New Tablet PCs With A Linux Option

Oliver Wendell Jones writes "InfoWorld is running an article about a new kind of inexpensive (starting under $800) tablet PC that runs your choice of Windows 2000, Windows XP or the Lindows distro of Linux. The PC is called the DocuNote and features an 8.4" touch screen with digital camera and microphone. The PCs are being created by a company called StepUp, which is formed of a lot of people from the old eMachines organization. DocuNotes are scheduled to start shipping in mid-December."

Comments

StepUp Computing - website

[levendis]

Here's the site of the company that's making this thing:

http://www.stepupcomputing.com/

Wonder if they'll sell an OS-less version, so we don't have to pay the Windows tax?

Company website with pictures...

[Thag]

Is at http://www.docunote.com/.

It looks pretty nice, even has a d-pad/mouse, but alas no thumbboard.

Jon Acheson

that's not a big problem

[g4dget]

I don't see why not. There is already handwriting recognition for Linux handhelds (see handhelds.org). Squeak is an open source Smalltalk environment that runs on Linux and is intended to be usable with pen input. The most high-performance handwriting input engines are the ones that define a special alphabet, and those are also easier to implement than unconstrained handwriting. And on-screen tappable keyboards are actually pretty efficient as well. Even if you try to implement mostly unconstrained handwriting recognition, in practice, handwriting recognition is generally simpler than speech recognition, and there are open source speech recognizers (you can even adapt a speech recognizer to handwriting recognition--a lot of the software is very similar). And X11 already has support for different kinds of input methods, so the software architecture is in place as well.

And many functions of pen computers don't require handwriting recognition at all (ink notes, browsing, e-books, etc.)--just getting rid of that bulky keyboard alone when it's not needed would be worth the pen computer.

Re:StepUp company URL?

[cmeans]

Here they are: DocuNote.

not a big deal

[g4dget]

The Tablet PC is cool because of all the software that handles inputing with an stylus and integrating that with the rest of applications.

There is plenty of Linux software designed to run with pen input--after all, Linux has been used on handhelds for a number of years.

Most mouse based applications work naturally with a pen anyway. Web browsing, e-book reading, marking up text, drawing, and things like that work like a charm with standard Linux applications on a Linux-based tablet. And even with no handwriting recognition, an on-screen keyboard makes entering text and data quite easy and quick and, again, requires no application changes (given the modular X11 architecture). And fully integrated handwriting and gesture recognition also already exists for X11.

Maybe it was a lot of work to integrate pen input into Windows, but Linux and X11 are modular and mature enough that this is not an issue.

Re:w/o handwriting recognition

[casio282]

Where did you get the idea that there isn't handwriting recognition? From the product description:

DocuNote integrates true handwriting recognition and a touch screen interface for entering data using a stylus pen on an 8.4 inch TFT color LCD display.

Linux pen software

[WillAdams]

Here're a couple of links which may help with this sort of thing:

- http://www.linuxslate.org
(drivers &c. for Fujitsu and other pen slates, also XScribble (graffiti-like handwriting recogntion)

Various Berkeley Java based Pen / gestural UI things (w/ source):
starting at:
http://guir.cs.berkeley.edu/projects/

NotePals - http://guir.cs.berkeley.edu/projects/notepals/
(c ollaboration w/ PDAs)

Quill and GDT - http://guir.cs.berkeley.edu/projects/quill/
(gest ural UI design)

SATIN - http://guir.cs.berkeley.edu/projects/satin/
(sket ch and ink-based toolkit)

DENIM and SILK - http://guir.cs.berkeley.edu/projects/denim/
(info rmal tools for GUI and web design)

Someone else already mentioned Squeak, a SmallTalk implementation suitable for use w/ pens www.squeak.org, as well as www.handhelds.org, (which should be obvious)

www.mira2go.com had Linux pen systems pretty recently (and was even advertising here on Slashdot).

The critical issue to my mind is getting some sort of natural ink handling w/ nicely integrated gesture support as well as document annotation.

William

Re:Touch screen

[Lechter]

On my linux tablet I use the touchscreen normally as you would a mouse. Works just fine for surfing, playing mp3's, etc.

For many things xstroke suits my needs quite well. (I've had a Palm for years so I'm used to grafiti. When I have to have a keyboard I pull up xvkbd and if I really need to type I plugin in one of those "industructable" keyboards that I keep in my desk or drop into my satchel.

So yeah, linux tablets work well, and having the power to download OSS apps, and or develop my own tools makes them excellent tools for the "power" user.

..next step get kdepim on it to sync with my desktop and my Palm...infomation everywhere, yeah team!

Good foundation with Inkwell

[burgburgburg]

Jaguar (OS X 10.2) has Inkwell handwriting technology built in (for tablets et. al.). So they have a good foundation.

Re:Touch screen

[commodoresloat]

Use final scratch!