This is the third and final part of my IFA 2012 review. You can find part 1 here, and part two here.
At this point, I didn’t have much time left and I wanted to focus mostly on the new laptops, ultrabooks and specially on the new Windows 8 tablets. I did a quick tour around laptops and ultrabooks, and I can tell you that most of them look way better on pictures that they are and perform in reality. The big thing is about making laptops and ultrabooks as thin as possible, which is a good objective since it makes them sleek and compelling, but on the other hand, most of them get really, really hot, making them really uncomfortable. Also, the materials used on most of them feel too plastic and cheap.
To my surprise this was the case on most Samsung and Acer machines, including the new tablets. The Lenovo ThinkPad computers were a good conservative display, with a few new laptops being thinner and more powerful than previous generations. I believe that enterprise PC users will love the new thinner laptops (I know I will!).
An unexpected surprise was too see that pretty much every computer manufacturer had Windows 8 machines on display. I could almost say that on laptops it was half Windows 7, half Windows 8. On tablets, Android was the dominant operating system, but there were a LOT of Windows 8 tablets from companies like Samsung, Sony, Dell and Asus, displaying an arrange of Windows RT and Windows 8 PCs. This was pleasant for me, because people felt quite attracted to them, and I say many, many people spending a lot of time playing around with Windows 8 features, especially with the Samsung Windows RT and Windows 8 tablets.
Samsung also displayed some of the hardware prototypes created during the Windows 8 and Windows RT hardware manufacturing process.
Since I don’t have many photos and detailed descriptions of the devices, I’ll instead direct you to their reviews by Trusted Reviews, where you can find most of the top laptops and tablets that were showcased at IFA 2012. Also, you can find specific overviews about the latest Windows 8 devices at the Windows Team Blog.
To my disappointment, despise Samsung’s ATIV S Windows Phone 8 announcement, the phones were not on display and I could not see even a picture of them. However you can stay tuned to my blog and check the photos and specs on the Samsung’s ATIV site.
That being said. My favourite picks are the following:
Overall, I would say that Asus and Samsung ended positioning themselves higher above the competition. However, both hardware manufactures seem to have fallen behind the expectations set by Microsoft’s Surface. Samsung in particular seems to have a hard time matching the looks with the feels, and Asus had a hard time making detachable keyboard feel just right. Overall, a good start on the new generation of Windows 8 devices, and hopefully the innovation bar will keep rising. Let’s not forget that as the new Windows Phone 8 devices are finally able to compete with Apple’s iPhone 5, Windows 8 tablets need to be able to compete with Apple’s iPad 3!
More on tablets and smartphones to come on the blog, along with more tech-coding-and-development specific blog posts soon.
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