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Bricklin on Tablet PCs
t482 writes "Dan Bricklin gives his first impressions of the Tablet PC.
'The most important thing to know about the Tablet PC, as far as I'm concerned so far, is that Microsoft did a great job...of naming it.' and then goes on to give a fascinating history of pen computing."
The problem with tablet PCs right now is the battery life. The whole advantage of a tablet PC is it lets you use it on the go, but if you have to plug in every two hours to recharge the batteries, that defeats the purpose.
I think there are some applications for tablet PCs now, hospitals, etc., but in order for them to reach mainstream-acceptance, they need to tackle the power/battery issue."Where exactly is the market demand for these?"
Me^3.
- I'm an artist. I use a tablet to draw with right now. The ability to draw right on the screen would totally rock. Right now Wacom sells LCD tablets that plug into your VGA port, but they're in the $3,500 range.
- I attend lots of meetings and drag a laptop around with me. I'd prefer a TabletPC so I can jot sketches along with notes. Right now I use paper and a scanner to do this, I'd like to skip the paper step.
- I wouldn't mind having a Tablet PC around the house. The tablet form factor is much easier to tote around than the 'laptop-that-doesn't-really-sit-well-on-your-lap' approach.
I don't know if I represent a 'whole big market' or not, but I can tell you that office-life would be easier with them. I'm certain these will start appearing in my office within the next 12 months.
Hospitals, medical offices.
Any records that docs might need instead of putting the chart on the door, each doc gets his own and you can send it his patient list, their chart, all the details, ASAP. No need for records to send up the chart. No need for stationary PC.
A Doc could have all his info point and click.
Puto
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
They said one of the design goals was that it should be able to do everything that a normal pen-and-pad method can do. That includes the use-with-one-hand from above, but also hot-plugging (so you can always take it out of the docking station and run away...). Some of them can be used as a laptop as well, simply by turning the display around.
They were pretty nice, and remindet me of the Pads they use in startreck. There are, however, still some useability-problems. The resolution of the EM-Sampler that checks for the pen is not very good at the edges, resulting in a "shaking" mouse cursor when holding the pen still. Another one is the right mouse button - the ones I held in my hands thought you want to press the right button if you didn't move the pen for some time. This resulted in context-menus that popped up when writing slow. Anotherone is the problem of your hand that overlapps some part of the screen when using the pen. Its annoying if menues keep opening right under your hand, so you have to move it away again to see whats on the screen.
The text recognition was nice, but they mentioned a error-rate of 10-15%, so it's not really very useful, especially when writing fast. My opinion is that it's nice, but still needs some time to get "mature" and really useable.
>>What student would buy this instead of a PowerBook G4?
Maybe because it's a tablet PC. I'm not sure about you, but I couldn't type notes. I need to write them. Which means that the G4's out.
>>the tablet PC is $2,000 more than anybody would ever pay for it.
Of course, I could have said the same thing about ENIAC: it was $450,000 more than anyone would pay. And I'd be wrong. Because there were people (the gov't) who built it. There are people who will buy the tablet PC because there's nothing else like it on the market, at least that I'm aware of. And the people who can afford it will spur development of more models that won't be expensive.
If I have five notebooks full of notes, can I pull up an application that will search through them in a minute or two to find a particular fact that you want?
Why the hell couldn't you type notes? Even a very crappy touch typist (like 50-60 WPM) can type much faster than you can write or print. Typing for an hour is also alot easier on your hand than writing with a pen for an hour.
The thing about prices is that they change.
The primary market for these things seems to be for people who need to be able to record scribbles in a lecture or meeting. This is probably not a concept that needs huge amounts of computing power. People's buying decision will probably me made not on computing power, but mainly on price.
The main consequence of this is that the prices of the most popular models will go down with competition, not up with increased specs.
I agree it's not the sort of thing one would choose as a main machine, but as a second device for specific tasks, and that £2000 may be a bit much for a machine for this role, but the price they'll be in two years time probably won't be.