Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

What are Those Tablet PCs that Stock Traders Use?

Posted by Cliff on from the where-can-I-get-one-of-these dept.

Crash McBang asks: "Watching CNBC, I notice that shots of the NYSE trading floor show traders scribbling madly on what appear to be wireless tablet PCs. So what kind of hardware is this, and what are they scribbling?" I've been wait for tablet PCs for a long, LONG time. Hopefully they will be hitting the home market soon because they would be much more ideal for portable tasks where even laptops proove bulky and uncomfortble.

3 of 23 comments (clear)

  1. Don't know about NYSE, but Fujitsu makes one by trentfoley · · Score: 4, Informative
    Last Thanksgiving, I took the family to visit my Grandma and lots of uncles, aunts, and cousins. One of my cousins is a Doctor in a hospital in Louisville, KY. Knowing that I was going to be at my Grandma's house and that I was a computer enthusiast (geek?) he brought along a prototype system he was evaluating with other doctors in the hospital.

    It was a Fujitsu tablet with a pc-card 802.11b card. It was running W2KPro. It didn't have handwriting recognition, but the interface looked polished enough to where you had little typing to do while using it -- mainly selecting from lists. Of course, there was the pop-up (over) keyboard when needed. He said that it was a god-send. They were tying it to the hospital pharmacy for patient medications as well as other aspects. I hope to see him this coming holiday season to see what progress has been made. I'd email him, but he's a Dr. and I can't read his typing.

    The NYSE guys are actually using etch-a-sketches.

    1. Re:Don't know about NYSE, but Fujitsu makes one by MaxQuordlepleen · · Score: 2, Informative

      My employer has deployed these Fujitsu tablets for customers in the automotive industry (car inspections). They're pretty cool, they run Win2k not WinCE, if I remember correctly they have 500 Mhz processors and 128 MB RAM. These units are almost two years old now, so probably the state of the art has progressed.

      The bad news? They cost us about $6500 CDN plus peripherals (docking stations, extra batterys, hand scanners, and fold-out keyboards).

  2. Fujitsu & Viewsonic by aztektum · · Score: 3, Informative

    Fujitus makes some of the things I've seen on CNBC, so if you're looking for a specific one it's probably them.

    I had a bookmark to a distributer that dealt w/ older Fujitsus, but I seem to have lost it, so yeah. Try eBay under the laptop category and select Fujitsu as manufacturer, they're under there. And try their site

    Also Viewsonic makes the "SuperPDA" Viewpad 1000

    These things are out there, you just have to look. New stuff is expensive and older (ie. cheap) stuff isn't gonna be anythin' special.

    If that fails you as always, just do a Google search.

    --
    :: aztek ::
    No sig for you!!