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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."
Microsoft came out with something that Linux fans cheered for? Yeah right...
1: Write free software.
2: ?
3: Make proprietary software.
4: Profit!
From what I've seen, this is simply amazing. I'm going to a preview of this tomorrow. My uptight boss was all for it once she saw what it was about. I've held off a laptop purchase for almost a year now waiting for this.
funny munging
I do believe the earth just ripped open, pigs have wings, and it might just be me, but it's awful cold down here....
Sent from your iPad.
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.
I doubt they cheered because it was Microsoft, but because it was a tablet PC. As the article says, people have been trying to make an effective tablet PC for years. Maybe Microsoft will *&@% it up, but at least now we know that it CAN be done, and maybe other companies will figure out how to do it as well. I hope
...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.
before:
1)People get one and install Linux onto it (eleven seconds)
2)Someone tries to make a beowulf cluster (fourteen minutes)
3)We see them on eBay (4 days)
4)That hinge thing on the Acer one gets broken (0.5345 seconds after the warranty expires)
Why would they?
Yet so far... Anyway, I'm quite looking forward to the Tablet PC, it seems logically where the PC is meant to go.
My postings are informational and does not constitute legal advice. Act on it at your risk.
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.
Why is it that a tablet pc now gets cheers, as compared to a few years ago when all attempts for a tablet product fell on deaf ears (besides specialized applications)?
Since the PDA craze is still hot, I suppose a new piece of hardware with some new, nifty software features is enough to get this thing some thumbs up. I've always wondered why there weren't hinges on laptops like this one. It seems like a no brainer (touch screen or not - a mouse/stick/pad on the side of the screen would have worked too).
It all about timing. Flexibility is finally "in".
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.
I hate Microsoft not because of any moral high ground, but because of their shoddy products and suspect business practices.
;)
If they fairly produce a product that is useful and works well -- standing on it's own merits, then I say good luck to them.
I must say though, I'll believe a good Microsoft product when I actually see it for myself.
"Proudly Posting Without Reading The Article"
Tablet PC?! Electromagnetic input pen?! I'm pretty sure Fisher-Price made the same thing like 25 years ago!
Insightful: 76, Off-Topic: 379, Flamebait: 24, Funny: 152, Interesting: 201, Underrated: 55, Troll: 9, Total: 896
I don't know why people think a keyboard is such a bad thing. I can type much better than I can write, and I expect that goes for most PC users under the age of 50.
My laptop gives me amazing mobility. I can even use it without having a desk by putting it on my lap (hence the name LAPtop).
I just don't understand what is so revolutionary about the Tablet PC. Can someone please enlighten me?
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.
Wow, the tablet PC actually looks cool. I thought it was just some more hype, but the underlying concept looks good.
On a related note, couldn't this be the perfect direction for the Simputer? It looks easy to use and powerful enough for most needs, and certainly better than a pda. All that needs to be taken care of is the cost.
I remember interviewing for a start-up 10 years ago which wanted to make 'revolutionary' use of the pen-based (windows) tablet PCs making it on to the market at the time. Both the products and the company sank without a trace. Considering where we are at the moment, the obvious question is, what makes it any different today? The technology doesn't appear to be fundamentally different, so has somebody come up with a killer app, or is this just a fashion revival?
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....
From those pictures, all it looks like is a laptop with the screen on the other side.. wow, blow my mind, how DID they think that up? p.s. very few companies have mastered hand writing recognition. hand writing is even more dificult to desipher then speech, and i think we've all played arround with speech recognition and found it to be very flawed.
MABASPLOOM!
Definitely, I'd hit it. And the Acer page doesn't have a disclaimer that says "Hot girl in chair does not come with Tablet PC," so hey, y'know, you might be lucky.
Exactly how are these features beneficial?
I learned typing so that I didn't need to use such a painfully slow method as handwriting anymore. Why is everyone so delighted that your WPM is going down?
As far as speaking, I don't know about the rest of you, but voice processing is useless for me practically everywhere I use a computer: On the train, in meetings, and at my desk. Everytime I've heard someone use a Dragon speech product I almost immediately hear someone else asking them to turn it off because it's annoying.
Just look at XBox: Big, loud, fragile, power-consuming, sold at 150$ loss - and still behind Gamecube and Playstation.
Now the same with Tablet-PC: Isn't it just an oversized PDA? The way I see it, it combines the disadvantages from PDA and Laptop: It's too heavy and big to casually carry it around in a pocket, battery lifetime is measured in hours like with a Laptop. - But it lacks a keyboard, many interfaces and connectors.
Why should anybody choose it over a Laptop? or a PDA?
I recall reading about this in the NY Times in '98 or '99 (in newsprint). From what I can recall from he story, the tablet pc idea was one that has been attempted and aborted by many big hardware players for a long time, and the view taken by the story was that MS's success was a long-shot, tempered, however, by the fact that the product was seen has a very high priority within the company.
The thing that stood out in my mind, however, was that the story indicated that the general wisdom of the time was that consumers could care less about a "tablet" PC, but it was being persued because technologists thought it was a cool thing to do.
Personally, I think it sounds cool, but I'd rather use a laptop: I hate using styli for anything other than 'point-and-click'.
All one has to do is hit the right keys at the right time and the instrument plays itself. - Johann Sebastian Bach
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.
If the handwriting recognition software is as good as they say it is, give one to every doctor - that way we will all understand the damn prescriptions.
