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Ever Improving Laptop
Every few months I see a new laptop that really impresses me, and
Hanno submitted one that does that with room to spare.
PaceBlade has a transmeta chip, PCMCIA, irda, USB and all the usual stuff... except that it features a removable ir keyboard, and can be used as a traditional laptop, or as a workpad sorta thing with a pen. Expected release around the middle of the year with a $2k price tag... I'm super skeptical of that price.
I think you got it wrong buddy. We keep Sales people employed. I came to a recent realization with the latest product I've been working on that we really could have used the input of the sales and marketing guys. It may be that the last couple years of my life have been spent largely on something that really didn't make a big difference to most of our customers, whereas something I did in a week or less has been much more well-received. I would have preferred to have spent more of that last two years doing a number of those week-long projects, rather than the other. And marketing might have been able to help point out this focus problem.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
"<body bgcolor="..." > is deprecated in HTML 4 and later, as it is a presentational attribute and should be implemented in CSS instead."
That's as maybe, but this page uses neither HTML nor CSS to specify a background colour. The white background on the image, however, suggests that the designers were not allowing for the fact that many users may have a default background colour other than white.
There are well-designed sites which don't override your default stylesheet, and which still manage to look acceptable against different background colours, but this isn't one of them. The only example I can think of right now is Yahoo!, but there are a number of guidelines a web designer can follow to create a background-independent site, such as using transparent gifs without anti-aliasing, or using contrasting borders around images (the page under discussion would not have looked broken against a grey background if the image had a one-pixel black border).
This isn't anything new. My friend had a 486 laptop that was a tablet with a detachable keyboard. I remember watching him play populous on it and drooling. I was wondering why that type of device didn't win over laptops earlier. Are they going to work the second time around?
Joseph Elwell.
Changing your "Window" color in Display Properties: Appearance will change the bgcolor of pages that don't specify a color in HTML or CSS.
Yes, I am quite aware of that. But if a page is going to use an image whose background is obviously white, I think it should be their job to change the color. Manual color changes kind of defeat the purpose of web pages having colors...
Posted from the wireless couch.
The link to "company information" comes before the link to "product information." Now, pray tell, what are they trying to sell? Themselves, or their product?
Methinks they need to priorize a bit better.
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Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
They claim it's a first, but there's nothing new under the sun.
I've got an old tablet 486 that works the same way... detachable keyboard and presto! you can use it as a tablet with the special pen that comes with it...
'Course, it's got a much smaller greyscale screen and only 25 whole megahertz of power (not to mention a whopping 12Mb of memory). Pretty cool though - I had it mounted to a wall for a bit as an electronic noteboard.
It was made by Compaq, but I forget its name now.
It isn't. I (the one who submitted the story) had this cool device on my hand, twiddling with it, yesterday on CeBIT at the Transmeta booth.
It had the polish of a ready-to-market product, with all connectors in place.
It did not run any applications, only a slide show, so it could still be be a hardware mockup. But definitely not cardboard.
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I'd like to see how that lovely screen actually looks with something running on it.
The device I saw had a pretty regular LCD screen running at 1024x768. Nothing spectacular, just a screen.
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According to the laptop's hardware developer I spoke with at CeBIT, the device contains regular PC-compatible components. He himself is not a Linux-fanatic, but he sees no problem running any x86 OS on it.
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What's wrong witha regular, full-featured laptop?
Most of all, they are not ergonomic. I use a laptop as my primary computer and I am sick and tired with the "keyboard firmly stuck below the screen" design paradigm. It forces me to a bad working position.
You can run a real, OS(W2k/Linux, etc.)
Same for this device.
Is it me, or are geeks getting even too weak to carry around a 5 lb notebook...?
Oh, that old argument again. I did carry a 3 kg laptop with me until a few years ago. I do not have a car as I live in a city with no parking space and a very good public transportation system and also have a bike.
I was surprised myself that carrying a "normal" laptop with me *is* a major strain, both because of its weight and of its size.
