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Pacebook Tablet PC
IAmBlakeM writes "Looks like a new PC design has been released by the guys at PaceBlade. Reviewed at Anandtech, the new PaceBlade, touted as a 3in1 PC, features a Transmeta Crusoe TM5600 CPU at 600Mhz, up to 256MB of RAM, a 12.1" XGA LCD that can do 1024x768, and an "any key". Always nice to see some new designs and technology throwing curves at the norms."
jiste zatje kaffieeee
This is what I call "the ultimate geek toy". Well, this is for the guys who think PDAs just are not powerful enough.
Actually; the Pacebook has been announced 1 1/2 years ago and released at the last Cebit. I have been trying to get my hands on one for all this time, but unfortunately they still don't sell to us Euros :(
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Mandi's voluptuous curves emphasised the singlemindedness of a Reaganite generation. Her wholesome rump, which would do a farmer proud in even the most competitive Texan meat markets, once again interrupted my field of vision to the birds perching nonchalantly on the roof of the opposite building. Two years, three months, four days and one hour into my job at dotcomrevolution.com, and the word on the seventh floor was that the VC's were about to cut off our air supply. These gulls were my only break from the monotony of BSD server administration, and Mandi had to be punished for her countless intrusive hours at the photocopier.
"Your ass is blocking my view," I mumbled.
"What did you say?" she roared. Well, it was more an angry squeak than a raw. I just had to block out the irritating, high-pitched whine that characterised all Mandi's replies, and my instincts caused my right hand to jump onto the air conditioning knob for the server room, turning it up to full blast.
"You -- that again -- I'll -- the manager!" she continued, her voice drowned out by the healthy whir of the most expensive fans in Christendom. I looked at her and grinned. "I can't think -- that -- noise! Turn -- off now!" She was trying to keep her cool (an act made all the easier by the now exceptional air conditioning), but even a blind man could have felt the heat from her cheeks as they began to turn a rosy red with rage.
"I'm afraid I can't do that, Mandy," I responded. I guess she looked like more of a Dave than a Mandy, her smooth but noticeably dark follicles of facial hair contrasting with her pasty skin under the lifeless fluorescence of office lighting, but she would not have understood the reference anyway.
With that, I turned back to my console and resumed my xtank session. But what was this? Out of the corner of my eye, I saw water begin to drip out of the corner of Mandy's eye, while she was sitting in my assistant's chair. (Well, I called it the assistant's chair, I had not actually had an assistant since late 1999, when I selected him to be the scapegoat for my rather poor backup schedule.)
"Why must you always make fun of me? I'm just trying to do my job," she blubbed. Sitting close to me now, not even $10,000 of Taiwanese ventilation could block out her piercing tone. "Ever since I got this job the guys here have made fun of me for my shape, why can't they just respect me for who I am."
A change of heart that would have made Montgomery Burns proud caused me to stand up and walk over to the wreck. I wanted to explain this rationally to her, in terms of the mating habits of the human male, and the desire for a woman fit for childbearing and housework, but there was no time for that (it was ten minutes to five). "I'm sorry," I uttered, and rested my hand on Mandy's shoulder, fearing a lawsuit.
Mandy stood up, and without hesitation put her arms round me, whispering, "Thank you." I reciprocated, grateful for a secure office lacking in inside windows. Instead of letting go, she squeezed me harder, and her tears began to stain the shoulder of my designer shirt. I motioned to back away, and in doing so my hand slipped downwards, brushing against her behind.
"I'm not so repulsive, am I?" she questioned.
I was racking my brain for a diplomatic response. "I guess there are advantages to looking at you over the gulls and the hypnotising router LEDs," I confessed. "And unlike with the routers, I'm not called out when you break down. And you don't leave a mess on the roof..."
"That's the nicest thing anyone's ever told me," she interrupted. "Do you have a girlfriend?"
(I'm a geek. Do you have a girlfriend? Exactly.)
