Technology Spot

The biggest hardware trend marking the launch of Windows 8 is the proliferation of touch-screen laptop/tablet hybrids. Some have screens that pull apart to become separate tablets, while others have screens that flip, twist, or rotate to give you a tabletlike shape to hold. We call those latter models convertible laptops, and one of the best examples to date is the new Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 13.

The name Yoga is suggestive of the system's big selling point, that the display flips fully over to become a tablet. In fact, it has four basic usable positions -- clamshell laptop, tablet, stand, and tent.

The reason the Yoga stands out from the suddenly crowded touch-screen laptop scene is that it does something other convertible or hybrid laptops do not. When set up as a traditional laptop, the 13.3-inch Yoga doesn't compromise the all-important clamshell experience. The excellent double-hinge design means that it looks and works the same as any other ultrabook laptop, unlike the complex and often clunky mechanisms in systems such as the HP Envy x2,Sony Vaio Duo 11, or Dell XPS 12.

The Yoga works best as a full-time laptop and part-time tablet, because when it's folded back into a slate, you still have the keyboard pointing out from the back of the system. Although the keyboard and touch pad are deactivated in this mode, it's still not ideal. Plus, despite the hype, Windows 8 is still not a 100-percent tablet-friendly OS, and there are some frustrations that span all the Windows 8 tablet-style devices we've tested.

The Yoga certainly seems to be everyone's choice for a great Windows 8 ambassador -- both Microsoft and Intel have touted it as a best-in-class example, and Best Buy is currently featuring it in a television ad. At $1,099, you're paying a bit of a premium, but not outrageously so, for an Intel Core i5/8GB RAM/128GB solid-state drive (SSD) configuration (note that our early review unit had only 4GB of RAM installed), but a less expensive Core i3 version starts at $999. If I had to pick a single first-wave Windows 8 convertible touch-screen laptop, the Yoga would be at the top of my list.

Design, features, and display
Despite its reputation as a maker of buttoned-down business laptops, Lenovo can always be counted on to produce intriguing designs. Most of those end up, like the Yoga, as part of the company's consumer-targeted IdeaPad line of products.

We've seen similar attempts at laptops that can double as tablets over the years, usually with a rotating center hinge that swivels around to let the device change forms (or more recently with a screen that slides down over the keyboard). Before Windows 8, most of these experiments weren't particularly successful, thanks to a combination of poor design, underpowered components, and an operating system that wasn't touch-friendly.

The other problem with those traditional convertibles has been that the single rotating center hinge was a potential weak point in the design. Lenovo says the Yoga's full-length hinge has been rigorously tested and is stronger than the older rotating convertible design, and in practice that definitely seems to be the case.

When opened into its clamshell position, the Yoga would be tough to pick out of a lineup of recent ultrabooks. The minimalist interior is dominated by a large buttonless clickpad, along with a island-style Lenovo keyboard, which means the flat-topped keys have a small curve along their bottom edges for easier typing.

As good as Lenovo's reputation is for excellent keyboards, I had a surprisingly amount of trouble with the Yoga's keyboard. I narrowed most of my issues down to the half-size right Shift key, which meant I often hit the up arrow when aiming for Shift. The end result was a lot of frustration and retyping, but after a few days one would naturally adjust to this specific layout. The touch pad is the same as you'd find in other clickpad Lenovos, including the recent high-end X1 Carbon. It offers plenty of space for multifinger gestures, but isn't as effective for manipulating the touch-centric Windows 8 UI as a finger would be.

When you flip the Yoga's screen back, the physical keyboard doesn't disappear from view, as it does on most other convertible laptop/tablet combos, but it does get automatically disabled. A slightly raised layer of leather over the wrist rest and keyboard tray lets you rest the tablet on a table, keyboard-side down, without worrying too much about damaging the keys. Some buttons have been moved to the sides so they can be accessed no matter how the system is folded, and the outer shell has a soft-touch coating for easy gripping. While the Yoga isn't particularly comfortable to hold in tablet form, as your fingers are pressing up against the exposed keyboard and the touch pad, you do get easy access to a volume rocker along one edge and a rotation lock button along the other.

Beyond the slate mode, I especially liked the stand or sharing mode, where the screen is folded back 270 degrees or more, turning the system into something like a small touch-screen kiosk. It's great for sharing video or presentations in a group setting, or for just getting closer to the screen while keeping the keyboard out of the way.

Its fourth position is standing upright like a tent, but I can't think of too many reasons you'd want that.

In any of these positions, the Yoga is well-served by its 13.3-inch display, which has a native resolution of 1,600x900 pixels. That's arguably the perfect resolution for a 13-inch laptop, giving you plenty of screen real estate without making onscreen text appear too small, as can happen with 1,920x1,080-pixel resolutions on smaller systems. Off-axis viewing angles are great, and unlike with some Windows 8 convertibles stuck with 1,366x768-pixel screen resolutions, you don't feel like you're paying a premium price for a substandard feature.