I am glad that the industry makes subnotebooks. My current laptop is 1.5 kg and I can carry it with me all the time without even noticing that it's there. Taking off half of the weight is a major difference.
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Only a slide show?
Yes, only a slide show. As I said, it could still have been a hardware mockup prototype.
However, I've seen a lot of prototype hardware on CeBIT yesterday and this one certainly was the best one I had a chance to get my hands on. Most of the otheres weren't even allowed to be touched and those that were felt shabby or had obvious manufacturing problems and looked, well, "homemade".
It was made from the right material, felt like a real product.
Definitely not cardboard and certainly more than vaporware. But if it will become a real, working product - I have no idea.
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Well, I wouldn't say you'd have all the benefits of a typical desktop/tower PC...
Expandability and performance (faster hard drives, memory, video cards, etc.) will be lost mainly due to size and power limitations...
Currently I feel that the best way to go is to have a really fast desktop and a decent laptop (i.e. not a desktop replacement), because you can have a fast desktop and a decent laptop for the price of a fast desktop replacement laptop.
I wouldn't mind seeing laptop market saturation either. =)
I want a display based on the same tech as in the
IBM lin-watch. 740 dpi OLED!
Even just a 15" MONO display at that resolution would kick major arse...I mean, 11100x8140 on a 15x11 screen?! Palmtops at 2220x1480?!
That would be slicker than owl shit.
C-X C-S
Toshiba Satellite 2800-500 has it, and it's an option on recent Dell Inspiron 8000s. Both available now.
There have been many "failures" which have helped to kick things along in the right direction. NeXT or the Apple Lisa are a couple of examples of products that bit the dust, but which helped kick things forward at the same time. This system may also be a failure and at the same time it may be the kick in the head that causes someone else to say, "You know, that thing would have been great if..."
Don't discount the shoulders upon which we now stand no matter how little some of them may have risen above those before them (every little bit helps).
In a place beyond time and space, in a land far better than this, look for me there...
Ahhh, but this will have handwriting recognition, so instead of writing things you can't read on a $1.50 legal tablet, you can write things neither you nor it can read on a $2000 laptop.
Visit me on #weirdness on the Galaxynet.
Like so many things, it does if you configure it correctly. loadkeys, xmodmap, the like. See www.linuxdoc.org
The add says it includes a "low power" chip.. This could be an oversight or they could be being honest about both power consumption and chip performance...
Toshiba has a new model out with the GeForce2Go :)
chip, it's probably the best graphical (=gaming
laptop available right now. According to early
reviews I've read, it generates impressive framerates for a laptop. Don't remember the exact
model, it's one of the Satellite 2xxx-xxx models.
It also has a combo DVD-CDROM-CDRW drive, and the
pricetag is pretty reasonable (around $2700).
http://www.paceblade.com/product/pacebook/images/f eatures_05-scroll_over.jpg
I just got a new Micron laptop (GX+) and it has a composite video out. I would like to have two serial ports also. I'm always plugging into machines that only talk serial (GEM/SECS), as well as some printers. I was going to try one of those USB to serial adapters. Anyone have any luck with them?
Wrong. Now I can code on my notebook like I can with a desktop - with the keyboard & monitor both at comfortable distances, rather than one or the other too close or two far away.
It looks too big to be a practical tablet, though.
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E_NOSIG
Pi. Nice sig ;-)
The PaceBook comes with a Transmeta Crusoe 600MHz processor, 4MB SMI Lynx graphics controller, 128MB SDRAM, 20GB HDD, 12.1" XGA TFT-LCD display with Windows ME or Windows 2000 OS. Optional accessories include CD-RW/DVD-ROM, wireless infrared remote control and CCD camera.
#include "disclaim.h"
"All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
#include "disclaim.h"
"All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
That space bar looks damned short! It annoys me how keyboards seem to get more and bigger "Windows" keys and things at the expense of the space bar. One one keyboard I kept pressing the right alt instead of the space bar.
-- Wodin
Heyyy, I didn't realize that 'ergonomic' now means 'shrinking the space bar down to three key-widths.'