"I'm, um, er.. I'm playing the field," was my closest attempt at honesty without offending my manhood. "I dont like to deprive others of my attention by focussing too much on one person."
"That's a shame," she said, and then her tone of voice changed completely. "Because I was so hoping to score before next week's lay-off."
"NEXT WEEK?" There was no chance that I would be able to return my home-brewed Beowulf cluster of 'borrowed' workstations so soon, and I had expected at least two week's warning from management. "Oh, and I know about your Beowulf cluster," she whispered, "but I'm sure I can use my special relationship with your boss to make it easier for you to return the equipment. The question is, what can you do for me?"
to be continued...
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Krama: Bigdickinyoura
Which OS is supported on the PaceBook?
:-)
All Windows OS' are supported including Windows Me, 2000 and XP. We will emphasize Windows XP since the functionality is much more suitable for the PaceBook than Windows Me and 2000. Also, we read Jerry Kaplan's book and didn't want to make the same mistake of pissing off Bill so he'd dust off Pen Windows and crush us under his boot heel like GO Corp-- so no proprietary, better-suited, pen-based OSes here. Just the same old bloat you've come to love from Microsoft.
Okay, those last two sentences aren't really in there...
~Philly
PaceBlade gave it the name "any key" because it solved the problem of having to hit a key during a blue screen. The screen, which sometimes reads "Hit any key to continue" can only be removed by hitting a key on a keyboard, which is difficult to do on a keyboard-less tablet PC. The "any key" button solves that problem.
I thought the "any key" was going to be a gimmicky conversation piece, but after reading the article it appears to simply be in anticipation of Win XP.
I had to wait this long, to be able to "Press Any Key". W00t!
--
If you moderate this, then your children will be next.
dammit. it won't let me post this short a message. damn lameness filter
Buttsex.
remember reading it awhile back, was posted on a forum. 'when instructed to hit any key to continue' hit any key on the keyboard. or somthing to that effect. this new 'any key' will probably confuse some of those aol kiddies LOL
Brilliant! That should cut my support calls in half!
I bet they are going to patent the any key and claim that no one else can use it. But maybe only dumb people will be able to use the any key on other platforms without royalty, after all the prior art is from them, these people that were truly looking for it.
Does anyone know how the Transmeta @ 600mhz compares to say a Mobile Pentium @ 1.5 ghz?
I have a tablet pc that I network with my palmtop at school for discrete programing. While I run everything on linux, it is interesting to not that windows doesn't include drivers for the devices pen interface. Linux seems to work just perfectly.
:)
Now I wonder if we could beowulf the tablets that this article is about, a backpack full with bluetooth cards for every student. Too bad TN schools are too cheap to pay for such a thing.
Great looking design, but...
It seems they are missing the boat with some of the design decisions they made (ie, no Wi-Fi, no handwriting or voice recognition software). The product's usefulness is seriously limited without these two capabilities. Where's the advantage of having a tablet in your hand if you can't use handwriting or if you can't access your data?
I think they left these things out to make a more affordable product. It also made the product less desirable.
Remember... ZG9uJ3QgZm9yZ2V0IHRvIGRyaW5rIHlvdXIgb3ZhbHRpbmU=
I was all excited when I saw this article yesterday. Then, I started reading it, and my mood just got worse and worse. The lack of native handwriting SW was a major insult. What exactly is a tablet PC for if you can't use pen based input? That, coupled with little possibility for RAM upgrade, a relatively slow processor, proprietary USB and VGA ports, supercheapo integrated video, and having menu and pivot functionality tied to WinXP sw only kinda ruined it for me. The "powered' 4-pin firewire was also a compromise in my opinion. Why use two cables to do the job of one? Especially on a laptop where cableclutter is not only frustrating and unsightly, but dangerous to the light hardware it's attached to, and the ports which tend to break easily on portables. Personally, I thought the "any key" was another slap in the face. Integrating a hardware element to deal with BSOD's (i.e. a sucky OS) is like putting a reset button on your mouse. It's not PaceBlade's fault that windows is so full of holes, but it hurts when their HW reflects that, too.
