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Major Tablet PC Running Into Problems?
An anonymous reader writes "As Digitimes says :
Global sales of Tablet PCs have not been as strong as expected, and major Tablet PC vendors like Acer and Hewlett-Packard (HP) have even experienced declining sales of the products, sources said.
Acer, which claims it sold about 35,000 Tablet PCs worldwide in the fourth quarter of 2002, saw sales of the product plunge by over 50% in the first quarter of this year. " I actually saw/held my first Tablet PC last week - it was one of Fujitsu series machines, and I was pretty impressed by it. It'd make a good business/school machine, but I don't think you'd want it for gaming and the like.
While I do believe he is correct, I think he may be off base with the PDA. This is one of the only devices that I would like to see be more "all in one". I'd personally like a Sony Ericsson p800 style PDA phone that had the screen from a Clie NZ90, GPS, iPod sized hard drive, megapixel camera, the VERY cool remote control center from Sony, 802.11g and Bluetooth + an Mp3 player and DIVX/MPEG4 decoder. While something like this would be in the high end (probably where the NZ90 is = $800 + $100 802.11 card) I still think it'd fly off the shelf, and possibly be subsidized by cell phone companies, at least in part with service agreements.
I still hope Apple is considering such a device or at least with most of the features listed here with a compact flash & SDIO slot.
I know there's a little link overload, just illustrating how easily this could be done right now!
All of this could be squeezed into a current form factor Sony Clie.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
It'd make a good business/school machine, but I don't think you'd want it for gaming and the like
:)
But you see, that's the whole point. A tablet PC isn't effective if you can't hold it in your hands and write on it, and that means it's got to be tiny. If you're going to get a laptop, you're either going to get a small laptop that's not so fast, or a bulky laptop that is blazin'.
It's not much fun sportin' a 7 pound tablet, I mean common we've been out of the stone ages for awhile
- tristan
What do I need a tablet PC for that I can't do with a PDA, or would require something smaller than a laptop? Aside from the 'cool' factor I don't see too much of a market right now. You can't really type on them... Maybe if you had a laptop with a detachable screen that functions as a tablet PC by itself.
They have always struck me as entirely pointless devices. Anyone here actually use one - one they purchased themself for personal use?
Tack on a CDR, and you've just made yourself a laptop with a tiny screen.
Although, Steve Jobs is justifiably wary about PDAs with the failure of the Newton, which I still think is an awesome device.
Vonal Declosion
Tablet PCs are physically too large and heavy. Much of that is driven by the requirements of running Windows XP: you need a harddisk and a powerful processor.
The software isn't all that great either. The connected handwriting recognition system is actually not too bad in terms of raw recognition performance, but its integration and user interface is awful. Speech recognition is laughable. Your best bet is the on-screen keyboard or the PDA-like recognizer.
I think a compact tablet with a high resolution 1024x768 screen, long battery life, but without a harddisk and with a low-power processor, would likely be more successful--provided it ran something better than Tablet PC. In fact, even PocketPC would probably be better than TabletPC.
How do the screens hold up to human oils? Or the constant pressure of someones wrist on it? I like the idea but never used one.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.
Ah, but The Newton wasn't Steve Jobs idea, it was Sculley's. (Another minute reason Steve is wary about PDAs=pride). Also, the Newton as described in the article you linked, didn't have Steve's vision or Ive's design.
And seriously, about the CDR, WHY NOT put a firewire port on it? WHY NOT make it run full Mac OSX? (Built in disc burning)
Small screen or not, very useful!
Oops, forgot the salmon link
I think that pointing out that a factor against a tablet pc might be that it is a specialized device with a limited market, as opposed to a computer. Pretty much everyone who can afford it gets a computer. Not everyone gets (or wants) a tablet pc.
Uggh. This is why I hate the state of the mobile device industry right there. There are four major kinds of flash media, all incompatible with each other. Rather than come up with innovative devices that all use the same media (compactflash would have been a good choice since it was the first, and arguably the most open), the companies decided to all come up with their own formats and compete in this space.
Imagine if all the major computer makers had come up with different kinds of floppy disk in the early 90's, all incompatible with each other? Sounds pretty idiotic in retrospect, right? Well, that's what's happening in the industry right now with flash media. SD, MMC, SM, CF, MS, this is not only inconvenient but it's probably confusing as heck to the non-computer literate.
To be truly sellable to the mass population, the tablet shall have the following attributes:
The focus then becomes an artists drawing pad.
Do a tablet PC which is cheap, lightweight, integrated wireless lan and has just enough power to browse the web comfortably... Then I'd get one at once so I could lie back on the couch and read articles while my partner watches TV.