Indeed. Bastards.
-- Wodin
http://www.EmperorLinux.com/kiwi.html
Damn that's a cute little computer!
This is the real issue, how fast will it run the client? How many RC5-64 KKeys per sec?
I will not buy before I know!
I'm holding off on buying a new PC because I would like my next "PC" to be an affordable laptop with a docking station. Then I could have all the benefits of both stationary and mobile computing without having to buy two machines.
This will be a bit off-topic....
No, you don't have two computers, you have one computer and one docking station. I prefer two (or more) computers and no docking station. I dock using something called network!
When I come home or to the office, I simply connect the small-screened, tiny-keyborded mouseless laptop to the net, close the lid and put it away.
When I need to work on a project stored on my laptop, I use X and ssh. In essence a seamless docking into my 21"-monitor-fitted floortop.
This also has numerous other benefits. A file/web-server always on net, scientific background processes and file-downloading in the background... always.
So wherever there is a machine with X and SSH I can dock my laptop.
And last but not least, that wonderful distributed.net client for when the CPU is idle. Gotta love them stats.
Unlike other notebooks, they have stuck the Insert and Delete keys where the space bar should be, and there is a black grey key there as well.
Naff keyboard layouts irk me. Why don't they stick those silly keys somewhere else out of the way?
Two serial ports. I know. I'm probably the only one that has a use for two serial ports plus the modem. Maybe one of these days the manufacturers of the realtime equipment my wife and I use will switch to USB, but they haven't yet.
Sounds a bit kinky.
As my father lik@(munch munch)...
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+1 Insightful, -1 Troll. What can I say, I'm an Insightful Troll.
I think that the video, proc, etc.. are behind the screen area and the keyboard, mouse, etc.. are wireless.. but thats just my intuition.
JOhn
Campaign for Liberty
Just wait ten years for the prostate cancer to go back down after untold amount of EM-exposures to our testicle area, from laptops used as "laptop".
Noticed that marketing stop using "laptop" and adopted "notebooks" instead?
Compaq also had a laptop in production (can't remember the name/number) with a very similar form factor about 5 or 6 (or more) years ago. I used one and loved it, but it never seemed to catch on.
Obviously, it was a little more clunky that the machine mentioned in the article (laptops being a little thicker back then), and the keyboard (and pen I think) were corded. But, it worked great and made a great desktop when the keyboard was detached. Not to mention the pen was mighter than the mouse (for some things).
So, Apple wasn't the first with this idea either. And this one was in production.
Smilodon
V V
The price doesn't seem that out of the ballpark to me. The bill of material on this looks to be just about the same as a regular laptop, with the possible exception of whatever they are using to do the handwriting input. The IR link to the keyboard adds about $30 to the BOM, counting the extra battery for the keyboard.
Depending upon how they do the stylus, that could be the main factor on the cost delta from a standard laptop.
www.eFax.com are spammers
Actually, that sounds like a pretty good deal. PocketPCs (that's what they're calling WinCE these days) have no hard drive and tiny screens and the newest iPAQ is going to cost close to $600 when it is released. A good bargain laptop may cost around $1500 but a really tiny, ultralight mininotebooks with comparable abilities will usually set you back about $2000. If this machine will really cost $2000, that's just a small step up from an average laptop.
Does this
We're keeping you guys employed though. Sales makes the economy happen, at least in this country where we don't barter for the food we eat.
I was at a sales presentation the other day and everyone was crowded around a guy who had a Palm on one side of a portfolio, and a writing pad on the other side. Under the writing pad was a pressure sensitive pad that transfered his handwriting on the paper to the Palm. He didn't have handwriting recognition software, but if he did - wow. We were all impressed, but I have no idea how much those things cost.
This post brought to you by your friendly neighborhood MBA.
[body bgcolor="..."] is deprecated in HTML 4 and later, as it is a presentational attribute and should be implemented in CSS instead.
