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Windows XP Tablet PC Edition
WallsRSolid writes "Microsoft just finished a week-long series of lectures and demos at my university, and the product that really stole the show was the Tablet PC. I was in a room with probably 150 hardcore linux users, and it seemed to me that the demonstration just floored them (the entire lecture hall CHEERED a Microsoft product). I believe that Microsoft's own online hype literature is insufficient in describing just how powerful their Tablet concept is. A July preview, Acer's propaganda, a press release about their initial success, and a behind-the-scenes account (good article) of the enabling technology. Oh, and the input stylus is electromagnetic, not pressure-sensing, ANY document (not just MS) can be annotated, and the journal software is AMAZING in its power and flexibility."
Tablet PCs are touch screens with handwriting recognition that run software just like a desktop personal computer. Early designs have been released and the first generation of models are expected to hit the market in late 2002. read and learn more.
Hellooooo... These are nothing new. I've had a Stylistic 1200 for years now, with the battery stylus, I'd prefer touch instead. Been running WinXX variant on it as well as different Linux dists. Nothing new here. More powerful, sure. Bigger screen, yep. But "Microsoft's concept"? Please. Not to mention they're taking a generic term, "tablet PC" and trying to make it a branding of their own product. Ridiculous.
and saw the tablet pc. Not all of those 150 people were rabid linux users. In fact I am quite certain there were not even 50. But you obviously misundertood what impressed the people. Noone cared that you could copy and paste ink. That is trivial. Annotations are passed through the bitmaps, as the guy specifically mentioned. Yawn. What impressed me and a ton of other people in the room was the kick ass handwriting recognition. I have not seen one that worked that well yet. For those of you who have not seen it, the recognizer is not line based, so it can form chunks of recognizable text at any position and angle. Nothing too mind boggling, but definitely a technical feat.
badness 10000
Pro's:
Nice feeling pens (there are two)
The swivel idea is nice, abeit a little fiddly.
It looks cool!
It's pretty small and light
Windows Journal is very nice
Con's:
Windows XP is as slow as a dog! I don't know what spec the machine is, but there is very noticable latency between clicking and menu's appearing for example. This might have something to do with it having an absolute shitpile graphics card.
There is no positive feedback that you have clicked. A tiny click sound would improve usability 110%. This is where the whole thing really fails. I found myself reverting to the touchpad in a few minutes because it was just so frustrating to try and double-click.
The onscreen keyboard is good, but the handwriting recognition is both crap and slow (about 1.5 seconds delay after writing 'jpixton').
The screen has a protector on it which makes it rather reflective.
Fiddly as fuck for clicking anything small. They really need to realise you can't just use a pen with windows which was designed to be used with a mouse. They need to alter the user interface to be more usable with a pen!!
The first one I attended was for an introduction of Frontpage along with NT4. Very posh circumstances in Bellevue with catered food (this was back in the "good ol' days). The demonstrations were slick beyond belief, done by smart, attractive people who did amazing things simply and easily. They gave us CDs with NT server, SQL server, Frontpage and NT workstation (all time-limited) and I was impressed enough to try them all.
Oddly enough, nothing worked as well for me as it did for those smart, attractive demonstrators. Perhaps I wasn't smart (or attractive) enough but it seens more likely to me that the demonstrations were carefully staged to only show the best side of the product and hide any flaws.
Of course, most presentations are like this... but this one sticks in my mind as a stark example. I've warned all our people to view all such "dog and pony shows" with a good deal of skepticism... but this goes double for those done by MS, in my opinion. What you see may not be what you get.
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
I've had an oportunity to use Microsoft's Tablet PC in person - A week or two ago a MS trailer was on the grounds of my University (Plymouth UK) mainly to shout about .Net, but they had a couple of TablePC's in the trailer too, one was an Acer, and I think the other was a Sharp.
These are my personal impressions, your mileage may vary.
First of all the handwriting recognition is not amazing. It does a fair job if you print in capitals, but writing joined up as neatly as possible gave unusable results. The recognition system really should have been better for the simple fact that when using a TabletPC you are not going to be leaning the device on table, but standing holding it in one hand with the pen in your other. This contributes to wobble (try writing neatly on a paper notepad with a pen while standing - notice your handwriting isn't so great?). So for a device like this, this is an important point - it should have been better, and as it is, I guess it's only *just* about passable.
My other complaint about the handwriting is that the screens on both devices were very smooth, and this meant that there was very little tactile feedback when writing, which promotes large scribbly handwriting. Notice how when you use a normal pen and paper there is resistance as you write? This is not present and promotes bad handwriting.
But enough about the handwriting - I really don't see how this is a revolutionary product. It's a laptop with handwriting recognition (and some have no keyboards).
That is about it - and because of the form factor being so small on most of the available devices you lose out on a whole lot of functionality (DVD, good graphics HW, CD burning, Large HDD etc etc etc.)