Connectivity, performance, and battery life
Even for an ultrabook, this is not among the most connected laptops you'll find. There's a pair of USB ports, one 3.0, one 2.0, and it has an HDMI port, a combo audio jack, and an SD card slot. The lack of built-in Ethernet is understandable, but this is the first laptop in a long while I've seen with only one USB 3.0 port.

As Android tablet shipments surge, probably the best thing that can be said about Microsoft is that it's not going away.

Android tablet shipments totaled about 30 million in the fourth quarter, IDC reported today. And that number (total market) jumps to 50 million if you throw in Apple's iPad.

"There is no question that Microsoft is in this tablet race to compete for the long haul," an IDC analyst said today in a statement, trying to put Microsoft's tablet debut into perspective.

In fact, that's probably about as positive a statement that can be made at the moment.

Then this: "Reaction to the company's Surface with Windows RT tablet was muted at best," IDC added.

So, how does that compare with other major vendors just entering the market? Amazon shipped about 4.7 million Kindle Fire tablets in the fourth quarter of 2011 when that $199 tablet debuted.Muted in this case amounts to 900,000 units shipped "into the channel."

And Asus, which makes Google's Nexus 7 tablet, shipped 3.1 million tablets in the fourth quarter of 2012, the quarter after the Nexus 7's debut. Many if not most of those are undoubtedly the Nexus 7.

Throw in the market totals that IDC reported today (Amazon shipped about 6 million last quarter and Samsung almost 8 million) and it's clear that Android tablets are not only leaving a bigger footprint in the market but are even eroding Apple's share.

That leaves Microsoft, for now, as a blip amid an Android boom.

How does Microsoft gain on Android? Lowering prices might help.

"We believe that Microsoft and its partners need to quickly adjust to the market realities of smaller screens and lower prices," IDC said.

And what about the long haul? "In the long run, consumers may grow to believe that high-end computing tablets with desktop operating systems are worth a higher premium than other tablets," IDC added.

That could indeed be a long haul.

Don't hold your breath for a sequel to the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet.

Speaking to the press yesterday during the BlackBerry 10 launch event, CEO Thorsten Heins wasn't particularly upbeat about tablets.

"The tablet business is rather difficult," he conceded.

Indeed, the tablet market has seen a lot of entrants, but only a few winners. While Apple's iPad franchise continues to dominate, its market share is eroding to only a few players, including Google's Nexus 7, Amazon's Kindle Fire franchise, and a few of the Samsung Electronics tablets. But that doesn't leave a lot of room for a company like BlackBerry (formerly Research in Motion), which is struggling to claw its way back into the smartphone business.

"Personally, I think it's pretty futile at this point," said Jan Dawson, an analyst at Ovum. "Like Apple, (BlackBerry) really has to make its margin on the device, but it can't charge a premium like Apple."

Heins said as much when he said that he was only interested in pursuing areas that were profitable, indicating he doesn't see much money to be made in the tablet business right now.

BlackBerry, of course, had been burned pretty badly with its first tablet in April 2011. ThePlayBook was a favorite project for then co-CEO Mike Lazaridis that ended up as a major embarrassment for the company when it launched. It was the first device to use the QNX operating system, which is what BlackBerry 10 is based upon, but lacked critical features such as BlackBerry Messenger and e-mail.

BlackBerry steadily updated the software for the PlayBook, filling in missing features, and heavily discounted the product, resulting in an increasing trickle of sales. The company shipped 255,000 PlayBooks in the fiscal third quarter, a paltry number by normal standards, but impressive given that the product is nearly two years old.

Heins said BlackBerry was working on a BlackBerry 10 update for the PlayBook, although he didn't specify when it would come out.

He also opened the door to BlackBerry potentially building tablets to address specific industries, but from the looks of it, those plans are just that. He talked about the potential to sell additional services to that industry.

"We want to provide a value proposition that isn't just hardware, but software too," he said.

But it's unclear whether businesses would even want to use a BlackBerry tablet, especially with tablets running Windows 8 starting to come in to the market. Despite a large presence in the business world, the company doesn't have experience catering its products for individual industries, also known as verticals.

"(BlackBerry) has no real credibility as a vertical provider," Dawson said. "It's never done anything vertical specific before and most industries can see through superficial verticalization pretty easily."

Heins is taking a look at this area because the consumer market for tablets looks even more frightening to a company in BlackBerry's position.

The gist of it seems to be that Microsoft's GPS--which will reportedly be inserted into Windows Phones in the future--will use input from more varied and up-to-date sources in order to create suggested routes.