Semper ubi sub ubi
Swap the stock photo girl out with Heidi Wall chicken-scratching GIMP under X windows, and I'll buy one. Tell me I can bash alias a frowny face to /dev/null and I'll buy two. Tell me someone's working on a GUI iptables interface where I can flick digital bugs with my index finger, and I'll swap out my router. And if I can get it with an at&t natural voice Majel Barrett module, I'll wet my pants and run around in little circles. Now to resurrect a cliche- will it run linux? oops, I mean, how long til it runs linux?
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
kde, evolution, any office suite...
i'm sure theres more.
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.
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
Like, what your definition of hype is, and why each qualifies.
I'm not trolling when I say "Why would they, and why should they?". It's their product, and they are free to disclose as much or as little of the technical information as they wish.
Holy moly. Are you feeling dizzy?
First of all, Microsoft is a software company (note the glee of the Apple critics on this front), so they don't so much have to think about installing Linux. Maybe you should be bitching about Acer or someone.
And anyway, as a software company that's making this new software that seems to have people excited, why should they give a whit about publishing anything to do with another operating system?
Even more than that, I'm as big a MS basher as the next guy, but shit. I wouldn't expect them to publish anything of the sort and I'd reserve the harsh light of my scrutiny for when they screw up outside of normally accepted business practices (and you won't have to wait long.) To do otherwise makes you look like a zealot.
I want it. I just want something that
1) doesn't fold like laptop
2) has palm graffiti AND handwrite recognition
3) be 2 times larger than a palm pilot
4) has at least an equivalent of 200Mhz Pentium,
energy-independent storage and >=32 Mb memory
hmm... may be Simputer?!
and surely I want Linux on that thingie (or at least to have an ability to put Linux on it).
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 hope they use something like Newton's hand recqonition. I know I'm preaching to the choir, but i think thats the best one out there at this time.
"What we have here is a failure to communicate"
The Warden, Cool Hand Luke
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!!
I remember these things when Windows 3.11 was around. Dumb idea then, dumb idea now. I can type faster than I write, plus how you are going to do "Control-Alt-Delete" with a pen?
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Here is what floored everybody:
You can open up a lecture slide on say, power point during a class, write notes on it in a spiraling circular fashion, then later search through your spiral scribble AS IF IT WERE TEXT. You write "foo," search for "foo" and "foo" in your hand writing will be highlighted.
They did it during the presentation and it appeared to work very well.
When I take notes in class I use paper and a pen because I like the variety in handwriting to help me remember things. If it were searchable... I'd buy on of these and I've used Linux exclusively for 2 years.
--------
It's OK to be social, just don't tell anyone about it.
It's of absolutely no interest to me, then. Even with just two fingers I can type a hell of a lot faster than I can write (and my handwriting is barely readable anyway), so a computer without a keyboard is to me - as a professional writer - as much use as a car without an engine. If I want to take a small computer with me on the road, I'll stick with my Psion Series 5, thanks!
You must think in Russian.
I got to play with a few of the in Redmond a couple of weeks ago, and have to say they do look pretty cool. The pen thing is particularly neat - you can hold the pen up to about two inches away from the screen and the cursor still follows the pen. You can hover the pen just above the screen and drag it around. Really weird at first...
Blue skies, Barthy Burgers, girls...
ms held a summercamp for employees children and all of them absolutely loved all ms software.
.net will dominate the world because it's so cool, and showed his cool watch to prove it.
when interviewed one of them said
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
First Microsoft reinvented computing by giving us Windows 95 and now the tablet PC a little over eight years later in 2003. Brilliance.
First Apple reinvented computing by giving us the Macintosh in 1984 and now the Newton a little over eight years yater in 1993. Brilliance.
I guess the real question is when did PARC come up with all of this. 1978?
Today is a gift. Save the receipt.
Clearly there is demand for this type of thing if it is well done and well integrated, but there is little to be learned from a rigged demo. The technology background piece has some interesting tidbits, but it doesn't seem like any of the interesting research is coming from MS in the first place.
If we are lucky, some interesting hardware will be built with higher quality input devices, and maybe that will spark some good research. Research is better done in open source, so hopefully the hardware drivers will be available to make this work in Linux.
This is super exciting! Just a few questions!
Microsoft just finished a week-long series of lectures and demos at my university
What university?
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).
What did they cheer for, other than nebulous "amazement?"
I believe that Microsoft's own online hype literature is insufficient in describing just how powerful their Tablet concept is.
What hype are you refering to, and exactly how is their "hype literature" insufficient?
Oh, and the input stylus is electromagnetic, not pressure-sensing
How is that better? Is an electromagnetic stylus a requirement of the Microsoft technology?
ANY document (not just MS) can be annotated
Can I annotate OpenOffice documents?
the journal software is AMAZING in its power and flexibility.
What exactly does it do that's powerful and flexible?
More details please! I don't feel the amazement yet - perhaps you could tell us all why we should be amazed! Then we'll love you!
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!
Microsoft is hyping the tablet PC because it uses their Operating System (Windows XP Tablet). Several companies are coming through with the hardware, including Acer, Compaq, and Motion. My university has had demonstrations of all three, a couple of them MS sponsored.
In our demonstrations Microsoft never claimed credit for the tablet concept, and the demonstrators did acknowledge that the idea has been around for some time. They are selling the difference in that a) the new tablet PCs are now affordable and b) the OS can run anything Windows XP can run.