As a really minor last note, they talked about using this down the road as an LCD display/TV, but neglected to put either a TV tuner or video in onboard.
Go ahead and flame away. But in my defense, I was really excited and wanted to be blown away by this product, but couldn't find any reason this was better than one of those slim Viao offerings
This is where I get my recommended daily allowance of "Foot in Mouth."
to make their website blink??
Signatures are a waste of bandwidth
Courtesy of WhatReallyHappened.com
... and that the FBI is dragging its feet on the case.
FBI'S TOP ANTHRAX LETTERS SUSPECT IS JEWISH
I moved this story into its own page because, taken together with the FBI's lame attempt to deny the presence of the Israeli Spy Ring, the story of the FBI's foot dragging in regards to their top suspect in the Anthrax letters betrays a continuing effort to conceal the real perpetrators of the crimes used to justify a war of conquest. In the case of the Anthrax letters, the chief suspect has committed murder of American citizens, yet the FBI is notably lax in pursuing this murder suspect.
03/19/02 FBI ignoring prime suspect in Anthrax letters as hard as they can. Problem is prime suspect isn't Arab. "Evidence linking these Israelis to 9/11 is classified. I cannot tell you about evidence that has been gathered. It's classified information."
-- US official quoted in Carl Cameron's Fox News report on the Israeli spy ring. In other words, the US Government, FBI included, is keeping secret any and all indications that 9-11 and the Anthrax letters were actually perpetrated by anyone other than the Arabs living over all that beautiful oil.
03/24/02 News Story identifying Dr. Philip Zack as the man caught entering the Anthrax storage area at Fort Detrick without authorization.
02/27/02 FBI'S PRIME SUSPECT ON ANTHRAX LETTERS IS JEWISH! No wonder they were dragging their feet.
02/28/02 Salon's story of the attempt to frame Dr. Ayaad Assaad, an Egyptian, for the Anthrax letters
02/20/02 Foreign press picks up story that Anthrax letters were sent by American bio-war scientist
Already the hate email is pouring in insisting that coverage of this story is "anti-Semitic". Clearly, a certain nation is terrified of this story getting wide coverage.
The time has come to face the unpleasant fact the citizens of the United States may well be the victims of the most incredible hoax in history regarding who is really behind the attacks on the World Trade Towers, the mailing of Anthrax letters to political and media leaders, and even to doubts that Daniel Pearl's killers are actually who we have been told they are.
The fact is that evidence presented to the public as to who was behind 9-11 is largely faked while evidence that links the Israeli Spy/Phone Tapping Ring to the attacks has been classified by the US Government itself, as reported in Carl Cameron's four part story on the spy ring on Fox News (subsequently erased from the mainstream media's web sites).
"reports that Israel was conducting spying activities in the United States may have a grain of truth Note the of second paragraph from the bottom of this story in which a US official admits that even if the Israelis were running a spy ring in the United States, the information would be kept from the American people.
The time has come to seriously consider that the American people are being tricked into a war. Such things are hardly new. Recently declassified documents prove beyond al doubt that Pearl Harbor was not only NOT a surprise, but was the desired result of an 8 step ONI plan written by Arthur H. McCollum and implemented by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in order to trick the people of the United States into a war against Hitler, via the back door of Japan. And according to Victor Ostrovsky, a former Mossad agent, the bombing of Libya during the Reagan administration was the result of a trick played by the Mossad in which a radio transmitter was smuggled into Tripoli and used to create fake radio messages for the US to intercept. The motto of the Mossad is, "By way of deception, thou shalt do war".
The Israeli government has a history of tricking the United States into attacking their enemies for them. A classic example is the Lano Affair.