As long as websites have matted images at all, the world of 'content' and 'presentation' are inextricably mixed. PNG support is uneven and broken, and few people even know about it. It is within a creator's prerogative to make an image that assumes a certain background color. CSS is an optional component of the system.
When images depend on background, a [body bgcolor] is not too much to ask, and is a lot simpler than setting up a CSS clause or override.
We have to face it, there is just no one "right" way to make a web page. You can't just say 'bgcolor is deprecated' and expect every tool that's out there to break the old traditions and bow to the holy new standards.
"Be strict in what one produces, but liberal in what one accepts."
[
I am writing this from the floor at Cebit. I saw the device yesterday afternoonn and it looks sweet. Super smooth design and definately a cut above other similar devices that out there. Of course the price is high but the manufacturing costs are also high. Maybe in 5 years they will actaully be cheap enough so I can buy one for each room...
I asked the guys about linux support, they are looking into it but at the moment there is not enough support for the hardware so I guess we better get hacking.
[Please type your sig here.]
It's cute, but it's still a Mac.
Anyone here know what the current status of BSD on the StealthBarbie is ? Soon as it runs a real OS, I'm up for one 8-)
So, it's just like the Fujitsu, except that I can already order the Fujis ?
Why is this thing so exciting ? Are Slashdot doing paid product plugs now ? 8-(
buy whatever freakin' mouse you want, if it is USB the mac will support it
Tricky on a laptop though.
$4??? I'll buy a thousand of them for that price!
:)
I say we take off and nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure...
hi,
recently build laptops simply sux. the have fun. what for? laptop is a portable computer, not heater, it shpuldn't generate uneeded heat.
Manufacturers should think about power-saving, not one gigahertz processor. think about laptop from year, let's say, 1996. Pentium200MMX. Give it 64mb ram and linux would run pretty fast. Add current (2001) battery technology and you'll got laptop running 20 hours on cells.
Please, stop making so monstrous laptops with pentiumIII or athlons. Those are not needed!!
:wq
The daiper dandy! Its BSD, baby!
illegitimii non ingravare
USD200 give or take. Try http://www.seikosmart.com. Cheers, Gary
Ahh..I guess if you read it that way it does...
Thanks for clearing things up for me.
A very basic laptop will run you $1500 but any mid-range laptop (Dell Latitiude C600 for example) will run you at least $2k. Did you look at this thing? It has features that blow a Latitude away!
Granted, everyone is entitled thier own opinions and you have yours, but compared to the current laptop market this is not bad for a unique versatile laptop like this...
The website just seemed to have pretty pictures. Not that that's a bad thing, but they need some statistics if they want real interest as a product (else be branded as vaporware). Was anybody more successful than I at finding the thing's stats? I want to know processor speed, RAM, and HDD space especially when using the monitor as a stand-alone tablet.
If I use this, I need lots of disk space on the tablet since my horrid handwriting is unrecognizable by any software... I'd just save each page as an image or a bunch of strokes. Naturally, I'd need at least 50 pages like that. Preferrably about 150+.
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
Heyyy, I didn't realize that 'ergonomic' now means 'shrinking the space bar down to three key-widths.'
I can't tell what keys they're putting down there, but I'm sure I'll end up hitting them with my right thumb.
Karma: Bored. (Thinking about resurrecting the "Anyone else is an imposter" joke.)
Having two serial ports is useful when you have to use expensive software that requires a dongle, or you want to use your laptop as a debugger.
Karma: Bored. (Thinking about resurrecting the "Anyone else is an imposter" joke.)
Every distro I've used recognizes it (and I've tried all the majors). It normally activates the "K menu" or the Gnome foot menu thing, and I seem to remember it doing something cool with E as well.
Karma: Bored. (Thinking about resurrecting the "Anyone else is an imposter" joke.)
the bastard child of an Apple iBook and my Colecovision...
Karma: Bored. (Thinking about resurrecting the "Anyone else is an imposter" joke.)
Excuse me whilst I barf.
Compaq made one of these a while back, around 1995 or so.
