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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."
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.
(From the review: Whatever the thinking behind Microsoft's Smart Display technology -- a battery-powered notebook screen without a notebook, linked to a PC by wireless networking and taking stylus input -- it doesn't seem to have included what users actually want. Emphasis added.)
-austin
Ni bhionn an rath achx mar a mbionn an smacht (There is no Luck without Discipline)
... as has already been pointed out. However more importantly, editors please update the headline to acknowledge the mistake. Lots of people may read the comments, see a single +5 comment pointing out this isn't a Tablet, next to dozens of Anti-MS comments and assume the +5 guy is a crackpot. He is not. This is a Windows Terminal Server device used to control your Windows desktop while walking around the house. It's isn't remotely Tablet PC.
Anyone with 15 inches is gonna be popular, and according to spam, is becoming increasingly cost effective.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
The worst bit about this terrible submission is that Taco will dupe the post in about 3 hours.
Trolling is a art,
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
2) Sell ad space to Microsoft
do not read this line twice.
Didn't the newton have hadwriting regognition?
Yes it dud, mole or lease.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions