News - ASUS Windows 8 + Android hybrid devices

[HEXUS]

Revealed through pre-Computex teasers on YouTube.

Read more.

[Dr Krepz]

it's just gonna be dual boot.

[cheesemp]

it's just gonna be dual boot.

Yes - I expect so. Its a good idea really - It allows ASUS to cover all bases.

[SciFi]

I was thinking more like it will be an all-in-one that is Windows 8 but you can pull the screen off to be a tablet with Droid.. Cloud sync between the two so it feels like one device.

As Win8 is meant to be for tablets anyway I think they are missing the point by a mile.

[TheAnimus]

oh dear.

That's all I can say, why would you want to dual boot what I'm assuming is one of the Arm devices.....

How long will W8 take to boot? From what I've heard its faster than most Andriod devices on the market from a cold start. So it comes down to apps, apps that are only available on one OS but not the other. Thing is dual booting is horrible, rather than having emulation of Apps from one in the other.

[crossy]

it's just gonna be dual boot.

That's what most people assume - so it'll be similar to the Splashtop+Windows arrangement that some Asus motherboards do (including the one I've got).

A more interesting (and radical) rumour is that the Asus device/device actually has a hardware hypervisor, and the Windows8 (with added Metro badness) and Android (presumably ICS) are "merely" VM's. Even the point that the storage is on exFAT, since Windows and Android both support that easily/natively, in which case there might even be the possibility of shared user data areas.

If this is true, then major-league kudos to Asus. And I've got to say that this tallies with the kind of "innovative" thinking that Asus seem to be pursuing at the moment.

(cancel Asus-fanboi mode...)

[krazy_olie]

Could be interesting,
I'd be leaning to some sort of strange dockable hybrid thing.

No reason why it should be ARM, intel have Android running rather fine on x86

[tribaljet]

A few Windows 8 features are exclusive to the ARM edition, namely features targeted towards mobile devices.

[dokdek]

I would love for it to be dual boot. I would run the windows 8 environment as a primary and Android in case there's an app I want to use that isn't on windows.

[directhex]

I'm confused.

There is currently no mechanism for booting Linux (Android) on W8 ARM devices, due to the secure boot requirement.

What have ASUS done?

[Funkstar]

Android on x86 was the first thing that sprung to mind (was actually forgetting that W8 was going to be on ARM as well). Or is that not really possible yet?

[bobharvey]

I'd really welcome the hypervisor approach, if it were true. That would also be putting responsibility for the boot and runtime environment back where it belongs, with the manufacturer. it could herald the end of the Windows monopoly.

[crossy]

I'd really welcome the hypervisor approach, if it were true. That would also be putting responsibility for the boot and runtime environment back where it belongs, with the manufacturer. it could herald the end of the Windows monopoly.

From Microsoft's point of view a manufacturer offering a hypervisor based machine would be a disaster (exactly for the reasons that you've outlined above). I'm also pretty convinced (although I'm quite content to be told I'm wrong) that this wouldn't work for a normal desktop machine, and really we'd either be talking about laptops or these highly integrated PC's. For example, I can't see how a hypervisor from Asus (for example) would "play nice" with a graphics card from Gigabyte. At least until the manufacturers got together to agree some common standards.

I'd love a hypervisor based machine though - even be willing to pay a small premium for the flexibility. I just love the idea of being able to (seamlessly?) switch from - say - Windows desktop to Linux one as I needed.

Of course, the ability to perhaps change the underlying hardware - since the OS's are all VM's - without having to reinstall the OS would be of great benefit. Maybe even a move towards that entirely cloud-based future that folks keep predicting?