I hope they got 'it' right, though. I fear this thingie will suffer from the 'El Camino' effect. In trying to be both a car and a truck, or in this case, a notebook and a tablet, it fails at doing either well enough, so it becomes neither.
Neat idea, though...
Sig? What sig? Do I have to have a sig!?!?
Can't speak to the serial ports, but my Toshiba Satellite Pro 4200 has TV out.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
PNG support is uneven and broken, and few people even know about it.
Until they get sued.
Will I retire or break 10K?
8 *MEG* to run a word processor?
Remind you of Emacs (Eight Megs And Constantly Swapping)? No, wait, Emacs has easter eggs such as M-x tetris and M-x doctor.
Will I retire or break 10K?
A VHS composite video output. This lets you plug it directly into a television set to put on a presentation for a small group, and it's great for playing games with the whole family.
My laptop has an S-video output connector on the left side. (Sadly, it's only active when I run Windows 98.) I got a 24-foot S-video to composite video cable for $24 at some Yahoo! store; it came with a free stereo audio cable. Or you can make your own adapter; it's merely a matter of mixing the signals on the luma and chroma pins.
Too bad my laptop's CPU is too slow (333 MHz Celeron-A) to decode DVD or DivX ;-) movies or to render Quake 3.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Why can't people learn to use HTML? Is it really all that difficult to state which background color you want?
<body bgcolor="..." > is deprecated in HTML 4 and later, as it is a presentational attribute and should be implemented in CSS instead. Some users prefer white text on a black background and have their default stylesheet set accordingly. (If you're using a Web browser that crashes when fed valid CSS, that's your problem. Mozilla has come a long way and is already an order of magnitude better than Netscape 4.x.)
Then I go look at it with Netscape under Linux which, thanfully, does not make everything glaringly white unless it is told to
Changing your "Window" color in Display Properties: Appearance will change the bgcolor of pages that don't specify a color in HTML or CSS.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Who is willing to have a low powered CPU?
Somebody who doesn't have a lot of money for batteries and will be using this thing for long periods of time away from AC power. "Low powered" does not necessarily mean "long execution time for a given program." Even then, document-editing programs are generally dominated not by CPU speed but by apparent latency; Transmeta's CPUs are powerful enough to run even the bloatware that is MS Office, but I see a potential problem with heavy use of GIMP filters. If you want to play 3d games, get a fscking game console. If you want to crunch RC5 keys, you don't need mobility; get a standard minitower.
Will I retire or break 10K?
He meant he was skeptical it would be that low
Everybody denies I am a genius--but nobody ever called me one!
...I've been waiting for a tablet PC coupled w/wireless ethernet card! Imagine, being able to order up a DVD & a pint of Ben & Jerry's from kozmo, without even getting out of bed!
"...[treat] every man after his desert, and who should 'scape whipping?"
They are far from the first. Just what the world needs more false marketing
About 2k, eh? Just about *all* laptops are about 2k. Sound familiar? Desktops were the same way until a couple years ago, then the major manufacturers finally started dropping price. At the time, I remarked that this might be a warning sign of "PC saturation" and I turned out to be frighteningly correct.
Laptops are still not saturated. As a consumer, I would like to see them saturate. They may be starting to a little. I have managed to find a few laptops in the $1000 range but I'd like to see major manufacturers advertising $600 laptops. That's right about my price point for a good new laptop.
It's really a shame that laptops didn't clone like the PC did. The race to see who can be thinner, lighter, more ergonomic has resulted in a slew of nonstandard parts. IIRC there were some standardization efforts but they were doomed in any attempt to produce something as useful as the ATX case/motherboard standard.
Anyway, I'm rooting for a "laptop downturn" to follow the PC downturn. If history repeats itself, a price war will precede it. I'm holding off on buying a new PC because I would like my next "PC" to be an affordable laptop with a docking station. Then I could have all the benefits of both stationary and mobile computing without having to buy two machines.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Bigger pictures
Ok, lets tie this in with the earlier story about new funky organic LEDs for a cool display, before we get too excited...
