Slashdot Mirror
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."
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 :(
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.
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!
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."
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.
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.
I totally agree... it would take very little to get the iBook screen to behave like the ones on the Sony Clie, and with a touch screen, Voila! tablet computer!
"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
That's because most people blindly get computers running Windows and this is a fact of life for them. Look at how the iPaq is even designed. It's got the reset button on the front and the whole pen tip fits in the large hole. Palm puts theirs on the back and you disassemble the pen to push it (not needed THAT often). The Sharp Zaurus with the Linux OS has the reset button inside the battery compartment on the back (again, resetting isn't THAT common).
;/
Rebooting/resetting MS Windows is SOP. I thought that line about the Any-Key was funny while MS Windows users will think, "that's handy".
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
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.
The only problem with writing on screen is you have to hover your hand over the screen, if you rest it on the page while writing then it screws everything up. Now if they could instead of being pressure sensitive be light driven or something (like the old "light pens") that would be much better.
NZ Electronics Enthusiasts: Check out my Trade Me Listings