For approximately the price of a laptop, you get a somewhat more mobile but less powerful laptop. Acer's includes an integrated keyboard. They are nifty, but I wouldn't say that the Linux users in the audience stood up and cheered by any stretch of the imagination. Right off the bat they have their drawbacks. CD/DVD isn't integrated (which would be difficult at that size, although they have lots of ports to use), the voice recognition is still somewhat weak, and as I mentioned, they are somewhat less powerful than laptops at the same price. On the other hand, people can carry them around like they're a pad, people can annotate in any program, it makes using drawing programs a lot better, and it has the best handwriting recognition software I've ever encountered (that is what impressed me the most).
All in all, they are selling the tablet PC as "an idea that's time has come." I don't know if that's true; if my area decides to support them I will probably use one, but I wouldn't go out and purchase one myself at this point.
The standalone desktop PC model just isn't right for something like a mobile tablet. It should essentially be a thin client to a company server or to your actual desktop PC. But then it's not a standalone PC, and they can't abide that.
Our intelligent designer has never created an animal that we couldn't improve by strapping a bomb to it.
Seriously, the parent is not a troll. People have been trying to make a tablet PC for years and it simply doesn't sell. After all, it's just a laptop without a keyboard, which makes it unusable for any serious work and still too heavy to use as a home appliance.
"I have opinions of my own, strong opinions, but I don't always agree with them." -- George H. W. Bush
oh for gods sake people
its just a x86 laptop with a touchscreen = open
the funkyness that they all rave about is the ability to doodle all over the screen and so the software
the real deal is if they put wince on a strongARM and use RDP + 802.11b to get to the x86 on your desk
that would be fun because of the battery life and the fact that ARM is well supported in linux 2.4/2.5
X11 term's on everyones laps
(now that would be cool)
regards
John Jones
Where are the boobies? Oh wait, this isn't a Fark story. Damn.
And WallsRSolid works for who? ...either Microsquat or one of their numerous PR firms, of course.
One of the things MS does well is that it pre-announces products, thus keeping competitors away.
Sanity is the trademark of a weak mind. -- Mark Harrold
If you download the demo application, it states: "Power saving in the CPU architecture delivers an extended battery life of 3.5 hours".
3.5 hours battery life?!?
Does it mean 3.5 extra hours due to the CPU power saving, or am I right in thinking this thing has an overall battery life of 3.5 hours?
loply.com
...is you having to excuse yourself for a quick trip to the photocopier every ten words or so.
Here is my problem: my handwriting is awful, my typing skills are fairly decent. During the lecture I have to draw some charts or graphs -- sometime. I need something I can combine the typing with some minimal handwriting but fairly extensive drawing. Something not too big I can take with me in classroom. Seems like Palm/Pocket PC screen size is too small. Any recommendations?
TIA.
I am no fan of MS products and this is not flame bait. I am also not a Linux fanatic. I use what makes sense when it makes sense. My routers are linux based, my laptop runs XP. My image servers are linux.. my 3D workstation is XP.. whatever works best at the time. The development community at large seems to be missing the point.
While linux folks have been busy hacking, reverse engineering, updating, and complaining about mainstream products, Microsoft has been quietly busy plunking away (in their own scary, plodding, increasingly buggy way) to get into the minds of consumers. XP, xp media center, and the tablet thingy are all going to be very effective. If the collective horsepower of the linux community had concentrated on an equivilant of XP media center (yes I know about freevo and the rest) and a tablet based solution, MS would be in big trouble. They (MS) are already doomed to lose the server battle in the long run, the linux community needs to concentrate on the consumer experience if they ever want to see Linux get used mainstream. There is nothing special about the MS tablet PC, all of this is perfectly possible in linux. Not only is it possible, it would also use less resources, be open source... yada, yada, yada.
The problem is not MS, its the linux community focusing on all the wrong things..
Every time I see 'how long will it be until someone gets linux ported to xxxx' I cringe. What a friggin waste of time. Who cares if you can port linux to some obscure device and create a following of 3 very avid users. That doesn't count for shinola in the big scheme of things.
Don't put MS down for trying something new, ask yourself why such a large collection of big brain linux developers can't beat microsoft to the punch for once instead of playing a chasing game.
IMHO, Linux users/fans will cheer for any os, hardware, etc. that is, in it's own right, a good thing. Regardless of who does it. Linux is just a "bathtub full of applications" isn't it? All kinds of stuff, from everywhere. When I am surfing the web with a linux/windows box, and I find a game, etc. that might be interesting to run on my Windows 98 partition, I just download it from my linux partition, and then reboot to Windows to go explore it, etc. Why should I keep the two os's separated on two different boxes? On the other hand, the typical Windows user has no linux partition on his machine, but I'll be willing to bet that most Linux users have Windows also, especially since HDD capacity now runs well over 30 GB in many machines. Now, the tablet pc can hold a linux installation, can't it? That's the real reason why "Linux fans cheer."
Rapidweather's Linux Screenshots.
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.
I had a Palm III for many years. I was able to pick up Grafitti in about an hour. Now I have a Zaurus. The handwriting recognition is amazing. I almost never use it. I usually use the keyboard. No matter how great handwriting recognition gets, it'll never be as fast a competent (not great, just okay) typist. It simply takes longer to write words and letters than to type them. I don't see the advantage of the tablet PC thing (except for vertical markets). As I see it, Microsoft is merely attempting to manufacture a market that doesn't exist. It's all hype, but Microsoft will get credit for it when everyone wants one (why? because it's "new" and "cool"). I say thee FEH!