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
http://www.dynamism.com
A bunch of neat little laptops that haven't yet been released in the States yet but are apparently available in Japan.
Mark
-- Patience - A minor form of despair disguised as a virtue.
This is of no intrest to a coder. "Wow, now I can code without a keyboard?? cool!" (Followd by repeated self eye poking.)
ender-iii
ender-iii
In all honesty, I've seen much better and neater products out there that would reall interest the slashdot community as a whole ...
And I'm pretty sure that other slashdot visiters have not only seen them, but submitted them to
This is just my 2 cents ... it does make you wonder ...
I'd like to see enough room in a laptop for a MFG to put in a PCI slot... think of the possibilities
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
Ok, you're an inventive little son of a bitch. z
Because their early machines were total shit and that scared off a lot of people. I'm not going to buy Fujitsu for a _long_ time. z
http://www.paceblade.com/index2.html
This is a nice lap-top, but are we expected to accept that because you can turn the screen on it's end, it has 6 functionality modes?! That's a little much for even me to swallow.M
Almost makes me wish I hadn't bought my Dell Inspiron 4000.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
Aren't most dongles parallel? (Not that I'd touch dongled software with a 10-ft pole, mind you). Parallel seems to be the cascadable device of choice (zipdrives, scanners, external CD-R's...) before USB completely takes over.
Even before the Compaq, there was the Momenta notebook that used a stylus or keyboard.
The Compaq was called the Concerto. Can't find a picture of one via google, but there are several fan groups for it plus a pen driver for X.
jonathan
Please visit our booth in Hall 13, C08. We are in the booth of Transmeta, the maker of the low powered CPU in the PaceBook
Man, that phrase is so unfortunate to have on your front page! Who is willing to have a low powered CPU?
Steven
-- I have marked myself unwilling to moderate-- I don't have other accounts to artificially inflate the karma of
A benefit of this division of labour is the simplicity of the viewer. There are VNC viewers on many different platforms.
~
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
Couldn't you get one of these right now if you wanted. Take one of these Qbe's http://www.qbenet.com/productsOriginal.htm Put it on it side with a wireless keyboard and wrap it up in a diaper and Boom you have the paceblade all new notebook Just was wondering
I'm guessing around 4k. At least. 4.5 maybe, but not 5.
The reason why I like laptops is that I can use it as a desktop replacement without the bulk and with an LCD screen for far less than it costs to put together a desktop and buy a flatscreen monitor. With my $2700 Dell Inspiron clone, I can lug around as much computing power in my backpack as the machines in the computer lab. With datajacks in nearly every room, I have full computing power in any building on campus. I haven't used my zip drive in two years since I've had a laptop because I can just plug in my laptop and do a direct file transfer over ethernet.
Furthermore, my laptop is my primary workstation. I using for work and for play. It sustains uptimes of weeks. And of course, I can shut it down or suspend and pack it up and take it with me in a matter of minutes. Try doing that with a minitower/tower and 21" monitor.
Only recently have companies discovered this niche in the laptop market. Previously, the laptop market was only interested in portability, and not performance. That is why you have seen a large improvement in multimedia, graphics, storage capacity, and screen size in laptops.
At this time I have a 15" TFT. I'm always looking for a laptop with a 17" TFT with a GeForce Chip in it. If anyone knows of a vendor that sells on, let me know!
About a month ago I submitted a question to slashdot about if we'd ever have wireless monitors (essentially what this seems), and it got rejected (of course). I had done a little thinking about how much data is pushed to the video card, and then how much data is pushed from the video card to the monitor, and I didn't know of any wireless techs that could push that much data with good quality. I figured compression would be the answer, but I'd really like to hear if anyone has any more information about how exactly they get it to work. If their product really can do decent graphics, why aren't we all sitting on a couch, wireless screen in our lap, with our computer (and all it's bulk) across the room?
Kurdt
Kurdt
I'm not anti-social. Just pro-technology.
how could you argue that a wireless (via PCMCIA) webpad would not be cool? I mean really?
yay for cool stuff that will always cost too much!
