Windows 10: New HP and ASUS Always Connected PCs enable a new culture of work

Brink · Dec 4, 2017

New devices from HP and ASUS are instantly on, always connected with incredible battery life

Throughout the history of personal computing, a steady wave of progress has changed how we interact with technology in both our work and personal lives. Microsoft and our partners have led many of these shifts in technology like enabling the original mobile computer – the laptop, navigating with touch, signing in with your face, detaching screens from keyboards, exploring mixed reality, and storing your files in the cloud. We are again at the beginning of another major technology shift: the ability to be connected anytime, anywhere with Always Connected PCs that are instantly on, always connected with incredible battery life.

Terry Myerson, Windows and Devices Group Executive Vice President, shares his personal experience with Always Connected PCs at the Qualcomm Snapdragon Summit.

New Always Connected PCs unveiled

Last year at this time, I was with many of our hardware partners at the WinHEC event in Shenzhen, China, where we painted a new vision for connected computing with built-in LTE connectivity, devices that are instantly on and battery life that went beyond hours into days and weeks. We also set a goal for us to begin delivering on this promise within one year.

Today, at the Qualcomm Snapdragon Tech Summit, I stood with Cristiano Amon, President of Qualcomm Chips, and we delivered on the promise that we made then. Along with our hardware partners HP and ASUS, we showed the world the first full-featured Always Connected PCs on the Qualcomm Snapdragon chipset running Windows 10 and a new, optimized version of Office 365. ASUS and HP have worked hand in hand with us to deliver on pushing the boundaries of what a PC can do, and we continue to work closely with Lenovo as they build their own Always Connected PC.

ASUS NovaGo is the world’s first Gigabit LTE laptop, with superfast download speeds allowing users to download a 2-hour movie in just 10 seconds. Powered by a Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ 835 Mobile PC platform with X16 LTE, the NovaGo is always on, always connected with a battery supporting 30 days of standby and 22 hours of active use.

The HP ENVY x2, an Always Connected PC, combines the best of a smartphone experience with the best of a Windows PC. Impossibly thin and incredibly durable, the HP ENVY x2 offers lightning-fast 4G LTE2 and Wi-Fi. With up to 20 hours of active use battery life, the detachable PC provides flexibility and connectivity to perform daily tasks while on the go.

Instantly on, Always Connected, and a week of battery life is liberating

One of the favorite parts of my job is trying out new products. Seeing the innovation, understanding how all the components work together, how it looks and feels, and ultimately how the customer will experience the product.

For the last few months, I have been using an Always Connected PC, running on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon platform. In the last week, I watched the movie Moana with my daughter, worked in PowerPoint, browsed the web every day, reviewed budgets in Excel, checked email while waiting to pick up my son from soccer, marked up a few PDFs with Ink, played some games on the plane – all of this without plugging in my power cord all week.

The PC is fast and responsive when I am using it and quickly goes into standby being incredibly battery efficient when I’m not using it.

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This new Always Connected PC is ultrathin, beautifully designed, running Windows 10 and a new, optimized version of Office 365. But beyond the full experiences you’d expect in a PC, this new Always Connected PC has fundamentally transformed how I work, because of three significant advantages over my other PCs.

The screen is instantly on whenever I pick up the device. I never have to wait for it to wake up, it’s just on.

Being always connected wherever I am whether I am in the car, airport or coffee shop, always being connected just feels like the most natural, safe and secure way to work with teams and be creative.

Lastly, the battery life is just awesome! I am finding myself charging it once a week. When I was using a wearable that needed to charge every day, I didn’t really rely on it. Once I moved to a Fitbit that only needed charging once a week that was game changing for me. Not carrying around power cords is liberating.

Once you start using this new category of PCs that are instantly on, always connected with a week of battery life and the full Windows 10 experience, you can really feel what a big shift this will be for consumers.