Why all this hype? The OQO PC is really small, AND it has all the functions of a normal computer, which means you could potentially put Linux on it given the drivers. You could consider THAT a 'Tablet PC'.
I'm the Devil the Windows users warned you about.
I wonder if I can still get a refund on the price of Windows.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Optional 802.11b wireless LAN
Optional? That seems a bit odd for a Tablet PC no?
Are here and here. Note that the first has a second page.
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
As you know, MS has deep pockets, and they've used some of the money extorted from W95 lusers to fund serious research in machine learning. In my own research field (belief networks, shameless plug) they have hired several of the big wheels in the field. Patrice Simard used to work in neural networks; don't know what he's been up to lately -- you can probably find papers by him at Research Index.
Recognition of handwritten characters is a hard, interesting problem; pattern recognition on bitmap images can only take you so far, and to go beyond that you need to start incorporating additional information such as stroke order and letter and word context. Voice recognition is even more difficult.
The bottom line is that since there exist computers (namely our brains) that can reliably carry out text and voice recognition, we know it's possible. Getting there will require solving several substantial engineering problems, and it's possible a university department somewhere will carry through the solution, or perhaps a corporation that can afford to have a group dedicated to technology that won't pay off in the next three months... such as MS.
Who cares how long it takes to get nix onto one of these machines
How long until the nix users realize this is just a stupid piece of hardware - the cool part is the outstanding handwriting recognition. Hardware vendors were never able to successfully get a tablet pc off the ground because the software behind the hardware was never sufficient.
How long until someone gets recognition software of this quality running on any version of nix - prolly never.
How long until http://www.fingerworks.com helps put out a tablet pc? That would be cool - I won't need a keyboard for the three finger salute. Mice are the work of the devil.
The magnetic screen is better than pressure sense because it is more resilient to wear and tear - dropping the tab is probably not healthy for it.
The magnetic screen is better than static boards because they are less/not sensitive to dirty screens. Heck I could butter up my tablet and still annotate my notes. Mmmmm butter.
I have one of these. Evaluation product from Acer. It is a very neat machine, but I think that is the extent of it. It exceptionally small, and the word rcognition software is amazing.... But I cant see it being too useful. Its a lot faster to type.
Plus, that damn hinge is flimsier than Bob Dole's dick.
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
This presentation was held on the afternoon of Saturday, October 26, 2002 in Wean Hall room 7500 at Carnegie Mellon University. I do not have any photos, audio, or video of it captured in a way that I can upload to the Internet, but it was real. Not every event has its own web site.
For more information, click here.
There goes my theory that Apple was going to bust open the tablet PC market. They have all the pieces ready to go, including handwriting technology, Bluetooth/WiFi, and Rendezvous zero-configuration networking.
:-)
Imagine the flat-panel iMac without the connecting tube. Everybody says "the screen makes you want to touch it and adjust it" wouldn't it be cool if you could pick it up and carry it into the next office?
Personally, I've been wishing for a nice wireless tablet PC for home use for a while. So I can read slashdot while plopped on the couch, of course.
"What we did is we came up with a form that is better than JPEG. It's about 50% better."
Hrm...I don't guess there is any use hoping they used an open format?
And besides, I can't type for shit.
--All your stolen base are belong to Rickey Henderson
In the late 80's a concept called "Pen Computing" was the Next Big Thing. Companies like Grid were building the hardware, and companies like Go were designing software that would be appropriate to the platform.
Along comes MS with vaporware called "Pen Windows" and the whole industry collapses because everyone wants to see what the 800 lb. gorilla is going to do. Naturally, attempting to kludge up an entirely new UI on top of Windows fails miserably, but not before everyone else runs out of money and the idea dies.
Of course, there were other issues, CPU performance, LCD cost, etc. but the technology was relegated to the Newton (and the subsequent PDA industry) where it has languished for 15 years.
I don't know about most people here, but I really don't get on with character or word entry using any kind of stylus - there's something unnatural about having to keep your hand off of the screen and only make contact with the stylus.
I see this table is not pressure sensing, does this mean you will be able to rest your hand on the screen while you write?
Someone revoke this guy's slashdot account NOW.
Depends on MS's purpose in hiring them. It may be that as long as MS can keep the best talent from working for somebody else, it doesn't matter whether they actually produce anything at all.
What?
If a corporation spends a sufficient ammount of money for someone, they're certainly going to put them to work. If they don't produce anything, they probably get fired--and if they produce something that can make MS $, they probably get some sort of bonus.
"Buy to sit on" makes sense for patents, copyrights, and trademarks--but not for people.
I was in a room with probably 150 hardcore linux users
how did you stand the smell? good god, man...
Do you expect me to use a tablet that needs to recharge in 2 hours (com'on this 3.5 hours is basically the CPU doing a screensaver)
For the kind of thing M$ is marketing thing for, I would like to see a 5 hour batter life. So, if I am using it for round-checks, as a doctor, or just writting in it, I have to recharge this sucked every 2-3 hours?
I would rather have a plain, old, paper-based notebook which last hours, if not months, on no batteries.
