Steve Ballmer has already suggested that Microsoft’s Surface won’t be trying to compete on price, but rumours suggest that Asus’s tablets likely won’t come cheap either. ZDNet is reporting that the devices will start at $US600.
A leaked internal slide from Asus suggests that the cheapest model, the Tegra 3-powered Asus Vivo Tab RT, will retail at $US600 — plus $US200 for a dock. Elsewhere a Vivo Tab with an Intel Atom chip is rumoured to start at $US800 and the 11.6-inch Asus Taichi, a dual-display Windows 8 laptop-tablet hybrid, pegged at £1,300.
While it’s tough to know if those prices will turn out to be accurate, they certainly sound mighty expensive. [ZDNet]
Is it just me or is the keyboard (or the screen) around the wrong way in that pic? Shouldn't the screen and keyboard be facing each other?
It has two screens, one on each side of the lid. The outer one is a touchscreen, the inner one is not. With the lid open, you get to choose whether or not the outer screen is active and what content it shows. Nothing has been said but I assume they probably use the same backlighting, so running both wouldn't consume much more power than running one.
I'd say the screen rotates.
Oh, the article says it's dual screen.
They are simply too expensive to really consider.
There will be cheaper variants eventually. The same happened with Windows 7 (In PC/laptop form anyway)
This is great news, I am really looking forward to the Taichi and I really couldn't care less how much it is if it runs as good as it looks.
US$$600...? with the aussie dollar, it should be cheaper here, right?
Yeah, that's right, I'd estimate about negative 60 to 80% cheaper............
Why should it? Wages here are more than double what they are in the US and property prices, both purchase and rental, are up to 10 times greater, so how could it be possible to sell things as cheaply here as in the US? And that's before you take into account the size of each market, which determines how much profit you need to make on each unit to cover your costs. Oh, and US$600 would be before taxes, so the reality is that customers in some US states will actually be paying as much as $675.
All that said, last year I bought my Zenbook from JB Hi-Fi for just $30 more than the Best Buy price in the US.
I think you two are arguing the same point...?