Exactly. MS's bread and butter is selling $400 laptops which may or may not even have touchscreens and it remains to be seen if a touchscreen UI makes sense on traditional laptop or desktop formf actor
It definitely makes sense on a traditional laptop. Just there haven't been decent UIs for it. I wanted to get that Dell with the touchscreen that came out earlier this year, but Win7 wasn't ready for it.
Now regarding the pricepoint, it will have to go up, but not as much as you think. There are tablets today with good capacitive touchscreens selling for $150. Expect to see a 10-20% price bump, depending on screen size (although screen sizes in general will probably shrink). But I guarantee you that with this UI Costco will sell a LOT more $499 touchscreen laptops than the $400 non-touch equivalent.
Look at Microsoft's MediaCenter. It's great software and it's on every PC, but it's nothing like an industry standard because it's just not a normal PC use case.
The Media Center problem is a LOT different. The problem with the Media Center is you need a computer hooked up to your TV. Have you tried to hook one up? You need a video card with HDMI out, a quiet fan, some IR receiver for the remote (unless you put the computer in your entertainment rack), if you're using cable you need a CableCard tuner and the actual Cable Cards. I'm wore out just typing this in!
A Win8 tablet or touch laptop you buy and use. A Media Center was literally a weekend affair where you had to buy a bunch of stuff up front in preparation. I know, I used to use one with two extenders in the house.
"It definitely makes sense on a traditional laptop."
If you have a keyboard, a mouse (or trackpad), and a big screen in front of you, or if the laptop weighs much more than 1.5 lbs, "touch" really adds limited functionality and might actually be tiring to use for a lot of common tasks (requiring much more movement unless your work area is perfectly calibrated). I returned an iPad 1 because I thought it was a little too heavy to be enjoyably used. I can't imagine using touch software on a 5 lb laptop or my work desktop for any length of time. So again, as impressive as Win8 looks, I don't think it does much to position Microsoft against the iPad and Android unless unless we see some outrageous hardware breakthroughs from Microsoft's partners.
It definitely makes sense on a traditional laptop. Just there haven't been decent UIs for it. I wanted to get that Dell with the touchscreen that came out earlier this year, but Win7 wasn't ready for it.
Now regarding the pricepoint, it will have to go up, but not as much as you think. There are tablets today with good capacitive touchscreens selling for $150. Expect to see a 10-20% price bump, depending on screen size (although screen sizes in general will probably shrink). But I guarantee you that with this UI Costco will sell a LOT more $499 touchscreen laptops than the $400 non-touch equivalent.
Look at Microsoft's MediaCenter. It's great software and it's on every PC, but it's nothing like an industry standard because it's just not a normal PC use case.
The Media Center problem is a LOT different. The problem with the Media Center is you need a computer hooked up to your TV. Have you tried to hook one up? You need a video card with HDMI out, a quiet fan, some IR receiver for the remote (unless you put the computer in your entertainment rack), if you're using cable you need a CableCard tuner and the actual Cable Cards. I'm wore out just typing this in!
A Win8 tablet or touch laptop you buy and use. A Media Center was literally a weekend affair where you had to buy a bunch of stuff up front in preparation. I know, I used to use one with two extenders in the house.