Among these sources are crime statistics. Which has led some to the thought that this will somehow be an insult to poor neighborhoods.

What is unclear, at least from my reading of the patent--which isn't written by anything resembling a human hand or mind--is what kind of crime statistics the GPS might choose to use.

It's one thing to avoid areas where there might have occurred physical assaults and gunfire. It's another to avoid, say, places where burglaries are popular, as one suspects quite a few allegedly nice areas are subject to burglars' desires.

With some areas, past performance isn't a guarantee of future results. What if someone using a route from this system does get mugged, shot, assaulted, or robbed? Would they feel entitled to sue Microsoft because the route was supposed to be "ghetto-free"?

The patent talks about the quality of the information. But quality is a subjective notion, so one wonders just whose assessment of quality will be deemed significant.

The patent also holds within it some other little gems. It seeks to help the pedestrian avoid "harsh temperatures." Some people like harsh temperatures, but this system will also store people's pedestrian information to offer, one assumes, a more personalized heat-level for the route.

How personalized should it be, though? My eyes perform slightly odd twitches when I read this sentence from the patent: "Various features can integrate with route presentment, such as integrating an advertisement targeted to a pedestrian with a direction set."

Is this suggesting that Windows Phones will give pedestrians a route that will take them past specific ads? What a curious and slightly mind-altering thought.

One wonders whether those who use the system might also be offered an "avoid ads" option

Will Amazon's $199 Kindle Fire reset the tablet market, rendering the $500 tablet obsolete?

Let me preempt any challenges from Apple iPad folks. Yeah, I know, Apple will continue to sell the iPad at $499, $599, and $699. And, yes, Apple is slated to ship more than 12 million iPad 2s in the current quarter. Android rivals like Motorola's Xoom or Toshiba's Thrive aren't even close.

With that out of the way, the most immediate impact will be on the pricey Android guys. "I think [the Kindle Fire] resets the bar," Carter Nicholas, CEO of market researcher eDataSource told CNET this week.

To expand on Nicholas' argument, why buy a $500 Xoom if you can get most of what you need from a $199 Fire or a $199 Samsung Galaxy Tab? Or a $249 Nook Tablet? Or a 10-inch Lenovo IdeaPad for $349.99?

But I'm guessing that the longer-term impact will be on Apple too, as immune as it seems today to price pressure--despite these results from a recent CNET poll (44 percent said they're sticking with the iPad).

We may not see the impact on Apple--the torchbearer for $500-and-up tablets--until late next year or even 2013, but it's as inevitable as the $999 MacBook Air. Remember, the MacBook Air started at the $1,800 to $3,000 price range and stayed in rarefied pricing tiers for a couple of years.

No, the iPad is not the Air but it competes with low-end laptops as well as the cheaper tablets. (Even the iPhone 4's pricing with a carrier contract is $99 now.)

And I think this will go beyond downstreaming old iPads. At some point, even a new $500 iPad 3 or iPad 4, not to mention a $700 one, is going to seem too pricey for iPad owners who aren't necessarily wedded to Apple products.

But until that day comes--however distant--here's the latest crop of alternatives to the iPad and pricey Android tablets. These tablets are already doing their part to hasten the demise of the $500 tablet.

Sub-$350 tablets: 

Lenovo and Best Buy are the latest to bring down pricing, selling the 10-inch Lenovo IdeaPad K1 tablet with 32GBtoday and Monday for $329, down from $499. And that 10-inch tablet comes with a dual-core Nvidia processor and Android 3.1.

At Best Buy, HTC also recently knocked down the 7-inch HTC Flyer to $299 from $499. This happened--probably not coincidentally--right after the $199 Amazon Kindle Fire was announced--which is selling briskly, thank you.

RIM and Best Buy have also been testing the $299 price-point waters for the 7-inch BlackBerry PlayBook, $200 off the regular price. As of Sunday, it's back up to $499. But that price seems almost fanciful now.

And India's $60 Android tablet--albeit with very-low-end features--offers a whole new take on tablet pricing.

Tablet price reality check: 

But don't expect Apple's iPad to come down in price anytime soon. It still starts at $499.99 and is still listed as a top seller at Best Buy and Amazon.

That doesn't mean Apple is invulnerable of course. A future 10-inch Amazon tablet priced aggressively could put pressure on Apple. "Amazon is already working with Foxconn to develop a direct competitor to Apple with a 10-inch display," said Ashok Kumar, an analyst at Rodman & Renshaw. "Potentially they could come up with some disruptive pricing. For that, I think Apple would have to react," he said.

That may be wishful thinking though. Apple is famous for sticking to its price guns. Kumar suggests one scenario, however, where Apple reduces the price on an older iPad, similar to what it has done withe iPhone 3GS.