THE LAVON AFFAIR
In 1954, Israeli agents working in Egypt planted bombs in several buildings, including a United States diplomatic facility, and left evidence behind implicating Arabs as the culprits. The ruse would have worked, had not one of the bombs detonated prematurely, allowing the Egyptians to capture and identify one of the bombers, which in turn led to the round up of an Israeli spy ring. Some of the spies were from Israel, while others were recruited fro the local Jewish population. Israel responded to the scandal with claims in the media that there was no spy ring, that it was all a hoax perpetrated by "anti-Semites". But as the public trial progressed, it was evidence that Israel had indeed been behind the bombing. Eventually, Israeli's Defense Minister Pinhas Lavon was brought down by the scandal, although it appears that he was himself the victim of a frame-up by the real authors of the bombing project, code named "Operation Susannah."
So now we have the present situation. Ruined buildings, dead people, Anthrax in the mail. There is a constant hue and cry to try to blame Arab Muslims by the Israeli government, which seeks to enlarge its territory (Israel has invaded every single nation it shares a border with since its creation) and by the US government, which seeks to grab control of what remains of the world's oil reserves. Either through this mutually reinforcing agenda, of perhaps because of blackmail of our officials by Israel, the US has become Israel's partner in this hoax, which leads us to the reason for the US to classify evidence that links Israel's arrested spies with the events of 9-11.
"Evidence linking these Israelis to 9/11 is classified. I cannot tell you about evidence that has been gathered. It's classified information."
-- US official quoted in Carl Cameron's Fox News report on the Israeli spy ring.
History teaches us that since the dawn of the industrial age, all wars have been started with deceptions and manufactured provocations. Hitler staged a fake attack from Poland to start WW2. FDR maneuvered Japan into attacking the fleet at Pearl Harbor then presented the attack as a total surprise to the American people.
Evidence that 9-11 is another such deception mounts every day. Almost a year ago, in March 2001, long before the attacks on the World Trade Towers, while the American people were being distracted by "All Condit, All The Time", the United States Government was already informing other nations of plans to invade Afghanistan in October, 2001. And, in October 2001, the United States did in fact invade Afghanistan, right on schedule, which means that the attacks on the World Trade Towers occurred at just the exact moment when the United States needed a population angry enough to support a war.
Have we been hoaxed? Would someone really sacrifice some buildings (as FDR sacrificed some ships) to start a war? Against the $5 trillion worth of oil under the Caspian Sea, the price of a new World Trade Center in New York is just pocket change, a cheap price to pay indeed for control of such vast oil reserves, and an even better deal if the oil under Iraq can be added to the prize package, especially for a government too deeply in debt to get out without massive conquests of someone else's resources.
The fact that the Anthrax Letters were NOT sent by an Arab Muslim but by a Jewish gentleman with the intent to FRAME an Arab Muslim strongly suggests that the entire sequence of recent events has been one gigantic frame-up, which would explain again why the US Government is itself classifying evidence that links some of the arrested Israeli spies with the events of 9-11.
History may be repeating itself again. We cannot afford to dismiss the possibility that, once again, Americans are the victims of a hoax designed to trick them into sacrificing their wealth and the lives of their children in a war of someone else's making; a war of the worst kind, war for profit and empire.
Let me get this straight: You release a combo tablet pc that isn't really good in any of three forms, has no voice or handwriting software and has an "any key" in anticipation of BSODs. Yes, sign me up for this reliable, easy to use gem!
CDE open sourced! https://sourceforge.net/projects/cdesktopenv/
There are some other options out there:
The AquaPAD from FICA starts at $650.
You can get it running Midori Linux or WinCE. I've played with both and support for WiFi cards is good with either version.
The SonicBLUE ProGear can also be ordered with Linux as the OS, but it's WAY pricey - like over $3000. And the version running Windows98 runs hot. Burn your lap off and runs sluggish. But it has a built in 802.11b card. No drivers to load for this one.
I don't have a solution, but I certainly admire the problem.
