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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."
They had a tablet for demonstration at the MS student tour across Canada. I was at one of the demonstrations where they showed an "informational video of a survey conducted by students at MIT, not an ad," as the presenter tried to claim as we chuckled at the attempted brainwashing.
Despite MS evil intentions to force yet another PDA device into our lives, these looked actually useful, because of the advanced handwriting recongnition software. You can literally handwrite your notes, and either save them as plain text, small picture files, or move them to another PC. You can even do a text search through handwritten files. The angle you write at doesn't always stop the words from being found even. Truely an innovation in PDAs.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Am I being Offtopic for discussing TabletPC, but that was what the headline said....?
anyway - having seen Tablet PC, it is the most half-assed bit of design I've seen in ages. One thing struck me right off. Considering the tablet concept is intended to be used in portrait mode, why do precisely zero of the UI elements reflect this? The task menu is a tiny strip along the bottom of the screen and it's proposterously hard to hit with the stylus.
of course, the handwriting recognition is abysmal, but that goes without saying.....
'This writing business. Pencils and what-not. Over-rated if you ask me. Silly stuff. Nothing in it' - Eeyore
In the interest of full disclosure, this review is about neither a Tablet, nor a Wireless Display. The product reviewed is actually a bastardized combo of the two.
It's really more of a Pocket PC with a larger-than-normal screen that can access Terminal Services on your desktop (ala XP Pro).
A true wireless display would work with any OS and would be a far cooler appliance - IMHO.
"Cuando tiene usar algo de Microsoft, todo sabe muy mal."
I'm a little surprised this clever bit of satire was modded as troll. It's a reflection of the anti-MS crap that flies around here. What's clever about it is when you translate this into literal english, it sounds like "When he uses something of Microsoft, everybody knows it's very bad." That's what Cmndr Taco sounded like in this flamebait article.
True, but there is a big difference. RDP/Citrix are far less bandwidth intensive, more responsive, and just generally better. If remote X (or VNC) was as smooth as Citrix, it would get MUCH more use.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Well I am using VNC now and I love it. Yes its slow over the internet but at home its responsive. Besides, it was free! and its running over ssh with little effort.
I have used citrix at work and if its the same thing this was the most horribly slow thing I have ever used. The whole workplace blasted this as totally unprofessional. Maybe it was a bad implementation.
im not familiar with citrix on linux.
just a quick reply to part of this..
The "Smart Display" is intended to be a "take for a walk and use seperately" MONITOR for an existing computer. So you finish up your work, take the monitor over to the couch and surf the net while you watch TV.
The "Tablet PC" is a complete computer, basically a laptop that you can write on the screen. Unfortunately the specs on current Tablet PCs are appalling, but I don't think microsoft's spec actually says "please use 4 year old hardware" so I'll blame the vendors themselves there.
The two technologies look similar on the surface, but are not remotely comparable.
Personally I like the smart display concept for use as a second monitor. I'm a graphic designer and programmer, so it's not even close to good enough for a primary monitor, but still, kinda cool.
And as for the "why would you want a windows PC" this is a dumb question. Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Homesite, Debabelizer, Flash, and yes, games. Don't bother saying that those programs are available for Apple, because I don't care. And the first person that mentions the words "The Gimp" or "open source alternatives" gets a personal visit. Oh, and not all games are on PS2 or Gamecube. Not even many. Once again, you're comparing things that are not even remotely similar.
As for reviews of Tablet PCs, the overall concept is covered well on http://www.winsupersite.com. My personal impression is "Nice concept. Well implimented. Crappy hardware so far." I haven't found any specific reviews, just going by manufacturers specs.
Finally, linux tablet. I see no reason it's not doable. The tricky bit would be actually reading the tablet (drawing) data. I know jack about that sort of thing. I couldn't see it happening, for much the same reason I don't have a Tablet PC myself. There's just no real need.
Matt
Have never used VNC so I can't comment on the comparisons. I do use and maintain a Citrix server and it is wonderful. It enabled us to have all our remote sites work at better than LAN speeds. A 56k modem at a high connection rate is very usable, ISDN or DSL is sheer beauty.
Yeah...i'm offtopic...whatcha gonna do about it?
Everybody dies frustrated and sad and that is beautiful
I used to run Terminal Services through an SSH tunnel courtesy of PuTTY, on port 443, so that (in addition to extra encryption and compression, and the ability to tunnel through my linux firewall to my windows box) I could disguise the session as HTTPS, so the company net cops wouldn't come after me. Worked perfectly. Waaaaaay smoother than VNC btw.
Jeremy
Anyone notice how ZDNetUK absolutely hated the wireless display the topic links to, but gave it a score of 6.6 out of 10?
A big 7 for "features"?
Only a 6 for a product that mostly doesn't work and may require the installation of a new OS to mostly not work?
Seems to me I could get an easy 5.0 from these guys by duct-taping a non-functional USB cable to a lead pencil, and sending it in for review.
With a 400Mhz processor and 64MB of ram, this little display has quite a bit of power packed in it. Which begs the question, anyone gotten Linux to run on it yet?
Ok,
#1) The terminal services in Windows2000 was in the server only, it was not in any of the desktop OS versions of Windows 2000. Additionally it was nearly as optimized as the version that is in the WindowsXP line. The performance of remote desktop and terminal services (in Windows 2003 server) is drastically more advanced that what shipped in Windows 2000. In addition, the terminal services that were in WIndows 2000 server didn't support many of the features that a product like this would need, such as Remote Sound, High and True Color Display, etc.
#2) XP Home Version also does not have the remote desktop capabilities built into it. So technically it just can't do it.
(However I don't agree with Microsoft's release of the Home version as I also disagree with it having feature cuts from the Pro version and complained constantly during the beta, to the point where many of the Pro features were put back in the Home version - Basically the Home Version needs to go and I suspect that there won't be a Home version much longer as XP is evolved into Longhorn.)
#3) Microsoft is updating WindowsXP Pro to allow users to have a 'Smart Display' and also let another user use the same PC as the same time. In other words, they are removing the 1 user limit that the smart display users have complained about. This is in beta testing and should be availabe with SP2 of XP.
Also look for performance enhancements in the upcoming update that are targeted at the Remote desktop client that will benefit 'Smart Display' PCs. For exmaple, video playback should be possible remotely, which will be quite a trick if they can pull it off considering the overhead of screen draws, let alone video streaming.