Author: Jamie Karl

Apologies for not checking in here as often. I have had a busy holiday period catching up with some family that I have not seen in a long time.

On the technology front we have some new core-m releases coming out in China – the Cube i9, and the Voyo vBook, both of which feature the same M3-6Y30 processore that the Microsoft surface has – and the vBook, which is a flip, or Yoga style hybrid, had a tasty low price. Not sure how long it will be until tap that stock this higher priced more premium hybrids, but I would like to see some in that space soon, so people have cheaper alternatives to the high end hybrids.

We have a nice little sale on for just one week – a combo deal for the Teclast Air III, where you save over $40 bucks on already heavily discounted products. Honestly it’s a steal. Check that out here:

Teclast Air III combo special

This week we continue to see releases and announcements in the hybrid area. We have the Chuwi Hi12, and the Cube i9, both Surface 3 competitors. The i9 as with the i7, particular serious as a contender. The Hi12 has 4gb/64gb and a surface 3 quality screen, but it only is powered by a z8300 cherry trail. No doubt that will make it cheaper, but I’d have questions about performance at that resolution.

The Cube i9 on the other hand – Core M3-6Y30 just like the surface 3, same screen panel as the surface, 4gb of ram and 64/128 internal SSD. Definately exciting. It should also have stylus support. More details as we go I guess, and while it is going to be cheaper than a surface, it’s pricey compared to anything else chinese no doubt.

In the same way we are seeing announcements for a few tablets with the newer ASUS Transformer book like swivelling magnetic dock, there are also a host of announcements around a Yoga 2 2-1 type design. The Voyo VBook V3 Ultrabook Tablet PC is a particularly exciting offering. It has the basic z8300, but 4gb of ram and 64gb eMMC. And while that’s no surface, it’s still a competent machine and one of the better ones with the flip Yoga style laptop casing.

I’m still waiting for a core M in 7.9 or 8.9 inches!

The end of last year saw the roll out of many new Cherry trail, and a few new Core-M chipsets. There are a variety of new possibilities, but the new chipsets are not without their issues.

Whether is a premium high end tablet, or a budget one, there are heat design issues with the Cherry Trails, they are hard to cool, and thus often throttle. There is a new intel revision coming out soon, that most likely will address this, as well as adding slightly to burst speeds.

The z8300 chipset, the most common to be found in the new generation of tablets can operate graphics 30% faster, and can utilize usb 3 speeds both for external ports, or for the microSD slot. Both pretty desireable advantages. As a CPU however, on benchmarks it tends to rank about the same as the old standard Baytrail z3735F, which did have a few superior chipsets such as the z3736F – with .3 Ghz higher burst speed than the z8300.  The z8300 is also capable of 4gb of RAM, but only in single channel, which blunts much of the performance advantage.

The faster 8500, and 8700 chipsets offer some real possibilities in terms of speed, and dual channel RAM. Some of the existing releases are very good experiences – however they also fall prey to the heating issues, and can throttle and get hot if you push them.

The surface uses very advanced cooling methods to power their Cherry Trail tablet. One should hope between more advanced cooling and the new revision, that we will see more smaller 8500, and 8700 tablets very soon without throttling.

And the core m’s while ahead in power, and in the expandability of RAM, and the potential to use SSD – are still floating at a price that makes it trickier for consumers.

However, all this is what makes this an exciting time. You see, usb 3.1 as a standard, is capable of powering an external GPU. It’s powerful bandwidth. And core M is bound to slowly come down, as 8500 and 8700 based chipsets become used without throttling in smaller tablets.

All this means tablets with more powerful chips, better connectivity and more RAM – offering us the potential of a true “3 in 1”. A tablet that can operate effectively as a netbook or laptop, a tablet, and a computer. Not strictly leaning towards any particular one – capable of full desktop tasks like sound engineering, video rendering, games, databasing etc, but in a form factor that can be held in one hand. And fortunately we already have a true all in one OS, Windows 10, to power it.

One device to rule them all, is getting much closer.

I spent some time recently with family I had not seen in a while. We went through some very old photos, remembering the people and places we had been. There is something about this experience, and also reconnecting with family, that puts like in perspective, not unlike a near death experience.

You realize that the things that bother you about people, and the smaller daily struggles you face are not as important, in the grand scheme of things. That perhaps what matters, is how you grow, and the peoples lives you touch, and their touch on yours.

That maybe we should not burn bridges. We should be able to forgive, even if we are also discerning, and fair minded. That if enough time comes to pass, even a troubled time with a person with whom you no longer speak, may seem in retrospect like there was care shared. That brothers and sisters, and family, for all their fights, that there is a shining light beneath it all.

That what we have is precious, and that even when things are hard, there are some silver linings.

I should only hope that more people out there, have a moment like this over their holidays. A little magical transcendence of our sometimes normally expectant, fragile and judging selves. Be grateful for the people you love, have loved, and whom love or have loved you.  It’s what makes this whole show worthwhile 🙂