Always Connected PCs enable a new culture of work with better security at a lower cost

Always Connected PCs also have three huge benefits for organizations

New culture of work: IT is always thinking about the culture of work they enable through the technology they choose: how a given device enables teams to collaborate and be productive. The Always Connected PC is a cultural shift, enabling teams to work effectively, whether they are on a corporate campus, visiting customers or on the bus commuting, freeing a real constraint on the creativity of employees today.

Better security: IT also must manage increasing security threats and is responsible for protecting an organization’s information. Security has been a huge focus for Windows 10. But there are still these public Wi-Fi hotspots out there, which every day unknowing users connect to and could put hackers in control of the data coming and going to their device, potentially enabling hackers to steal corporate data and invade user privacy. The Always Connected PC is real security progress enabling safe connectivity everywhere, bypassing untrusted networks.

Lower costs: Today IT organizations are spending millions of dollars installing, updating and maintaining Wi-Fi antennas and repeaters throughout their buildings, and upgrading those every few years to make them even faster. At the same time, mobile operators have invested billions in building fast 4G networks. The United States alone is now 98% covered by 4G. And mobile operators have now embarked on even faster 5G network build outs that will be even faster.

Just like IT is now leveraging the massive investments in cloud compute and storage in data centers like Microsoft Azure, moving networking to the cloud will lower IT costs. Today’s global mobile operators are professionally maintaining, managing and updating their networks with massive investments in speed and security. Always Connected PCs are key for IT leaders to unlock the benefits of this global networking and provide employees with a modern workplace they want at a lower cost.

With the introduction of the Always Connected PC, IT now must ask themselves: how can they leverage the public networks of Sprint, AT&T, Orange, and others – and reduce their investment in their private antennas – to give employees faster connectivity at a lower cost than they enjoy today?

For IT, the Always Connected PC enables a new culture of work, a real step forward in security and an opportunity for massive cost savings, as the local network moves to the cloud. More on this shift is detailed in Accelerating the Move to the Cloud with Always Connected Computing.

Always Connected PCs are modern Windows 10 devices with Windows Hello, touch, pen and Ink, with thin, light, elegant designs that are more secure, instantly on, always connected with a week of battery life. When I think about organizations and whether they are going to leverage the massive networks of mobile operators and adopt these new PCs – the answer is simple: It is not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when and how fast all mobile PCs become Always Connected PCs.

Terry
Click to expand...

Source: Always Connected PCs enable a new culture of work - Windows Experience Blog

:)

JohnTCI · Dec 4, 2017

Windows 8.1 phone not appearing in Microsoft Account?

In total there are 7 devices linked/tied to my Microsoft Account (2 Nokia Lumia 635 phones, 1 Surface RT, 2 HP laptops and 2 Asus PCs).

Up to a week ago, all 7 appeared in the "Device" list, albeit with some v. strange names, which made it extremely difficult to identify/distinguish between them. So, with the exception of the Surface RT, I renamed the other 6 (including the 2 phones whilst
connected to a PC via USB cable).

Strangely, 1 of the phones, 1 of the HP laptops and 1 of the Asus PCs reappeared with their new names almost immediately. However, after 2 days the other 3 hadn't changed so I "removed" them. After another 2 days, the 2nd laptop and the 2nd PC had reappeared,
with their new names . . . or, better said, close to their new names.

However, although it is working perfectly, the most frequently used phone has not "reappeared".

The only difference between the 2 phones is that the one that hasn't reappeared is running Denim and the other was running Cyan. Don't think that this difference has anything to do with it as I have subsequently enrolled the latter into Windows Insider and
"upgraded" it; first to Denim and then to Windows 10 . . . and it has always appeared in all 3 guises.

Obviously, if the Microsoft account can't see it, the "Find my Phone" option is redundant.

Therefore, any suggestions would be appreciated to either, (i) "force" the Microsoft account to "look for, see and/or recognise" the missing phone or (ii) change a setting on the phone itself to enable it to be "seen" (although I think I have tried all the
obvious ones).