If Acer, or whoever else, can achive that, now we are getting somewhere.
Hmm, there's Inkwell for OS 10.2 and the iBook and TiBook are over-due for an upgrade.
Will Apple do it too? Most importantly, will they do it better?
_nfotxn
Considering how much _less_ goes into a tablet versus a laptop, it makes you wonder why the concept has taken so long to catch on as it has... I love mine, for example. Got a nice little Ricoh G1200-S tablet for $100 on ebay. Runs 98, Linux, fun to hack with...makes a great wardriving dash-mount console.. lots fun stuff.
The only problem with tablets is, you walk around with a constant fear of scratching the display. There needs to be some sort of form-factor for tablet casings...some sort of disposable laminant to encase your tablet in.
Cheers,
Bowie J. Poag
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).
well they don't sound very hardcore to me. Unless the person holding the tablet pc was natalie portman or something...
Seriously isn't a tablet pc just a very flat pc with some fancy software ?
If anything Im impressed by the hardware makes, getting all that stuff into that small a box.
I don't care about any of Microsofts products anyway, they are way to expensive, an forget about modifying features you don't like. What's fun about cool software if it only works with with Windows (Which is not cool software).
Oh btw. Could you just picture a cluster of tablets ?
I didn't say it was your fault. I said I was going to blame it on you.
After 5 years, I still use a Newton (current is 2100). Like reading
Cake or Death? Cake Please!
I was surprised that Corel's Grafigo Tablet grahics /colaboration application was not mentioned. It has already been previewed last Sept at Seybold and got good reviews here. Corel started development early with Microsoft and designed it from scratch for the Tablet PC. From all accounts it is one of the best apps.
Today's vices may be tomorrow's virtues.
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.
...is: 1) have some sort of word recognition (dictionary) after the character recognition - this will probably cut down on a lot of unrecognized stuff. 2) Have the thing with a small drive but with a wireless connection to access the regular PC. This way it could be smaller (less spindles) and probably less power-consuming. I've even seen a Sony AirBoard which is basically a tablet screen that connects to an AirBoard PC, and sends video through it (think VCR/DVD), but this seemed to weired to me.
"Well, my handwriting recognition software works JUST FINE with my handwriting. Maybe you shouldn't write like a lamer! Don't tell ME what to do. Write it yourself!"
Any OSS coder that demands a computer user write their own code is contributing precisely NOTHING to the community.
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.
Some here moan about "This is nothing new!", "[insert company here] did this in [insert random year here]"!!
If that's so true, why can't I go to a store and buy a product with the specs of the TabletPC or better?
The TabletPC is the first incarnation of a kind of product some people will find useful. Let them. The moment you all start to cry out loud that it's nothing new, it will suck or similar crap, think about this: "as soon as a competitor comes up with a more useful product running Linux, you have all right to cry fool. Until then, shut up, learn and listen."
The vectorization of the handwriting, f.e. the copy/paste functionality of your handwritten text into an email, it's cool stuff. As software-developers, you have to admit: it's software that has a serie of interesting specs.
Why oh why is it then so damn hard to admit MS made something cool? Because it doesn't run Linux? So? "Use the tool that fits the job.(tm)".
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
...if dev had continued *sigh*
Cake or Death? Cake Please!
Remember the Newton? You'd try writing "Having a party" on one of those things and it would produce "Hating a potty" or some such. There was a Simpsons joke about that kind of thing. In fact, the only word I could get Newton to consistently recognize was, in fact, "Newton". So writing "Newton sucks" would produce 1001 fun incorrect interpretations: "Newton stocks", "Newton sports", "Newton critics" and so on.
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
big wup...
*"You will be able to select it and parse the words and know what words are."
*"There will never be a time where if you cannot recognize your own writing on the page that the recognizer will be that intelligent."
+So if I write something down you'll be able to tell me what I wrote.
+But, if I write something and I don't know what I wrote, you won't be able to tell me what I wrote.
=So, basically, you can tell me what I already know!!
and XRnR... make X capable of "recognizing" vectors scratched at any angle on *any screen* the server can communicate with.
....
SVG is the killer secret computing technology. 10 years in the making in W3C labs, perfected by Gnome, built in to Mozilla and waiting to be bundled into X and
BLOW EVERYTHING OUT OF THE WATER!
# gcc communist_manifesto.txt
# diff a.out
#
So what you're saying is that if you compile the communist manifesto you get out a sendmail binary?
No, I think he's (either) suggesting that you compare the result of compiling the file communist_manifesto.txt with the sendmail binary (but not in any way predicting the results) or (under the more likely assumption that the file does not contain a syntactically valid program) pointing out to us 1) that gcc deletes any preexisting a.out if it is given an invalid source file and 2) you can confirm this by trying to diff it with something, since diff will complain that the file doesn't exist.
He's correct, but I can't help but think that there are easier ways of accomplishing the same thing.
-- MarkusQ
P.S. Ah! I see! It's a clever way of removing a.out if and only if the file communist_manifesto.txt exists and does not contain a syntactically valid program. I'm not sure why you would want to do this, but it is a rather clever hack if you need it.
