Acer Iconia W3 - 8-inch Windows Tablet

I'm surprised this forum hasn't talked about the coming wave of smaller Windows tablet.

The Acer Iconia W3 was leaked, and then officially admitted a while ago.
http://us.acer.com/ac/en/US/content/series/iconiaw3

8-inch 1280x800, Atom Win8 32b, $430. This can potentially be an alternative to the Nexus 7 and iPad Mini. What's more interesting is the full-size keyboard that's much larger than the tablet itself.

Did Acer find the perfect balance between a smaller portable device and the need for full-size keyboard? Or do you have trouble accepting the form factor?

How about the tablet itself? We have seen smaller devices run Win XP before, but they weren't exactly easy to use. Would Windows 8 finally make it work?

It would be interesting to see how people react to this.

Maybe not the Nexus 7 at that price, but I'm fairly interested. Is this the long awaited return of the H/PC / (I'm probably gonna get some hate for this) UMPC?

The Atom processor turned me off then 2nd the pricing, might as well have arm & RT for what will actually run on a atom graphics wise in comparison.

Now put in a amd apu & you might have something.

Edited by thcrw739 2013-07-01 2:37 PM

The problem is that Intel have a monopoly on the small device market, and don't show any signs of stopping.

I do think this is a return of the umpc - what I meant by smaller devices running XP. I have no problem with the Atom. But chances are other companies might make something similar with ARM. Acer just refuses to release any RT machine at all though. The rumor is Microsoft will make a smaller Surface too, as an answer to the iPad Mini.

AMD is not completely out of the game. I would like to see cheap Windows 8.1 tablets with AMD, perhaps undercutting the Atom ones.

Just wondering how "fast" is the Atom processor compared to a Pentium 4m at 1.7Ghz?

Would the Atom processor be faster as it has Hyper-Threading?

Just curious how fast it will be compared to a very old laptop...

By Moore's law, I bet the Atom processor is faster and more power efficient, but just wondering. If it is faster, I would like to get my hands on this Ace Iconia W3 someday. Or Windows Surface RT.

I have an RT, and as an experiment took it as my only device on a business trip this week (after upgrading to the 8.1 preview). it worked flawlessly.
I will be looking to buy the W3 when I go to the states... I did have a Fujitsu U820, however that really was dog slow and hounded by bad drivers for the inbuilt graphics chipset.

cool to hear the Windows 8.1 upgraded RT worked flawlessly! I tried Windows 8.1 Preview on my Macbook Pro, but it eats up my CPU cycles, as it is run on VirtualBox using 2GB of RAM for it.

yeah, Atom isn't really for me. ARM is much better these days, and far more battery life that comes with it.