-IMHO-
Why bother?
/*drunk.. fix later*/
What's wrong witha regular, full-featured laptop? You can run a real, OS(W2k/Linux, etc.), and they're really not that much bigger. I'd rather have a laptop with all of the features as my desktop and a normal sized keyboard then some kludgy tablet/pen/palm pilot thing. Is it me, or are geeks getting even too weak to carry around a 5 lb notebook...?
Now I can write stuff that I can't read on a $2,000 laptop instead of on a $1.50 legal tablet.
Goat sex free since 2001
is it just me or does this sound like a glorified PDA?
What I want to know is, how does the Crusoe CPU run x86 code (e.g. OS binaries for Intel processors)? Does this require a special build or is the Transmeta chip able to just run Intel x86 native code with its VLIW instruction set?
Knowledge is like ignorance.. too much can be just as bad as not enough.
My office uses basically all laptops... 90% of them come with video out (the little yellow jacks)...some of them now are even coming with s-videos...especially the dvd driven ones...
.kb
Two Wrongs Don't Make A Right-- But They Make Me Feel A Whole Lot Better
Lets see, WinCE stuff (or whatever they call it today) costs around 400 or 500 US$, a nice, not too expensive lappy costs 1500 US$.
This thing costs 2KUS$..... Me no entiende.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
...and all your redundant "yeah, but does it run Linux?" posts belong to us :-)
Seriously, it looks cool, but it's not a new idea: the Compaq Concerto, the recent Fujitsu machine someone pointed out, and (stretching waaaaay back), the GRiD computer.
The last of these was where the creators of the Palm (Jeff Hawkins, et al) started out. It was a pen-based, tablet-sized, x86 processor machine that could run DOS, GEOS, and (if prodded with a sufficiently large hammer) Windows (2.X IIRC). Unfortunately it was heavy, had a very reflective screen, and a slow processor to give it a decent battery life.
Where this makes to look some advances are in weight, battery life (thank you, Crusoe) and overall usability given a fairly zippy processor.
I cant beleive this!!! >PaceBlade Technology is proud to present the >first Tablet Notebook computer: the PaceBook . Um. Not the first guys, and im sure it's not the first time they didnt understand the market they were going for. The IBM 730T, and the rest of the tablet PCs in that series were quite nice, and well above the competition from Compaq. Take a look at the Fujitsu Stylistic series of both CE and Win2000 tablet PCs. These are CURRENT! The Casio Fiva is also a nice tablet PC, that runs Windows 98. "Walkabout Computers" makes a very rugged machine like this with a detachable keyboard.
I'd love to find a notebook that can replace my old one. It has two things that you just don't see anymore:
A VHS composite video output. This lets you plug it directly into a television set to put on a presentation for a small group, and it's great for playing games with the whole family.
Two serial ports. I know. I'm probably the only one that has a use for two serial ports plus the modem. Maybe one of these days the manufacturers of the realtime equipment my wife and I use will switch to USB, but they haven't yet.
The Titanium G4 looks nice; it gets high points for style, but I don't think it's a good value. The screen is wide but pretty low resolution and there is no choice of pointing device other than the touch pad. You can get a wide choice of equivalent PC laptops for significantly less money.
$2k for that? You've got to be kidding. I bought a device that does nearly the same thing for $350. Both Sony and Vandum make these things (respectivly called Tripad's or Clio's).
In my experiance most people (or at least me) use laptops mostly for note-taking and internet functions. It just isn't practical pricewise and functionwise to carry around a portable desktop (I'd also add physical strain...I can barely lift some of Dell's laptops!)
This is where the tablet PC comes in handy. You don't need a tablet PC to run the newest 3D gismos, you need it to take notes. It makes sense that you could save alot of money and get all the needed functionality out of a thin solution.
The great thing is if you want the power of your home computer you plug it into an ethernet jack and use Terminal Server (for windows) or Terminal X (for linux)...yes linux does run on these things.