"I really want to make sure that the Tablet PC will be easy to use. You never have to think about how to sit on a chair. We should have a computer device that people never have to think about how to use, they just pick it up and use it in a very natural way." - Wang
"...once you would compute with a handheld 'Dynabook'... millions of potential users meant that the user interface would have to become a learning environment; and needs for large scope, reduction in complexity, and end-user literacy would require that data and control structures be done away with..." - Alan Kay
I am a huge fan of Alan Kay! And, the more you learn about computing today, the more amazed you will be at how right he was 30 some years ago. Wang, and a lot of the computer industry with hum, is finally realizing what Kay knew back then.
Is somehow less than a winshit xp one?
/. post for it, I have a "Switch" article at http://flame.dnsart.com/
I hate to bring uptimes into this, but my tablet pc has more uptime than my servers thanks to a recent blackout. Without "sleeping" I doubt that one of these things could manage better uptime than a month. What good would one be if it crashes in the middle of a Quake 3 match?
If only Apple would release a tablet computer. My iBook is perfectly compatible with Linux (modem aside) and hasn't crashed in any of its three operating systems (OS 9, OS X, and Debian Woody). Power management is entirely software-controlled and easily disabled in Linux if I want to use my $1100 laptop as a fancy iPod.
But don't take my
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
Other than it being rather like a magna-doodle, as a user, why would i want an electromagnetic stylus versus a normal touch screen? (other than a reason to do more cleaning because you can't use the device until you find that stylus)
The touch screen means you can use anything, stylus, stick, finger, pen, etc to type, write or press buttons on the systems screen.
A special electromagnetic stylus means you need to use the stylus, what good is that? If I'm just browsing the web, or queuing some music to play in my futuristic wireless home, its much easier to just pick it up and press thse on-screen buttons with a finger than screw about with a stylus.
When i use my iPAQ I only use the stylus to type, reading email, web, ebooks, and most othr uses I just use a fingertip - for handwriting a fingernail gives enough pressure and precision.
Given a normal touch screen I'd love to have a few of these, but I'll pass on those glorified magn-doodles.
jeez, dood. what's the rush? if microsoft can do something tomorrow, what's wrong with the linux/free software crowd finishing their version of it the day after tomorrow?
the war will not be won tomorrow. once you understand that, everything becomes crystal clear.
e.g. in 5 years, what kind of value proposition will micro$oft be able to offer that will entice you to pay them a $200 premium on a $100 computer, or similar system?
This is just another MS Ad place by one of the fake Linux supporters. I sometimes wonder if I'm Slahdot or ZDnet, I almost can't tell the difference anymore.
Slashdot is the voice of the open source community like ZDnet is the mother of Linux.
Collaboration is one of the next big technological waves. We've toyed with collaboration for years with things like Lotus Notes, handheld's, cellphones, etc, but the TabletPC will offer true collaboration.
The models I see working most effectively are sales staffs and then the teacher/student/parent model.
And another thing all of the anti-MS people haven't thought of....add wireless technology to these things and any 5 people within range become a network.
This adds to your ability to chat, share files, and game together.
You guys need to think beyond writing your name 100 times and playing tic-tac-toe.
Jarb
Even from this page we learn amazingly little about this device. We see that the tablet runs Windows XP with certain enhancements. However, the page also tells us that [b]ecause of the special hardware features of a Tablet PC, the operating system cannot be purchased separately for installation on any PC. Why can't we buy the OS. Is it that MS sees the wisdom of Apple's business model of selling sexy mostly closed boxes. Is MS upset that some evil people no longer pay a tribute on every processor, and is introducing this new model to make sure that major vendors can no longer sell naked PCs. More importantly, will we be able to purchase a major upgrade for XP on the tablet PC or will we need buy a new Tablet PC.
As far as I can tell, this is just a large screen portable with some handwriting recognition hacked on top of XP. They say it will run all XP programs, but they also say that it requires as special development kit. One wonders if applications will in fact run on the device, or will we need to wait a year for developers to write application that will take advantage of this "powerful platform."
In any case, a content free post for a content free press release.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
you might have noticed some MS.NET adverts at the top of your /. articles lately. Those ads weren't mistakenly placed there...
Taco's not "falling" for anything. This is just another advertisement. Obviously. ANybody who's seen the Amazing Tablet PC can tell you the same. Hype. Good character recognition, but not much better than the average iPAQ with Calligrapher - except that it'll recognize when you write at a funny angle too. WOW. It's an oversized PDA that runs like my old PII-266 cranking along under Win2K Advanced Server.
I wonder about the future of these things. When I was in high school only girls took typing (to prepare them to be secretaries.) My typing is horrendous. I wish I had taken typing.
Today, keyboarding is taught in jr. high to every student. Twelve year olds type better than me.
I would love a tablet pc with good handwriting recognition, but in ten years will that be the same? I wonder if the tablet pc came about because some exec is from a past generation and lacks good typing skills. If so, what will happen when the next generation comes along and can type well (or type better with just their thumbs) and has less of a need for a tablet.
They only cheered so MS would feel comfortable about releasing it and they could get their hands on it and promptly install Linux on it.
You always here such hype about "more natural imput", but that is a joke, keyboard's are so much more efficient than either handwriting or voice! Convinience factor is slightly different, and sure this helps there, it isnt so easy to type (or hand-write for that matter) while walking down the hallway..
But I recently read a study on the effectivness of voice imput, the fact is that speach and writing use completly different parts of the brain, so much so that writing (typing / etc) uses so much less brain power that it free's you completly to think! So not only is voice imput slower it is vastly more inefficient as it limits your thinking!
