Windows 8

Windows 8 has come to open the eyes of all hardware manufacturers to create a good variety of devices that take advantage of all the capabilities of this operating system.

Among these devices we find a section which has been named hybrids This term simply refers to the mixture of two agents which have their own characteristics but when put together they can offer the best of each one within the mix.

So now translating this term to any electronic device we can find three main combinations of gadgets which are: a phone that becomes a tablet, a tablet that becomes a laptop and a device that can combine all three on one only.

But in the particular case of Windows 8 this has come to promote only hybrids which share tablet and laptop characteristics, But why promote these devices? Let's see the possible answers.

It was all about software and hardware

We know that Windows 8 brings with it a total redesign of its interface so that it can be used by any device with a touch screen, so there we can see the impulse that Microsoft gave to the development of tablets, of course considering incorporating the lightest version of its operating system (Windows 8 RT) for hardware based on an ARM architecture.

But since not everything is rosy, hardware manufacturers have seen a great narrowing between the tablets with this version and their uses for productivity, so many have turned to the full versions of the operating system to make tablets capable of doing what any laptop would do.

But of course not only the software change was enough, since this change would imply an increase in both peripherals and ports as well, so this is where it was thought of offering an extra for these tablets which in its most classic way we can see as a dock which adds these peripherals, ports and in some cases a battery to increase its autonomy.

And the main bets are:

And this is how hybrid devices between tablet and laptop are born, which can take advantage of the size and touch features as well as the productivity options offered by some other peripheral, here are the main bets:

Samsung in this IFA 2012 has come to offer the ATIV Smart PC, device with x86 processor to which a keyboard can be added and touchpad to convert and transform it between tablet and computer.ASUS also has its own Vivo Tab which in one of them we have as an extra a keyboard, some ports and a battery boost. And of course, finally, the Envy x2 could not be missing, with which HP has once again offered itself in this market.

One more variant

Of course, this hybridization leads us to discover more experiments, which many of them are based on making a tablet with laptop characteristics but achieving the change between them in a very particular way, this is where they are born the transformables.

The only extra thing these devices enjoy is having the ability to switch between tablet and laptop through mechanisms which in turn hide the keyboard completely, among them we find the Sony Vaio Duo 11 a device that has the hardware capable of matching up with an ultrabook and also has the ability to transform between a tablet and a laptop through a sliding mechanical system, the Toshiba U925t could also enter here, which shares this same feature.

On the other hand, the Dell XPS Duo 12 transforms very old school, rotating the screen according to the horizontal axis so that just by lowering its hinges we can have a complete tablet taking advantage of the x86 architecture. The Lenovo Ideapad Yoga also wanted us to travel back to those years, in which laptop hinges could rotate the screen until it hit the bottom of the computer in order to switch between laptop and tablet.

And of course these are not all the devices that have been born from the integration between touch capabilities and productivity, so the list could go on endlessly as the years go by (these are if we don't see another redesign of Windows) this thanks to the fact that an operating system has decided to come to reduce the great strait that existed between a tablet and the productivity options with it.

The opinions of the hybrids are quite extensive, to which many believe that these are the ones that will come to complete the post-PC era or to what others say that they are the bastard children and cannot take advantage of what best of both worlds. But in my opinion, Windows 8 is the one that gives the flavor to these hybrids and for me if you don't have a tablet with keyboard, ports and touchpad running on architecture x86, the content creation experience could not be satisfactory enough and in some cases it would even be frustrating.

Special Windows 8 In Depth