Not to mention that the computer looks like it is held together by some sort of fabric-like case, which seems very poor fited for the job. The flip top Tripad/Clio seems to do what it needs to just better.
I won't even get into the false claim it is the first tablet PC.
Big apple, new Yorik, undig it, something's unrotting in Edenmark.
a laptop's going to ask me to buy it when it's got a new fantastic mobile nVIDIA graphics card. when that happens, i'm not sure i'm going to be able to resist. that opengl support has seemed to be the one thing that's never been up to speed. oh well, i suppose i should put my student loan to good use.
i was angry:1 with:2 my:4 friend - i told:3 4 wrath:5, 4 5 did end.
i was angry:1 with:2 my:4 friend - i told:3 4 wrath:5, 4 5 did end.
i was 1 2 4 foe i 3 it not 4 5 did grow
If you haven't fondled one of the new G4 Powerbooks yet, drop off your significant other at the video arcade and head on down to Frys. If you already have too much debt, I suggest leaving your credit card at home.
[Insert the usual disclaimer here]
Apple Newton's Forever!!!
I don't know if this has been brought up and I hate to throw water on the sweaty geek-tech love-fest, but... What is the screen on this thing going to look like after months of running your pen apparatus over it? I know that on all the laptops I've owned, I'm pretty careful to keep fingerprints and certainly pointy objects away from the screen. Granted, the screen will likely be similar to the surface of a PDA, but how does that work on a large screen and will the cost of this unconventional screen drive the price up? My first post on Slashdot... Do I get points or some shit like that?
Yeah, the notebooks at Dynamism are awesome, but does any one know about their tech support or service? I'm thinking about buying their Fujitsu LX-T, http://www.dynamism.com/lx/lxt.shtml , does anyone currently have any information on it? Thanks
Dear Slashdot readers, I will try to comment on most of your questions in this reply, if there are still some unanswered ones please let me know and I will reply again. 1. We don't claim to be the first notebook nor the first Tablet PC, there are already thousands of notebooks in the market and nearly 30 Tablets. We are however the first Tablet/Notebook, which is a computer that can be used in your lap as a notebook or on the table as a Desktop PC, or used as a tablet while you are standing or walking. There are three parts: Keyboard, Tablet and carry bag. The keyboard is wireless to the tablet (consumer IR and not low-range IrDA). The bag is very essential since it makes the transition between tablet PC and Notebook. There is no hinge that can break down, you don't need to worry about spilling over the keyboard, the touch sensor protects the expensive LCD from breakage, no ventilation holes nor fan for dust intake, etc... 2. We use Windows 2k/Me at this moment, we see the strong interest from the Linux community and we will do all efforts to port Linux on it, we will also set up a BBS where our Linux users can exchange information/drivers. If anyone has got better ideas please let us know. 3. The price of USD2000 is similar to a normal notebook computer with a 600MHz CPU, 128MB RAM, 20GB HDD. While a normal notebook will cause RSI (Repetitive Stress Injuries), easily break down (see 1 above). 4. We are much more than a Fujitsu or Qbe tablet PC. The Qbe and the Stylus 3000-series only run 1hr30min battery life, hardly practical for a unit designed for people walking around or standing up. We support 6hr or longer battery life in normal usage. 5. We see no relation to a PDA nor WebPad. PDAs are very small and fits in your pocket and contain your Address book and some otehr stuff. WebPads can only be used for Internet surfing (depending on their OS they support 40-80% of websites due to lack of JVM, Flash 5, Shockwave, Asian languages, RealAudio, RealPlayer, plug-ins, etc). The PaceBook is as functional as a notebook, as functional as a Tablet and will serve as a Desktop replacement due to it's unique formfactor. We see it as six computers in one, while notebook is only one function! If I left something out, please let me know. We did some updates on the website to remove the "low powered CPU" error and added a sitemap to make the site easier to browse. The PaceBook will be available worldwide in June-July. Per Lyngemark VP R&D PaceBlade