Plus, on the two devices Microsoft was showing off (so presumably the best two available devices) the battery life was appalling - at around 1 - 2 hours. For a portable device like this to succeed, we need to see 'day's use' longevity, which will probably realistically mean 6 -8 hours. So what gives, there are fully fledged notebooks available with TWICE the battery life of this device, which is supposed to be more personal and available 24/7 than a notebook.
Plus (and it could be because I only had it for 20 mins) the way that Windows Tablet edition responds to the pen is very confusing, you write away and all of a sudden it thinks you are trying to press buttons, and all sorts of stuff gets clicked on, then it'll calm down for the last couple of words of your sentence and go back to recognising handwriting.
And what's more, the two MS employees openly stated their pessimism for the devices, and admitted they had no idea how to use the interface.
Plus - with the devices that are simply going to be like a notebook without the keyboard half (rather than the notebook like ones that have an actual keyboard that folds around to the back of the screen) how on earth is the screen protected? A pouch? A cover? If so - this seems more ungainly than a conventional ultralight notebook (Vaio, PowerBook G4 etc).
And the things are *heavy*.
Sorry, but I was very underwhelmed by the Tablet PC, and find it surprising to hear of this reaction (cheering, clapping) from *anybody* let alone people who you'd expect to understand more about the industry
There is nothing special about the Tablet PC, it's *just a small notebook with handwriting recognition* - and my final justification is that apparently the devices will cost *A LOT* - thousands of GBP. -Peter
This sig has been deprecated.
At least they're smart enough to implement it coherently unlike a dozen or so who've tried previously. It sounds like this product is about 70% of what a Dynabook is supposed to be.
-- Multics
Your anti-Microsoft advocacy is priceless. By countering hype with FUD, you will go far on this Internet-site.
What university?
Carnegie Mellon University.
What did they cheer for, other than nebulous "amazement?"
They cheered for the fact that their product blends handwriting recognition with Windows applications that are already in widespread use. Advantages over Palm OS: Larger, color screen; easier ability to add wireless. Advantages over Newton: Tablet PC has a large company actively backing it; larger, color screen; compatible with Office and other widely-used applications. Advantages over Linux: the hwr-devel kernel module has been stuck at version 0.2.5a since 1997, and doesn't support any hardware made in the time since then.
What hype are you refering to, and exactly how is their "hype literature" insufficient?
Their hype literature, like many such pages, is pretty shallow.
How is that better? Is an electromagnetic stylus a requirement of the Microsoft technology?
Yes.
Can I annotate OpenOffice documents?
Yes, with the openoffice-hwr-devel module, currently at version 0.0.1a on SourceForge. If you'd like to see this technology implemented, write it yourself. That's the power of open source.
What exactly does it do that's powerful and flexible?
It lets you use handwriting recognition.
For more information, click here.
Sheesh, Microsoft once again claims to have invented the wheel and everyone claps. Why is this?
:(
Tablet PCs have been around for more than a decade at least. Fujitsu has the Stylistic and Point lines (some of them very current and very powerful), Casio has the Fiva, Panasonic and Sharp have models, and even the IBM ThinkPad line was originally given its name because the first models were tablet PCs with essentially the same form factor. A number of smaller manufactueres have also been making high-end tablet PCs. Just go to eBay and search for 'tablet pc' and you'll se models running the gamut.
Natural handwriting recognition that works has been around forever. The Newton line of PDAs (which admittedly had trouble in early revisions) had very accurate natural, full-speed handwriting recognition and the ability to annotate documents in ink on a largeish, screen by the mid-90's with the release of the 2000/2100 series. These things can open imported MS Office documents in NewtonWorks and you can mark them up to your heart's content. Meanwhile, Paragraph's Calligrapher (eventually to become Microsoft's Transcriber in a licensing deal) has been available for years for Windows CE tablet PCs (which aren't even mentioned among the models above) and also provided natural handwriting recognition and digital ink for annotating documents. The same Paragraph product for full-fledged tablet PC's was known as PenOffice and provided all of this functionality for users of Tablet PCs running full-fledged Windows. Even Microsoft has done this before (years before) with MS Pen Extensions.
Why is it that Microsoft can always get away with digging up, licensing and/or copying a bunch of old technology that everyone has been before, then throwing a party and calling it their own new invention? It saddens me to think that ten years from now people will believe that MS invented the tablet PC, just like they now believe that Microsoft invented multitasking, databases, graphics, the mouse, the concept of application windows, and the Internet.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Actually, WallsRSolid is a friend of mine. The university in question is Carnegie Mellon. Microsoft really was here last week, and the reaction to them really was, in all truth an honesty, a positive one.
I've been absolutely astounded on the number of people in this discussion who have completely blown off the topic. Microsoft does produce some quality products, and they are very attractive as employers (the purpose of the visit was one of recruitment), despite all of the Evil Empire BS that flies around.
Common sense is what tells you the world is flat.