When Windows goes to a blue screen and says "Press any key to continue" you can press the any-key.(emphasis mine)
Something is wrong when a new device is produced and they have to advertize a "feature" that allows the device to be recovered when it crashes, not if it crashes.
Sure, most devices have this feature, but when you look at palm's site, do you see a big bulleted "And there is a reset button on the back to fix it when it breaks!"... No, it's listed on the site, but it isn't a big deal.
Sticks and Stones may break my bones, but copyright will always protect me.
Hey dudes, yuo xcant suoprt teh tablet pechee because of M$ windows lunix is teh far superior oserasibng system
i bet yuo fags have ms mouses and xboxen two. personly i don run any windows blot i even wiped my aibo clean and install netbsd.
!
Given the people here, it seems very amusing that it has apparently become standard practice to post all of the interesting news from ntcompatible.com here a couple days later. It could just be a big coincidence - perhaps many sites are carrying the same stories - but it is every few news items, and it is always delayed from when ntcompatible.com posts them by a day or two. Never earlier, and never much later.
It strongly appears that one or a few people are monitoring them to find out what the news is...
- Rob
They do not mention encryption, however. Without that, wouldn't this also mean that you could then snoop on those other channels, even without a wireless keyboard of your own? Me no like.
Inventor of the LOLbalrog meme.
take a look at the Product->Solutions page, under Realty.
the brunette is pantless
stunning!
I'm sorry, but it is overpriced, and the Aquapad runs Linux with handwriting recognition from Penpower. A screen that large will kill the battery life, and with a MS desktop OS you won't find handwriting recognition, so what is the point unless you have a browser based app that you only need to click buttons with?
I have a Toshiba Libretto L3 with the Transmeta Crusoe 600MHz CPU. Performance is not blinding fast, but it is more than adequate for most tasks.
I guess my point is that this is intended to be a portable device, not a supercomputer.
Putting moderation advice in your
I am curious why they decided to ship on top of Windows XP Home and rely on Office XP
for handwriting recognition instead of waiting another few months for the release of
Windows XP Tablet PC Edition (there's a mouthful).
I attended a presentation on the Microsoft TabletPC's a few months back and the handwriting
recognition in the OS was by far the most accurate I had seen to date on CE or Palm devices.
On top of that, with the WinXP TPCE, the handwriting recognition support is exposed via a set
of APIs and could be bolted onto any existing app. Not sure what the pricing for new OS will be,
but it seems like a much better way to go than taking dependency on Office and after $400 still not
being able to use pen input in other apps.
does that mean we have to hit the anykey? or can we still hit just any key on the keybaord?
I'll just wait for Apple's version to come out. Say what you will about them, their hardware is always first-rate.
(No, Apple hasn't publicly anounced a tablet yet.)
The crimes of eBay are a disgrace to it's pig latin heritage!
Maybe they figured most users would not be selling their souls for an OS?
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
The PaceBlade seems very similar in design to the Compaq Concerto from about a decade ago. A faster screen and higher resolution screen may make it more popular, though.
They seem to be using old-timer touch screen technology. Microsoft Tablet PC (AFAIK) will use the tablet, similar to wacom tablets, placed under the screen. So you won't need to touch your freakin' screen and scratch it (unless you really want to), and you won't have to adjust positioning all the time. Hell, you'll be able to write on the screen as you write on paper (AT LAST!) and search handwritten text (and specify what you want to find in handwriting too). I've seen their demo. You just move your stylus over the screen and mouse pointer follows it.
Where's the any key? I see alt, esk, citarol, but I don't see any any key! Ooo, a tab!
There are many tablet PCs already on the market. Microsoft has yet again tried to claim they invented something that has been used by the industry for years. What is really sad is that this one has nothing over the others in terms of usability other then being transmeta based (which should benefit the power usage). Microsoft's standards HINT and what a Tablet UI should be to be usable but it will need substantial changes to get market buy in.
