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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."
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)
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.
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.
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....
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'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
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
In other news:
Microsoft (MSIE) has just released a beta version of there upcoming Human Resource Management tool, called MS Brainwash 2003. It's said to give offices serious productivity spurs and makes office meetings a breeze. The product is expeced to release around sping 2003.
Moderation: +4. Modded 70% Funny and 30% Overrated. 100% Saturated.
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?)
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!!
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!
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.
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.
Then add lots of pointy haired bosses with a similar attitude.
That said, I still don't think they will be successful long-term. Because it's Microsoft and it's "revolutionary", no matter how old the idea really is, so I see many morons buying it in the next months.
But! there is not much use for it. There are not really many situations in which a tablet PC is better than a PDA or a Laptop. That's why the great "revolutionary" tablet-PC has been converted into a tablet/laptop hybrid. Tablet-PCs have lots of problems. They are heavy, they are fragile, the touch-screen gets dirty fast, and the center of gravity is in the screen, not the lower unit which will make it fall over easily in laptop-mode. I'd guess that most buyers will realize that they keep their laptop-part attached all the time anyway and will buy a slimmer, lighter, faster and cheaper laptop - or a PDA - in the next upgrade cycle.
So I expect a very short tablet-PC craze which will die down soon.
...is you having to excuse yourself for a quick trip to the photocopier every ten words or so.
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
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
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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!
The pictures I saw made it look like it was a laptop that you could fold so that the keyboard wasn't showing (ie. you could use it as a laptop most of the time, but you could also use it in tablet form when convenient). The key is making the whole thing light enough that carrying around the keyboard when you're using it as a tablet isn't a pain.
...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.
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PGP Key ID 0xCB8FF658
Maybe someone can make a hybrid version.