back to article Tablets be DRAMmed – 9 times as much

Research house IHS iSuppli says tablet computers will need nine times more DRAM this year than last. Tablet computers are forecast to need 353.3 million gigabits of DRAM this year, on the back of 57.6 million tablets shipped. This DRAM demand is 834.7 per cent more than the 37.8 million gigabits 17.1 million tablets needed in …

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  1. jake Silver badge

    And yet ...

    Nobody has actually demonstrated a use for these thingies, outside of entertaining the GreatUnwashed[tm], right?

    I knew I should have gone into marketing when I was at uni, but I couldn't stomach the concept. Lying for a living would only give me ulcers.

    I need a dram, and it's only 04:20 ...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Thumb Up

      no use for these thingies?

      Oh, I don't know. They make a pretty useful thin client, or a notebook with snob factor.

      Not to mention, a great tea tray, platform for watching porn in private, playing frisby...

    2. 2technical
      Thumb Down

      RE: And yet ...

      Nobody? Perhaps nobody showed you?

      If there was no use for them, people wouldn't buy them. I wouldn't think the "general public" would buy products that they don't have a use for, at a high price, especially in the current economic climate.

      Personally I would use the ipad as a convenient way to browse websites without having the pc / laptop turned on or around in the house. It takes up little space and has a big enough screen to view stuff without too much zooming around.

      Also for this purpose, not having a keyboard / lid (like a laptop) makes its easier to hold in various positions. The only put off for me is the current model is a little too heavy. If the ipad 2 is light enough, I will get one.

      No uses? I have a few.

  2. Gordon Barret
    WTF?

    Not a lot

    "Tablet computers are forecast to need 353.3 million gigabits of DRAM this year, on the back of 57.6 million tablets shipped"

    That doesn't sound a lot - it's 6.13 gigabits per tablet, or 0.766 gigabytes, the nearest commonly used amount of memory would be 768Mb.

    It is apparently "834.7% more than in 2010". That would make the requirement 92Mb in 2010.

    Yet my (2010) iPad already has 512mb of DRAM and 64Gb of flash memory.

  3. Robert Carnegie Silver badge

    And your iPad presumably is perfect, so?

    512 MB seems to be a common allowance on Android tablets, too.

    If they're including Windows tablet PCs, I just bought an HP TouchSmart TM2-1010EA with 4 GB RAM, 12 inch screen, and, in fact, a full size notebook keyboard - it folds away. (Comes with a USB DVD rewriter, and apparently LightScribe.) In fact, I intend to control it by speech. But I guess a lot more people will be buying iPads and Androids, and using desktop or notebook machines for serious computing.

  4. Anonymous Bastard
    Thumb Down

    It's shameful to start a story like this

    I was in Dixons earlier today and took a minute to watch the iPads. No one paid them any attention. None got bought. Despite being near the entrance everyone walked past them and went to the netbook/notebook section instead. There is simply not enough demand for tablets in the real world and I have seen it with my own eyes.

    I surmise the initial rash of sales were from early adopters, apple fanbois and koolaid drinkers. Market watchers are keen to extrapolate the rate of growth to massive sales and profits but I can't see the average man on the street actually buying into it.

    1. magnetik
      Thumb Down

      BS evidence

      "I was in Dixons earlier today and took a minute to watch the iPads. No one paid them any attention. None got bought."

      Yeah and I was in a store that sells Ferarris and in the five minutes I was there nobody took one for a test drive. Proves beyond doubt that nobody buys Ferarris, right?

      "There is simply not enough demand for tablets in the real world and I have seen it with my own eyes."

      Time will be the judge of that. What say we come back in a year and look at your comment again?

      1. Anonymous Bastard
        Troll

        @magnetik

        From your tone I take it you own a fleet of Ferarris and bought tablets as christmas presents for all your friends and family, only to find out they had already bought their own?

        I predicted less than monumental sales rather than "nobody" buying any in the next year. I offered an anecdote of first hand experience, not "evidence". I did, however, see two Acer boxes carried out in the same time.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Meh!

    If you can't understand how you could use one of these, or where the use of one would be appropriate then don't comment!

    I've got a laptop, which I rarely use, a netbook which I use normally when surfing at home. And a Samsung GT which I also use for light instant surfing at home, game playing etc. I also use it frequently away from home.

    I'd rather check my emails, internet on a good quality 7" screen than on my 3.5" mobile phone.

  6. Jean-Paul

    Hilarious comments

    @AB you are a very funny bastard. I wish I had a lack of demand for my product to such an extend that in the last three months I only sold 7.3 million of them like Apple does with the iPad. I wished I had such a bad lines of products that nobody wanted them that I only make £3.76 billion in profit in the last quarter. I wish that my early adapters 9 months later still go out in millions to buy the products.

    And that is just Apple, I couldn't be bothered to look up the stats for Samsung and other companies But gosh if you are right and this is all an epic fail that just imagine what success would have looked like.

  7. BozNZ

    Old timer whinging (move along - nothing to see here)

    <drivel>

    How did I ever survive 2 years with a 1K Sinclair ZX80!

    Yet I learnt basic and Z80 assembly and electronics (I soldered it together)

    What will the facebook/ewe-tube generation learn with a system 2 million times better?

    </drivel>

  8. Stuart Halliday
    Thumb Up

    Beginning of the end

    As a aging IT engineer I got myself a HTC desire HD Android phone.

    It sums up for me what is so appealing about Tablets.

    It is so damn easy to use, very low-level tech awareness needed to use them and they're fun!

    I've had a great time customising it and searching for new apps.

    My domestic customers are flocking to them as word gets around to the fact they are easier to use than a PC.

    The only fly in the ointment is the seriously crap ones that are on sale. These may blunt the edge on this new market before the better ones go on sale.

    I've not touched my net book in over 2 months now and when HTC brings out their 10" tablet, I'll be there!

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    We need more ram everywhere, not just tablets.

    Having just taken my third acer 18.4 inch machine in a row (with no faults except the ubiquitous windows seven irq problem causing high cpu from an invisible process,) this one is a monster. Twin 640GB drives, and at 16GB ram, windows 7 just loads all the files you ever need. It's a Core i7, quad core, and is effectively a server.

    As a result, after you've opened everything once, it's just all in ram. It opens all of, Photoshop, SQL management studio, VS2010, excel, word, outlook, notepad, ie8, all at once, in under a second.

    I don't deny the first time you start it up it takes a minute to get them all open, but I never start it up any more, I just sleep it.

    There are only two things I could improve it on.

    Firstly, more ram, enough to cache c:\windows, c:\programfiles, c:\users and whole of the current disc in the blu ray player (which it would read and cache on insertion.) I know i7 only goes to 24GByte, but I'd pay for 64 if it could.

    Secondly I'd only consider going desktop again, if someone like highpoint, made a similar card to their brand new hybrid card thingy, whereby you could use ram (up to say half a terabyte,) as a buffer instead of the ssd and it auto cached, and loaded at startup, through a custom disk file allowing custom flushed or cached writes, and you could put the page file on it.

    Good use of large amounts of ram solves everything as far as I can see.

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