,reading in full page portrait layout. But try to use these things for any input beyond point and click and you quickly see that your finger is not a mouse pointer. it's a big blunt object. using stylus on large screens is inherently iffy for targeting small little GUI widgets.
...correct...correct, and try to continue. it's maddening and a waste of time. Grafetti at least reduces the number of errors by changing the operator's input, not using cycles to compute what it thought you wrote.
I've been writing software for a year now for an in-house psych/neuropsych testing package and have had to evaluate many tablets for this project. Most are used for specific applications like data entry in the field or map/contextual content. None are overly better then others but we ended up choosing the all but defunct QBE tablet because of the most mitigating factor: cost. new tablets are over $2500 and QBE's can be picked up for $800. Since they can double as a PC when not being used as an idiot proof data collection tool, they have great value for a small office/lab setting. But not when they cost $2500 a pop.
having lived with a tablet as a dev-platform and using it as notepad for meetings, I now understand why tablets haven't caught the public's attention. they suck for getting work done. I love lying in bed surfing with my finger
After a week of testing we changed our program's UI to use a minimum of 80x80 pixel widgets just to avoid incorrect input. On a 1024x768 screen, this really limits what you can fit on the screen. Suddenly all fonts must be over 24 pt if you plan on selecting text. Radio buttons have to be replaced with "SONY My First Button" like nobs, and handwriting with a styles consumes the entire screen just to write a few words...then you wait for the coversion to text, correct
And let's not even get into using voice recog for input..it's just not going to happen for a few more years. A 90% recognition rate means a lot of mistakes that have to be corrected, and this only becomes efficient when you are streaming your words like dictation, most people speak in fragments
...a notebook that doubles as a tablet, ala the pivoting reversible screen is a good start, allowing scribbles when you want to jot down diagrams and simple notes and a normal keyboard when you want to really get work done
All windows apps rely on fitting large amounts of GUI items on the screen. Developers will first need to take on the Palm GUI theme to provide public access...just a few items for reduced chance of incorrect input and apps that accomplish a specific task.
Go pick one up and try it. you'll return it in a week and get your money back. unless you only surf.
if it ran linux i'd get it in a second! (or if i found someone who owned one who said all the fuctions worked well in linux)
Just for the record - The pivoting to Portrait/Landscape function is provided by Portrait Displays, Inc. The Anandtech review incorrectly claims that the pivoting function is provided by the Lynx hardware. And yes, I should know.
That's true.
When the Libretto's working hard for a while it will issue a puff of hot plastic-smelling air from the little vent on the left side, kind of like it's breathing.
I'm hoping the smell goes away with time. Unfortunately the manual's in Japanese so I don't know if that's normal or not.
Putting moderation advice in your
Dear Slashdot readers,
By the time we shipped the unit to Anandtech our own handwritig recognition software was not yet ready, however we are pleased to inform that we are now Beta testing it to our customers. We will release an end-user beta by the end of this month and expect final code in early June.
We would love to bundle Office XP since it's handwriting is excellent, however the OEM bundle from MS doesn't include PowerPoint, which we think is vital for office productivity. Also if you buy the OEM version you cannot upgrade to PowerPoint, meaning that you need to pay for Office twice!!!
We made the tough decision not to bundle Office XP for this reason, however the user manual is very detailed and shows how to enable the handwriting etc.
Per Lyngemark
VP R&D PaceBlade
Let me try to replay all of your issues:
1. Handwriting is a free upgrade, available end of this month in beta and early next in production.
2. We can do up to 640MB of RAM, many of our customers use this configuration
3. We have two standard USB ports, one of them is round (but becomes standard with a dongle). This is one of the dtronger things on the PaceBook since the round USB is very easy to use, it doesn't have direction problem as the normal USB. We use this natively for 360degree cameras, FIR adapters, Bluetooth adapter. It's ideal for vertical markets that need to attach either a GPS or Barcode scanner very quickly, instead of fiddling around with the USB port.
