Noise of Tablet PCs

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Reachable
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Location: Western Mass.

Noise of Tablet PCs

Post by Reachable » Tue Apr 03, 2012 3:49 pm

A sentence in MikeC's "Decade of SPCR" article reminded me of something I've wondered about for a little while:

My only contact with tablet PCs has been glancing at them being used on the street or other public place. What kind of noise, if any, do they produce? Do they have fans?

Commentators say they will continue to become increasingly popular, so this may be a relevant topic.

Cyäegha
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Location: Grenoble, France

Re: Noise of Tablet PCs

Post by Cyäegha » Sat Apr 07, 2012 1:35 am

Reachable wrote:Commentators say they will continue to become increasingly popular, so this may be a relevant topic.
I believe those commentators were referring to tablets (like the iPad), not tablet PCs. Tablet PCs simply never took off, except for some niche uses.

Tablets use hardware that derives from smartphones (with ARM-based system-on-chips), so they don't need fans (and are normally silent) and they draw little power (the biggest power draw is usually for the screen). But they can't replace PCs: they are too underpowered and their OSes (iOS or Android) are too limited for that.

Tablet PCs use laptop-class hardware and run Windows like any laptop PC, but it means that their weight and power draw is more comparable to that of a small laptop... And I think they usually have a fan. A Google search did turn up a few manufacturers of rugged tablet PCs (aimed at professional uses in difficult environments) who offer fanless (and dustpoof/waterproof/shockproof) tablet PCs, using Intel Atom CPUs (since even the ultra low power versions of the Core i5s probably draw too much power for fanless use in a very confined casing).

The distinction may be blurred a bit when Windows 8 is released though, since it will be a full-blown desktop OS, but Microsoft wants it to run on low-powered tablets too (unlike Apple and Google, who adapted their smartphone OSes for tablets).

edit: About fanless tablet PCs, it looks like there are some more consumer-grade ones too, because some convertible netbooks are fanless - the Viliv S10 Blade is one example.

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