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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. check with google by nocent · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Hey, how about doing a google search instead of positng a Ask Slashdot?

    Plenty of answers right there on the first page of results. To save you time, I'll even tell you that most of them are Windows CE (the horror!) handhelds.

    +1 Righteous flame

  2. Casios by nelsonal · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Their made by casio, and really only run a few very specialized apps. The feature on them, from CNBC when they were introduced, only showed a trade ticket program. It was pretty impressive, it connects wirelessly all over the building to the traders computer showing what trades customers wish to make. It won't stop them from being largely replaced by computers though, most of the volume is already done electronically, through SuperDOT, the traders make good TV so there here for a while.

    --
    Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
  3. 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.