...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
OK . Microsoft gets points for putting handwriting recognition into a small device? No, we had the Newton and many other handwriting recognition devices before this. So is the fact that the 0S has suddenly integrated the handwriting recognition a big deal? They sure make it SOUND good, but do we really care? Now the clincher. I am writing this entirely on a tablet . But not a Tablet PC. No, I'm using my Wacom via Mac OS X Jaguar;s "Ink" technology. It's not perfect, but its pretty damn close. Handwriting recognition really isn't that big of a deal. [resumes normal typing] OK, my allowed edits were to correct extra spaces and to fix ONE letter per word maximum. And you know what? Once I turned the "spacing" sensitivity down, it stopped putting in extra spaces, PLUS I only had to change six letters in the entire portion above. It works. The problem is, it's SO much faster to type. So before you start making a big deal over the fact that Windows has handwriting recognition, realize that not only does the Mac OS have it already, (as usual) but that Apple doesn't even bother making a big deal of it, even though their handwriting recognition is GOOD, because guess what? It's NOT A BIG DEAL. Does anyone really think that I can write faster than my 96 wpm average? I think not. But you CAN do this already if you want to. The fact that Microsoft bundles their proprietary OS with a bunch of extra recognition stuff isn't a revolutionary concept. The fact that it works--and relatively well, too--isn't even a revolutionary concept. Jaguar's Ink tech, brought from the Newton era, still does its job. The fact that Microsoft can match it seven years later is really not worth making a fuss over. So I ask again-- what advantage, besides the obvious larger screen, does this have over my carrying around a Visor Prism with a keyboard? And don't tell me that the keyboard is hard to set up-- it takes three seconds max. Why would anyone want a Tablet PC? Really?
FranklinCovey will be carrying these around christmas(just in time eh?) or so i've been told. they are also the first developers, excepting M$, to program specifically for this platform. price should be around $2k, and a docking unit will be available for keyboard and mouse input.
If good things come to those who wait...why work now? Procrastinate!
I wish to point out that Microsoft did not invent the tablet PC. Ten years ago I was priviledged to work with the people at Go Corporation, who created the PenPoint operating system for tablet PCs. I had hands-on exposure to a working 386-based tablet PC and was excited about them coming to market. Go was well along with a solid operating system. Then Microsoft stepped in, conned details of Go's technology, and announced their Windows for Pens. Microsoft succeeded in killing off Go, and then immediately buried Windows for Pens. We could have had tablets 10 years ago except for Microsoft. Nonetheless, tablets are awesome and will drive another wave of innovation. I remember editing text by touching a paragraph and sliding it with my finger to where it should go. And the drawing tools in one application I saw were hot. There was 'What you DO is what you GET' drawing, no mouse piloting or standalone stylus position errors.
Nobody is going to use this. Calligrapher is not as good as you guys think. It takes people a long time to understand how to write with these things.
:-)
I still own a Newton 2000, and it has everything the article on Microsoft Research mentions. It actually looks suspiciously like they have taken the Newton 2000, and copied its features over into Win32 world.
Today, I use an iPaq PDA, even though I have the Newton 2000, and even tough I think the NewtonOS beats WindowsCE by far. Why? iPaq is simply smaller. I can stick it in my pocket, and it won't look too weird!
I can't imagine anyone using the tablet PC's as they are intended to be used. It's just too big to be a PDA, too small to be a desktop computer, it's like a new category. Let's not forget the form factor which will add to the cost.
I also personally think that no amount of marketing and brainwashing will actually make this product a worldwide hit. Some ideas look great on the surface but never withstand the test of time.
What we REALLY need is handwriting recognition on Linux, and a combination of Windows Manager + Set of Applications that give users the NewtonOS experience! Combined with a fast processor, very high resolution color screens (look at the recent Sony Palm devices for an example), and a tiny form factor, this is the winning product of tommorow, and guess what, all based on open source!
Just my two cents
Skaag
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain... time... to... die...
"Well, good luck finding a judge that doesn't run a bestiality site."
I saw one of these a few months ago, along with a prototype of their phone os. It was cool shit. I was impressed. I nearly faltered in my flaming passionate anti-MS hatred (the one with the big rusty acid dripping spikes sticking out of it). It was like the time i set my Win2k laptop down next to an IRDA-enabled LaserJet, and i could just print to it. Both times, I was impressed with what MS had done. But on both those occasions, the same thing occured to me which brought me back to my normal state: if it weren't for microsoft, i could probably have done this years ago. I'm pretty sure one of my dad's friends had a tablet on his desktop back in the early 80s. I was like 6 at the time so it's a but fuzzy, but tablet technology has been under development for most of my lifetime. And IR data? My parent's replaced the old B&W tv with no VHF knob around the time of the 1984 olympics, and the new tv came with and IR remote. Granted, your standard TV remote doesn't do hundreds of Kbits/sec, but the ideas and the basic technology were there. We needn't have waited for microsoft to decide they were good and ready to support _______. If they didn't take such rigorous steps to destroy competition in the computer sector, I think we'd be years ahead of where we are now. Microsoft didn't start the computer revolution, they just bullied their way into an illegal monopoly over it. Sure, WinXP TabletPC edition is cool. But for all the money we've given them, we should expect more than this.
