What are you talking about.
Trinity doesn't have that much power and is hardly real discrete graphics class.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5831/a...m-a-new-hope/6
The laptops I just shown have more CPU power and have similar graphic performance. So why scoff and call these low end - mid grade GPU when they are the same thing in a trinity solution but more CPU power. A thousand dollar laptop beats trinity up and down with core i7 processors and discrete graphics. They are uncomparable so it doesn't make sense to use them in your 1000 dollar comparison + tablet comparison.
http://shop.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary/c...%3A00001373%3A
Ivybridge quad core i7-3610qm
GTX 660m
8gbs of Ram
500gb HD.
$849
This laptop is well under a grand and would smack around a trinity laptop into the ground.
The reason I mentioned the standard priced tablet(hardly low as you can get transformer eepc is pretty well featured), is because a user is better off getting both a laptop and a tablet. Because there is less compromise for both and you are not spending as much as you have stated. You don't have to make the other product worse for it to make with the other product. They exist better as two different entities.
Sure there might be no ssd, but at total cost of about 1000 dollars, you can add a 240gb ssd in the laptop laptop for $200. This means you have are getting vastly more storage space(ssd based) for the same cost as your shared storage based solution. Even without this upgrade, in the 1000 dollar scenario, your getting the storage of the SSD in the tablet and the volume of a conventional HD opposed to simply having the storage in the SSD in the tablet to be shared between the two units.
The reason I mentioned the expensive tablet in the first place is your design isn't as cheap to implement as you think? You said 1200 dollars. So I took a 12.1 inch tablet(1100 dollars) that is already on the market, which although has a more expensive processor, your hybrid has two processors so there is no or barely any processor savings. You still need to add the motherboard, ram, cooling battery, battery, connectors and chassis to said dock and as a result your well above the 1200 dollars you mentioned.
A battery dock with a keyboard costs 150 dollars and isn't meant to house as much and has no logic inside really. So I am saying it is going to cost alot more than 1200 dollars. One of the reason's your design is more costly is because larger touchscreen IPS or OLED(needed for wide viewing angles in tablets) LCD panels are significantly more expensive to produce than there 10" counterparts as they are not as mass produced on top of being larger. In fact considering the amount of mass produced 10.1" lcd there are compared to 12.1-14 touch screen lcd panels, I think it may be cheaper to get a 10.1" ips or OLED screen and a regular laptop screen compared to a 12.1-13" screen touch with IPS or OLED. Mass production is everything. This is what makes your 1000 + 200 scenario not work. There is no laptop out there with a touchscreen based IPS or OLED screen that is 13". Your underestimating how much this is really adding to the cost and this Intel based device is the closest match, minus the processor.
The reason why I mentioned two different scenarios is one is to illustrate buying two separate devices isn't as expensive as you think and secondly to illustrate the cost savings of your hybrid designs are not as much as you think. Keeping them two separate designs has a lot of practicality.
Plus you haven't really addressed the battery life issue and the storage issue.
This is hardly thinking outside the box. It is just so impractical that it doesn't make sense.
Are 13" tablets practical?
Is a laptop stuck with 64GB of storage practical?
Is getting a 4 hours of battery life in a tablet(bobcat is closer to intel ULV in power usage than ARM) with limited APP selection practical?
Is paying 1400+ for a laptop powered by a budget CPU/GPU practical? Remember trinity has the CPU power of a core i3 processor with the power of lower end discrete graphics.
The last one is what really kills this thing along with the engineering problems.
I agree using an OMAP5 or ARM based solution is better physically. You keep your profile thin, battery life good and windows 8 is being programmed to work on ARM efficiently. The difficulty in this is that ARM and x86 are completely different languages, so the system who need dual OS systems on board.
If the docking is only utilizing the storage and screen and not switching back between resources to increase battery life, your killing much of the what would be benefits if the design was possible and the interconnect existed. By combing this weird design, your getting a over sized tablet, a clunky design( this is going to be one thick screen lid) and have the solution stuck with 64gb of memory.
Wouldn't it be better to keep both ecosystems separately, since when combined they cost the same anyway if not cheaper. I doubt the public would pay this much for an AMD CPU based products, especially without the apple logo on it.