Thanks in advance.

StefGrunn · Dec 4, 2017

Windows 10 compatibility problem - Broadcom 802.11abgn Wireless SDIO Adapter in Asus X205TA

The work-around to get an internetconnection in spite of the failing adapter: Connect a smartphone and the Asus-device with a USB-cable. Permanently enably ‘ tethering by USB’ in the settings of the smartphone and
install a new network on the device.

It wil give you internetconnection as long as the smartphone is connected to the device. It’s ugly, but at least you can work…

alphanumeric · Dec 5, 2017

Smart phones that aren't phones? Not knocking it, that's just what comes to mind when giving it a quick read. So it's Windows on Arm? I see Snapdragon mentioned for both. I shouldn't read this stuff so early in the morning with no coffee in me, lol.

cereberus · Dec 5, 2017

The main issue in UK at least is getting a 4G plan that is low enough cost. Many mobile phone plans allow pretty unlimited 4G access from phone relatively cheaply but you normally are limited to say 4GB per month to tether pc to it.

If you want more, it costs more than the UK GDP to buy data sims or topup allowances.

I am certain UK mobile companies will not allow unlimited data usage on for such devices.

alphanumeric · Dec 5, 2017

My take on it, is its more for corporate customers than consumers. Or at least that's who they are pushing it to. How much data transfer is there if all the files etc your working on are on the companies cloud storage? Asking because I'm so far out of the loop it isn't funny, lol. < laughs anyway. *Smile

jimbo45 · Dec 5, 2017

Hi folks

4G unlimited data usage isn't normally available for any sensible price (if at all) in the UK - goodness knows what will happen if and when they roll out 5G (Probably a Y3K --"Year 3000") project judging by very poor 4G coverage generally in UK. 5G will eat up typical users allowance in about 3 mins flat when they download 1 decent 4K movie !!!!

When I visit U.K I'm OK because my home provider has decent 4G unlimited plans as do most of Nordic countries and N.Europe. Roaming is still Free for EU / EEA countries (Iceland is EEA).

After Brexit ????? but that's their problem.

I'm also in principle against "Always on devices" --if it's switched off nobody can access it when I'm not using it.
Security needs to be a lot better and also from a typical conservation point of view --even though energy usage may be minimal we should really think about turning OFF resources that we aren't actually consuming at the time.

With these devices too how do you do a complete system re-set when an invariable a system hang occurs and you do need a total COLD re-boot.

What also happens say you have one of these always on devices and you are in say the "Royal Opera House" in London or similar and the wretched device becomes active with you having no way to turn it off !!!! I can see people becoming quite unpopular with this type of hardware.

Cheers
jimbo

alphanumeric · Dec 5, 2017

I do believe "always on" means if you want to, not a no choice situation. It can be "always on" but doesn't have to be. I would think even if they were "always on" there would have to be an "airplane mode". That should stop any annoyances in places like an opera house.

ThrashZone · Dec 5, 2017

Hi,
Fast start 3 or 4.0 *Smile
Just with the latest FCU you could see this type of stuff coming since the start button power options are now bookmarking instead of doing what is listed.

I have never really like the inability to remove a battery especially on a windows os seeing it's a last ditched effort to reset or kill what ever borks it from malware.....

Iphone well they seem more stable so they may get away with it but windows has always been to buggy to eventually have to do it.

alphanumeric · Apr 4, 2018

Might be an interesting read, https://www.qualcomm.com/news/releas...s-connected-pc

Windows 10: New HP and ASUS Always Connected PCs enable a new culture of work

New HP and ASUS Always Connected PCs enable a new culture of work

New HP and ASUS Always Connected PCs enable a new culture of work

New HP and ASUS Always Connected PCs enable a new culture of work

New HP and ASUS Always Connected PCs enable a new culture of work

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