Slashdot Mirror
Analyzing the Microsoft Tablet PC
An anonymous reader writes "ZDNet UK has an amusing - but accurate in my view - review of the Microsoft Tablet PC. It may not be the first, but it is the most incisive because of the way it dissects the many fundamental flaws in Microsoft's latest creation."
I've seen lots of posts complaining that the Slashdot editors aren't paying attention to what they post, and for the most part I just laugh and move on. But here's an egregious example - the web page referenced is indeed a review of the ViewSonic V150 AirPanel, but a Microsoft Tablet PC it is not. Rather, this is a "Mira" remote display device that requires a separate Windows XP system that actually runs the programs.
The anonymous contributor can perhaps be forgiven for making the error, but the editors should know better. Perhaps the editors need to first count to ten (or a hundred) the next time they want to post a "Microsoft is lame" article?
After reading the review, this thing sounds like a nightmare.
I don't get it, it costs more then a basic laptop, its much more difficult to setup, it has a very slow processor compare to a lappy, and it doesnt do nearly as much as a laptop.
This reminds me of those portable personal DVD players. They cost about $1000 for a 7" screen and all it does is play DVDs, for the same price you could buy a notebook computer with a 14" screen that plays DVDs and does a whole lot more.
This isnt some easy to use Internet Appliance like the i-opener, it is not priced like one, so just who is this targeted towards?
I would love a tablet PC, I hope they get better and better and cheaper. This appears to be pretty worthless though.
Has a processor, an OS, and memory, but needs a host-pc to run?
It requests that you change your OS to a particular version?
No, it's not really a TabletPC, but it's still something I'd never subject myself to.
Nikkos
I think this review is VERY biased. For one, its not even a Tablet PC as defined by Microsoft. A tablet PC is a fully functional computer, period. In fact, I just got a Toshiba Portege Tablet PC and use it frequently in tablet mode (it converts to laptop mode for all the wienies that cry about using a pen). Its handwriting recognition is second to none, able to read cursive and messy hand writing. Voice recognition is really good as well, though I am sure there are better products available.
It has builtin WiFi and Bluetooth, 1.4 Gb P3, %12 Mb RAM, and a 40 Gb hard drive. Its a computer and very well adapted to the medical and sales professions.
In all, my experience has been very good with tablet pcs and I wonder when the open source community is going to think about developing such a product. If the open source community does not begin innovating instead of playing catchup to microsoft, it will never succeed. Here is something (the tablet pc) completely new that everyone I show asks "where do I sign to get one"? All of the features are there but the price is still a bit steep. But you have to recoop R+D.
In my opinion these panel things are gay. Tablet PCs rock. Where are the voice recognition and handwriting recognition in the open source community? Are there any efforts? Are we going to let microsoft reinvent the pc while we sit back and simply say... ah... they'll pull it in a year. BTW, they spent millions in R+D and they are not going to simply kill it. They may thorw millions into marketing though which they haven't yet.
Do your homework before advocating decisions for the open source community.
Reading the lengths to which you must go to get a remote display on your Windows machine amazes me.
Give me the same basic hardware, but rip WinCE out and put a lightweight X server into it, and I could remote the display on my workstation without any software changes on it at all (except perhaps for adding a line to my X0.hosts file).
AND if the table spoke SSH, I wouldn't even have to do that.
AND the fact that I could also redirect the displays of my SGI, my other server, my service monitor, and anything else that spoke X Windows system protocol.
For all you naysayers who poop-poo the need for network transparency in your GUI, I say:
BEHOLD
www.eFax.com are spammers
I can always count on slashdot for the fairest and most accurate reviews of Microsoft products!
This is a remote desktop for home users, not an Ellison-like "Network Computer" for the business enviornment. Sadly, the reviewer reviewed it as if that were what it was trying to be.
You were block printing single words and short phrases to test the recognizer, weren't you? Seriously, write in cursive, and write alot. Block Printing is hard for the recognizer to work with, because it's a ton of tiny little strokes. Cursive on the other hand is a hell of a lot easier for the recognizer to work with, not to mention the fact that the recognizer combines spell check/grammar check into it's routine. Thus if you're writing long sentences that makes sense, rather than short little block printed words, the accuracy goes WAY up.
In their haste to bash Microsoft, both the anonymous submitter and the slashdot editor failed to notice that the article doesn't even review a tablet pc. This is what slashdot has come to...
- A real programmer uses $ cat > a.out
I'd have a lot more respect for the editors if they'd just come out and admit their mistakes (dupes, inaccuracies).
There's a Mercedes gap too. I want one and can't afford one, but it's not government's job to do anything about it.
Not only did he label it a review of the Tablet PC, but he certainly must have read it closely because he declared it the "most incisive" review so far.
Of course, since it's not even a review of the Tablet PC at all, incisiveness must simply be a synonym for "critical of MS", as in "Slashdot posts are almost uniformly incisive."
"Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded."