Slashdot Mirror
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."
...is their desktop OS monopoly, not than their applications. If they've done something cool, power to 'em. It'll be amusing seeing somebody copying M$, rather than the other way around.
This is my post. There are many others like it. If you don't like what you read here, go try one of the others.
Acer just needs to add more RAM and and DVD video into their tablet and this will be a laptop (and portable DVD player) killer product.
the article states: "Handwriting recognition in the Tablet PC will be a boon for Asian consumers. Chinese and Japanese are pictorial languages with thousands of characters - it is a Herculean task to input these characters into an electronic document."
A herculean task to input these characters into an electronic document? Hardly. In fact I think it's quite the contrary. I've had experience with many Japanese who actually find it easier to type out their language phonetically and have the computer list potential chinese character matches than writing by hand. This saves them from having to recall stroke orders for obscure characters, and is actually faster. Typing two 10 stroke characters phonetically may take four or six key strokes, which is much quicker than 20 hand written strokes.
But then the article then goes on to point out that they have algorithms for two to four stroke characters. This makes me think they are only looking to allow input via Hiragana or Katakana - the phonetic based Japanese character sets. Maybe they understand that the task of recognizing characters with upwards of 15 strokes is overkill and maybe simply beyond reach right now.
I've yet to see a house full of Linux "hardcore" geeks even warm up to a Microshaft presentation. And I've lived in the "geek world" for many many years.
Just so you know: I have seen the Tablet PC; and most of the people (techies) who were with me were thoroughly unimpressed. I don't know what "Linux crowd" you hang out with, but check their foreheads for butterflies....
I've used a palm for a long time, but I've realized one thing - writing on a piece of plastic is nothing compared to writing on a good sheet of paper. For example, my signature is consistent on paper. With the electronic signature things more stores are getting, I have a problem with my signature because the tablet doesn't feel the same way as paper. It seems like too little friction or something, but it doesn't doesn't feel right. So until I can write on real electronic paper that feels like paper, I don't think I want to spend another $500 on a tablet pc that I'll end up being annoyed with.
Microsoft Research went on an incredible hiring spree in the mid 90s, Picking up a majority of the top researchers in some fields. I'm surprised more killer products haven't come out of there since, apart from the difficulty of bringing products from reasearch to production I always observered at Bell Labs.
The whole innovation behind this has nothing to do with the electrostatic input device. MSoft is not in the business of sensors. Plenty of devices have had these kinds of input screens.
IBM just used it ala mouse-input. Microsoft is allowing people to use digital ink as a first class citizen in the computing world. It's a whole new way of looking at computing.
TabletPC is not some sort of handwriting recognition on steroids, it is a way of combining standard text with ink-based input, and allowing you to freely go between the two without effort.
Tablet technology seems like it would be great for doodlers and maybe other artists, depending on the sensitivity of the input device. It'll be great when my big ol' LCD monitor can be taken off of its stand and used on my lap for a bit of drawing.
On the other hand, right now, when I see the pictures all I can think is that it looks like a comically over-seized PDA.
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
Again I believe Slashdot has fallen victim to guerilla marketing. Were the poster in fact a real person, they would have linked to their university.
The post might as well have been straight from a textbook. No facts, just unsubstantiated hype.
The question is: who is the poster working for? Acer? Microsoft?
(And the next question is, why is Taco falling for this shit?)
I got that error when mixing PC100 and PC133 memory. Maby that's your problem to?
This, boys and girls, is exactly the reason Microsoft is so successful. More power to them. When was the last time you heard the average person waiting with baited breath for Red Hat 8.0 to come out? "Look! It now supports a new video card that shipped in my machine 12 months ago! Woohoo!"
Not a flame, just an observation. Microsoft really knows how to stir up the troops and get them excited over nothing but cybercrack. Open your wallets folks and enjoy the ride, I sure do.
I believe that Microsoft's own online hype literature is insufficient in describing just how powerful their Tablet concept is.
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.
Whatever makes you think that this comment was submitted by a Microsoft promoter?
Could it be the fact that he was able to pick out the 150 linux users in the crowd and knew that they were "floored" by the Tablet PC demo?
This submission has stink written all over it. Good call.
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
Comments from people who have never or barely used the machines should be discounted. The work done at Microsoft Research in the area of merging bitmap and vector algorithms and compression/journaling (per the "behind the scenes account") is far beyond anything of which I am aware on any competing platform.
That said, the resources necessary to accomplish the promoted tasks are large and will affect battery life. When the machines debut on November 7th and become integrated into the lives of the targeted audience, I believe it will become clear that, this time anyway, Microsoft is farther down the road than anyone else.
About half of all Americans cannot type or efficiently use a keyboard. Not surprisingly, that's also about the penetration of PC use in the general population. This could be Microsoft's bid to achieve similar penetration of such appliances as the television and the telephone.
I'm of the opinion that Apple either won't do a tablet, or at least such a product wouldn't last long. Why?
In order to get people to enjoy using a computer it either has to be reasonably adaptable to their needs, or very tightly targeted.
The iPod is a perfect demonstration of the latter. It's a killer MP3 player. It has a few extras, but those are just icing on the cake, rather than something people expect of it. Thus every new feature is a treat, rather than an obligation. The iPod is also quite successful.
The problem with a tablet is that it has a relatively big color screen and versatile input. I expect to be able to do pretty much anything I can do on my iMac on an iTablet. I expect a tablet to be fully functional without depending on a desktop for anything(and for that matter, I don't want a concept where removing the tablet from the equation cripples my desktop).
But this means that a tablet has to have pretty much everything a compact, yet fully-featured(like the iBook, rather than one that requires a "docking station") laptop. Double hinged screen or not, the "tablet" then becomes cumbersome. My Mead 70 page notebook doesn't weigh nearly as much as even the lightest laptop.
The tablet concept is something that wants to be too many things at one time. It either has to wait for technology to become light and thin enough to make truly lightweight, non-crippled laptops, or it has to be more specifically targeted as a middle ground between the laptop and PDA. Right now it's just too close to being a laptop with a fancy screen to distinguish itself from that already-saturated market.
The technology required to truly replace pen and paper with something more effective is probably 10-20 years off. A 75-100 dpi LCD screen just doesn't cut it compared to a quality fine-tip pen on a piece of notebook paper. Neither does the lag of screen output and character recognition. And what more, these Tablet PC's are way too large and heavy.. and they use short-lived batteries.. and they're really, really expensive!
When I brainstorm, sketch, diagram, etc. I use paper and pen. When I write, program, or do anything else structured, I use a keyboard. I have precisely zero need or desire for one of these "Tablet PC's."
Now, a real piece of innovation would be "electronic paper" nearly as flat and flexible as the real thing. Think 400dpi with a reversible draw/erase stylus. But it should be dumb--nothing more than a reflective monochrome bitmap device. You draw to turn pixels on and erase to turn them off. And it's only interface would be to transfer these page bitmaps to and from my desktop or laptop. (where I can do character recognition if I really need it) This electronic paper would also be excellent for reading books, newspapers, docs, man pages, etc.
Give a hand, not a hand-out.
...is, in my experience, almost always fantastic. I for one could not live without a 5-button Intellimouse Explorer and a Natural Pro keyboard, and I have MS gamepads and joysticks for gaming.
Say what you want about Microsoft's software, marketing, and management... but their hardware products are amazingly good.
-----
PGP Key ID 0xCB8FF658