I think something like that is going to be the popular form factor in the near future. I'd very much welcome it, and I think it's something that was in mind with the design of Windows 8.

When what they should be doing is working on convergence on your laptop/desktop/tablet, so that you can be doing something on one, and slide the app right onto the next device and continue working. Instead of sticking them all together and making one device that isn't as good as the seperate ones. *fumble-typed on my ipad

See, this is why the Transformer Prime is starting to look appealing to me.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Transformer Prime is awesome! I love mine.

Not only does it have the keyboard dock (which is also an extended battery), but it has a standard USB port which can be used to connect game controllers, mice, mass storage, etc... I use a logitech bluetooth mouse with mine (when it's docked).

I'm using a Nexus S, which serves as a nice WiFi tether when I don't have other wifi services available.

I probably split time about 50/50 between docked mode and undocked.

If you are thinking about getting one, you might consider waiting until the TF700T comes out this spring. It will have better wifi/gps/bluetooth, as well as a better screen.

Ooh. Thanks for the heads-up. For the first time, I'm actually having to fight the urge to go out and buy a tablet. This should either offer me a better version, or a price drive-down on the Prime.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

That seems more like a gimmick than anything practical, just finding a place to fit a bunch of devices into a netbook case for no other reason than they can, why would you want a full point and shoot camera on your netbook? Also a convertible tablet into a netbook but using the tablet as the keyboard is dumb since the reason people want that format is for a real physical keyboard because touch screen keyboards suck in comparison.

The padfone ASUS made seems to be a similar but much better concept, ice cream sandwich based android phone that docks into a tablet where the tablet is simply a screen and battery and the phone powers everything and then the tablet docks into a physical keyboard netbook type dock.

Sas,

I think that is the way of the future for portable computing. We just aren't quite there yet. ASUS is getting close with the hardware. Hopefully others will follow. 'Mobile' network providers are all frantically trying to upgrade their infrastructure to handle being a primary option for PC's and home network. My somewhat educated guess is we are about two to three years away from this stuff being ready for prime time.

Me too, if they could make something like that that can also run Windows I'd be all in, though at the moment I'd rather stick with my laptop over a tablet with keyboard dock since some things I use my laptop for can't be done yet on a mobile OS, but in another few years i'm sure things will get there.