FYI amd has a tablet version of zacate that runs at 5.9 watts for tablets the Z-01. Next gen zacate should be even much better at 32nm next year.
You can't stick a 5.9 watt SOC in something the thickness of an iPad 2. I have to admit that I haven't yet played with a Z-01-based tablet, but I'd expect it to be considerably thicker and heavier than even an iPad 1.
An arm tablet can not even run a full fledged web browser let alone real programs. Apps are ok but I want real programs on my tablet. I have played with a few android tablets that the ARM could not even run the basic OS smooth.
I don't see any market for a ARM based desktop any time soon. The current Zacate is cheap and many times more powerfull.
Zacate is 18 watts; I don't think anybody even
makes ARM SOCs that consume that much power. If we compare Ontario at 9 watts, I don't think it's "many" times faster (at least if you focus on the core, rather than benchmarks that stress the DRAM interface or maybe GPU). If you can get your hands on a decent Android tablet you should be able to run benchmarks and confirm that.
As for Android, I personally think it's effectively the cheap Chinese knock-off....everything is
almost good... and it's all slow because they don't bother to properly GPU-accelerate things like scrolling. I really think you have to compare the iOS experience, which I view as a system done right (an iPhone 1 could scroll smoothly, and yet a 4X faster Tegra2 can't??? Come on!). The Samsung Galaxy S2 is the first candidate I've seen for a possible example of Android done right. But
idontcare should probably preemptively stop me from getting into an Android/iOS flame war in his forum .
I'm skeptical about your web browser claim; given the factor-of-many speedups in the past few versions of Firefox, I would expect an up-to-date rendering engine would be pretty pleasant to use on a decent tablet. You can actually see these differences in browser benchmarks on tablets with different software versions.
As for desktops, I wouldn't expect to see a big ATX-form-factor kind of ARM desktop, but if I didn't play StarCraft 2 and there was an ARM version of Lightroom that was properly GPU-accelerated, I suspect I would be able to replace my desktop with an ARM A15-based set-top-box form factor machine. But we'll see how A15 performs when it's actually available.
Here is preview of the world of hurt Android and the Ipad tablets are in for next year once W8 hits.
http://www.techspot.com/review/441-msi-windpad-110w-windows-8/page5.html
3 hours of use / 6 hours idle? I suspect if the ARM guys appear to be quaking in their boots it's because they're actually laughing too hard to stay still. Some macworld review (first google result) I found looped a movie on an iPad 2 with the screen at full brightness and WiFi enabled for
8 hours. From personal experience with a Zacate-based laptop (with great battery life) as compared to a laptop with more average battery life I can say that those hours really do make a difference. I don't worry about whether or not I'm plugged in with the Zacate (as I write this I notice that I'm not, even though the adapter is right next to me), but on machines with a 3-4 hour battery life it
is something I consider.
To be clear, I think Zacate is fantastic in its target market, but I think anyone discounting ARM as a potential player is making a mistake, and I haven't been "wowed" by the x86 tablets I've seen.
What makes you believe Microsoft wont eventually provide office products for Win8 ARM based products???? And when they do, the battery life will be a hell of lot better than x86 designs.
Microsoft's original Windows-on-ARM demo showed Office running. It already exists.