Ok, done now. (And for the record, vague references to "we" are basically intedned to include the whole world, because the advancement of computer technology affects or will affect most of Earth's population in the near future. The idea of naming it the "Information Age" is that IT is at least as important to human history as stone, bronze, industry, and nuclear technology. )
While I think it is mostly a PHB toy, it might spark the tech industry a bit, ending this really annoying slump.
Table-ized A.I.
I've got an Acer prototype Tablet PC and I'm here to tell you it's way cool. Those Linux guys should be applauding. Those who say Microsoft never innovates will have to give it up for them this time. The Tablet PC is a major step forward in laptop technology. I'm not quite prepared to give up the keyboard. But if you use the model that's basically a convertible laptop/tablet device, you get the best of both worlds. If I were Apple, I'd be trying to copy this--quick. It's exactly the sort of thing Apple should have done first.
Hiawatha Bray
Tech Reporter
Boston Globe
will people buy it?
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
Gary Trudeau had never used a Newton before doing the comic which he intended to make fun of PDAs in general rather than specifically the Newton. Trudeau was so favorably impressed with the Newton MP120 once he got a chance to use one that he drew this panel to be used as an easter egg in the Newton 2.0 ROMs.
The 2.0 Newton had awesome technology, but it was ahead of its time - nobody really knew what a PDA was for at the time. The MessagePad 2000 was great but cost over $1000 and was the size and weight of a small brick.
Most engineering is incremental development rather than a paradigm shift.
This is true. Microsoft has done some excellent work incrementally improving the Aha! InkWriter technology they bought a decade ago and moving some of its features into the OS. And I hope they keep at it, because there's a lot of improvement still to be made.
Here's a brief review of Bill's talk at Comdex 2000 the last time he made a big deal of Tablet PCs.
I play Nerd-Folk!
Inkwell recognizes your handwriting. Just write on a graphics tablet, and Jaguar turns it into typed text at the cursor in any application. Inkwell just works with all your existing applications. No upgrades, no application changes are necessary.
Inkwell lets you write wherever you want to on the screen, and the recognized text just flows to the current insertion point, as if you'd typed it on a keyboard. So when you're working with a graphics tablet, there's no need to put down the pen and return to the keyboard just to enter a title, caption or filename. You can also write command-key shortcuts with the pen -- it's easy to open and close windows, and otherwise control your applications, without lifting your pen from the tablet.
Built on Apple's Recognition Engine --Inkwell's handwriting recognition is the best in the industry. Beyond just words and numbers, you can also use Inkwell to write commands. Inkwell provides a set of easy to learn and remember gestures that are convenient for carrying out common functions, such as cut, copy, paste and select-all, with a single stroke of the pen.
While in handwriting mode, you can still drag windows and use scrollbars and other controls immediately. The pen knows to behave like a mouse instantly in these special places. For other places, you can just press and hold the pen still briefly to use it like a mouse, anywhere.
You use Ink on a floating window to automatically insert text at the cursor. This window can mimic standard modifier keys, so you can write command-key shortcuts, bring up contextual menus, and so on, without having to return to the keyboard. You can shrink the window to a single button, which saves screen real estate while letting you toggle the pen between the pure mousing behavior used for drawing and painting and its handwriting behavior.
Conversely, you can expand the floating window to InkPad, a handy utility application. The InkPad app offers additional features for writing and editing, such as alternate word lists and targeted gestures. InkPad also lets you draw quick sketches and paste them in most other applications. So you can draw a quick map to the party, or communicate that new design you've got in mind, and send it out with your email, effortlessly.
Preferences allow you to add uncommon words to your own personal word list, for maximum recognition accuracy. And if your writing style is a little bit different--maybe you write your words closer together or letters farther apart than the average--you can fine-tune the recognition to suit your style.
This works in *any* macosx application -even terminal.
Probably the really useful aspects of a tablet PC are being enabled by other companies. The people over at Parascript are making really huge strides in handwriting recognition.
The problem with all of these is that they're dictionary based. We got one of the ViewSonic tablets in here and I fired up IE and tried to do "http://slashdot.org" through the handwriting recognition. Needless to say it was a horrible failure.
Also, try inputing any passwords into the system? You either have to tap away at the soft keyboard or you're completely SOL.
Finally, how do you press 'Ctrl+Alt+Del' on a PC that has no keyboard? In the case of the ViewSonic tablet you couldn't even log in because the handwriting and keyboard support were in the OS and didn't start until the desktop was there.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
I bought a CrossPad back when they first came out. They struck me as the best interim solution until you got true portability and high resolution capture capabilities.
The thing used an RF-based pen and a table behind a pad of paper. You could store up to 50 pages of handwriting in the thing before having to upload it to a PC. (You could page forward and back if you wanted to add additional notes.) The only problem was that it didn't have an erase feature on it.
On the PC side you had IBM's Ink Manager software that handled capture, storing, and even recognition of the handwriting. To top it all off the tablet part will run for weeks on a couple of AA's.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
I hate to say it, but the AC is right :-/
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
I just met some Mircosoft people who were talking about this thing. They said the hardware was just made by the usual people (HP, Acer, ...) and only the software is MS. I'm sure linux and the gnu tools can be easily ported to the thing, since it seems to be IBM compatible. I wouldn't call this a "Microsoft product", as I don't call any `normal' PC a "Microsoft product".
"One basic notion underlying Usenet is that it is a cooperative."
Having been on USENET for going on ten years, I disagree with this.
The basic notion underlying USENET is the flame.
-- Chuq Von Rospach
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