News - Toshiba launches first 'Windows 8.1 with Bing' devices

[HEXUS]

Its Encore 2 tablets will also launch with a 1GB RAM option, to keep entry prices down.

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[Saracen]

Win 8.1 with Bing.

Yawn.

[Tabbykatze]

Why 1 & 2GB? Is it so hard to have 3 & 4?

[Saracen]

Cost, and keeping it down, I presume.

[Badbonji]

Great that the full OS will become widespread thanks to the lower price to OEMs, although I can't see how 1GB RAM is $50 in the 8-inch. the 10.1-inch upgrade is $60 with double the storage. I wonder how much space is actually usable though... (turning off things like hibernation will help somewhat).

3GB would be a weird option as capacity comes in powers of 2 by design, just making it awkward. I think 2/4GB would be better.

[HMS_Victory]

So models with more ram can come with a premium pricing possibly.

[LSG501]

damn.... that 8-inch Encore 2 with 2GB RAM, 64GB storage at $279... if and I mean if that comes in at conversion plus vat then it's pretty good value... having said that no stylus and only 2gb of ram is a bit of a downer in my opinion.

I'm not even sure I'd want to run windows 8 on anything less than 4, especially if the gpu takes some like it will here.

[scaryjim]

... I wonder how much space is actually usable though...

I've got a 32GB microSD card with Win 8 To Go installed on just here ... with a base Win 8 install - *before* they introduced the option to run Windows files from a compressed boot image - it has over 21GB of free storage. Obviously over time Windows updates would eat some of that, but given a tablet's typical usage scenario that should be "sufficient", with the microSD slot available.

As to Win 8 on 1GB, I used to run 8.0 - before the low-spec optimisations - on VMs with 1GB of RAM allocated on a fairly regular basis, and found it performed very well (although charms are a pain to use in a windowed VM ). If 8.1 Update 1 has genuinely had performance tweaks aimed at improving performance on low spec machines, I'd happily buy a 1GB Win 8 tablet.

Fair play to Intel and Microsoft - they've managed to hit the magic $199 entry point. Wonder if we'll see anything AMD based in a similar price/form factor (I'm not going to hold my breath...)

[crossy]

I guess this must be the 32bit version of Windows 8.1 because according to the System Requirements you need 2GB to go 64bit.

I know what they're trying to do here, but memory that's at the bare minimum for the OS - and not expandable - doesn't fill me with much enthusiasm for the product. That it's not exactly pretty either - at least according to the photo's - doesn't help either. Anyone tried running 8.1 with 1GB - I would have thought it slower than a treacle coated snail on Valium?

The 1 year sub to Office365 sounds like a good idea on the face of it, but all I see is "ongoing costs". Still I suppose it'd be easy enough to find a nice free lightweight office suite somewhere.

Think I'd still be spending my money on something powered by Android instead.

[LSG501]

The 1 year sub to Office365 sounds like a good idea on the face of it, but all I see is "ongoing costs". Still I suppose it'd be easy enough to find a nice free lightweight office suite somewhere.

1 year free is just a loss leader with the hopes that xyz continues after the first year.... as much as I use office I'll just stick with 2010 thanks

[Brewster0101]

3GB would be a weird option as capacity comes in powers of 2 by design, just making it awkward. I think 2/4GB would be better.

3GB is quite common in higher end GPU's.

[Funkstar]

And the current crop of high end smart phones

3GB was also popular for a short period before most people moved onto 64bit desktop systems. 2x 1GB and 2x 512MB modules. All it would need now is 3x 1GB memory chips.

[scaryjim]

Back in the day a lot of mid range motherboards had 3 RAM slots, so 768MB and 1.5GB were quite common

I need to set up a testing VM with Win 8 on it in work, so I'm going to try it with 1GB and see how it runs. Will report back tomorrow

[SUMMONER]

Microsoft's new Windows 8.1 with Bing OS

hmm... first device with Bing OS... Microsoft Bingos

I will wait for a new incarnation of the HP Omni 10, hopefully this time around it will be able to charge via the micro USB port.

[Badbonji]

3GB would be a weird option as capacity comes in powers of 2 by design, just making it awkward. I think 2/4GB would be better.

3GB is quite common in higher end GPU's.

Yeah but RAM generally has a 64bit bus width to CPUs whereas GPUs are more flexible, 3GB cards have 384bit for example. Mobile processors are different I believe. Getting different sizes for each channel is inefficient in terms of performance and space.