4. VGA port is a drawback, there was simply no space for a standard VGA port, however most slim notebooks today, including Apple new iMAC all use proprietary connectors with a dongle. Sometimes space is precious.
5. SMI VGA is actually almost double the price compared to a GeForce desktop chip (so it's not cheap). It's not super-fast for 3D (which is not our aim for this version of the PaceBook (we hae others coming...) but it's got very low power consumption which is our number one concern, that with 8MB for DualView, DualApp etc.
6. Pivot and Menu works in Windows XP and 2000, it will not work in DOS, we are working on Linux drivers now, see our www.pacebook.com website for Linux support and drivers.
7. Anandtech got that a little wrong... 6-pin powered Firewire can only supply 1.2A, we need 2A for the DVD and CD-RW drives. We supply a 5V 2A on the power out. We got ONE cable for firewire and power, so it's in fact the worlds first portable computer with an external DVD that can be used in mobile environments (neither PC Card nor USB supply enough power, USB is not fast enough). MS tablets cannot use DVD more than in docking station. We also use the 5V DC out for port replicator, USB hub, and recharging of mobile phones!!!
8. Anykey will be used to switch handwriting on/off. For your information MS Tablet new requirements is a Ctrl+Alt+Del button on the unit...
9. Sure, TV Tuner is coming, but defienetly not integrated due to size, cost and weight. It will be a mobile accessory (with this we mean that you can use it while being mobile and not near a wall outlet as all other TV tuners). It will supply a consumer quality picture (means no jerky USB low quality stuff). It will be available early Q4 this year.
We appreciate your comments and you are more than welcome to talk directly to us in PaceBlade, we loe to satisfy people like you.
Regards,
Per Lyngemark
VP R&D PaceBlade
Yes, it's definetely encrypted, if you happen to have the same ID as someone else you will only see garbage characters on your screen.
To set the ID is very easy, takes a couple of seconds.
For more than 255 people in a room we will have a USB/IR keyboard coming up, simply plug in the cable and you are fine.
We have many customers that use either one PaceBook with many keyboards (conference, whiteboard applications). One keyboard, many PaceBooks (testing, MIS, teachers).
Per Lyngemark
VP R&D PaceBlade
The Tablet XP edition has been delayed several timesn and it's very hard for anyone to really know when it will come out.
Our product was ready and we had customers worldwide screaming for it, why should we let them wait another 6 months???
I think that Office XP handwriting is as good as the Tablet XP handwriting, I've tested both and get about 99% accuracy on both of them.
Per Lyngemark
VP R&D PaceBlade
PaceBlade never made any claim ot be the first Tablet PC, we have seen about 30 or so from the first Grid came out back in 1988.
The Qbe was too heavy, too slow, too short battery life and it was a tablet only.
We designed the PaceBook to be used as whatever you want whereever you are:
Use it as a notebook on a train, a desktop in the office and a tablet when you are in meeting or walk around.
It's impossible for any tablet to take these three functions, that's why we created our concept with the 3IN1.
Per Lyngemark
VP R&D PaceBlade
We have no aspiration to replace your PDA. A PDA is a device you put in your pocket and use for informmation retreival.
The PaceBook is a full blown computer, use it either as a tablet, a notebook or a desktop!
We don't see it as a "geek-toy", we see it as the next generation of computers, something that will make computers more portable, easier to use and more robust than current tablets and notebooks (we don't call desktops for portables yet).
Per Lyngemark
VP R&D PaceBlade
Academic in my case, I know the exchequer won't stand for one of these anytime soon (sigh...)
We supply PaceBlade systems with both handwriting and speech input. With our version of the PaceBlade you can touch, talk, type or write - whichever is best for you and your application. We offer both NaturallySpeaking And ViaVoice. Give me a call at (800-905-7080) or email me at chatterbox@3n.net. Harry Nielsen ChatterBox Systems, Inc.