For serious computing I'd still want a desktop, but a tablet PC would indeed be perfect for browsing, even if it were a bit underpowered.
My 2 cents anyway...
.: Max Romantschuk
I've worked with a few tablet PCs, and I have to say that that there is a huge market for them from college students ... if the price is right.
The tablet PC is fantastic for taking notes during lectures. It's unobtrusive, and you can turn the handwriting recognition off while you're maddly scribbling notes and drawing diagrams. Plug in a mic, and you've got a recording of the lecture for future reference.
Later on you could run the recognition software, reorganize your notes, highlight, e-mail, print, etc. etc. Plug in a keyboard and a mouse, and suddenly you've got a "normal" computer for browsing the 'net, writing papers, and, erm, acquiring music.
The "perfect" tablet for this market would have a lightweight OS, 10GB HD, wifi, low power CPU (Crusoe?) and dimensions roughly the same as an A4 or 8x10 pad of paper (12.1" screen, ~1/2" thick).
How many students would buy one if they were under $1000? What's your personal price point?
The problem is that most people aren't really sure what to use tablets for. They are great for business use where your staff needs to be able to work with information as they walk and a PDA is to cramped or lowpowered. They are okay for lugging around the house for Net use or even for watching ripped movies. I like to plug a Happy Hacker keyboard in and use one as a laptop to code on (I find it more convient being able to remove the keyboard when not needed).
:)
They could even be good for low power games (think GameBoy with a much bigger screen) if there were a joypad style mouse button and the buttons were positioned properly.
The other problem is that these things tend to cost as much as a laptop. If they could get them into the upper range of PDA prices while retaining their PC-like features then they'd kick ass. The ProGears were a great hacking bargain once they went out of business and were available for $400 each.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
the first time I used one (a Compaq/HP). It was sleek, reasonably fast, and had a decent display.
Of those I've seen (online, never seen one IRL) have had a keyboard as well. Some has a detachable keyboard and some are like a laptop but with a rotateable screen.
That's the kind I'd get, and if I were hunting for a laptop I'd probably get one which is "tabletable".
If that's what you get then it's worth the price. Those that are a "big PalmPC" are however generally way too expensive for the bang. As you say, you don't want to get a big PalmPC for the price of a laptop.
but I don't think you'd want it for gaming and the like.
Tablet PC's - at least the majority of them - are nothing but convertible laptop computers. Nothing more, nothing less. I couldn't play games on my laptop - it's not powerful enough - but my wife sure could on hers. Stick a swivel touch-screen on our computers and bam, they're both tablet PC's. The point being, there's nothing whatsoever about the fact that a PC is a tablet PC that rules it in or out for gaming or any other computing task.
The hype for these things has gone beyond what the actual product is, and I don't think it's served the product well. I'd love to have a tablet PC - it's a laptop with a useful extra feature (especially for design work, which I do occasionally). If you want a laptop, why don't you want a laptop with this extra feature? It's like putting built-in wi-fi into a laptop (which I think is a much bigger innovation, honestly) and then giving those laptops their own product category and specialized launch. It's just a feature, and one that a lot of people would like if they actually got to use it. There's no reason to not want a laptop with this feature if you already want a laptop... maybe you don't want to pay the extra $100 or whatever (that's really about all the premium is), but eventually that won't even be a factor.
btw, I think the word "vendors" was left off the headline of this story - I read the headline and thought that a particular model of tablet PC had developed a defect. I expected to read a story about a recall based on the headline.
The people we've deployed Tablet PCs to love them. We're using the Compaq TC1000 with the removeable keyboard, so it's a great compromise. Along with wireless it's perfect for most managers that end up in meetings a lot. The only problem is the old battery life issue. They are better than notebooks, but not great yet.
...for anything to survive very well other than a vanilla notebook:
= 43 78
As long as you can buy a $899 1.6GHz namebrand pentium notebook at Best Buy, few specialty PC makers can survive.
A tablet PC, which needs to be sold for ~$2000 (since it is still a specialty item), but has no better specs than such a $899 machine is just not enticing for most consumers.
Another example is the AlphaSmart Dana, a notebook built with the Palm OS and designed for schools:
http://www.palminfocenter.com/view_story.asp?ID
At the price this thing is sold for, a school could almost buy true notebook PCs at wholesale. Due to the low prices these days, the day of the specialty PC are over.
As slashnot.com stated:
"The Viewsonic Tablet PC is an excellent way to pay twice as much for a laptop by removing the keyboard, CD-ROM drive and Floppy."
Let's face it, Tablet PCs are essentially expensive stripped down laptops. While they might have some very handy specific uses, for the vast majority of people a laptop is a much better solution, i.e., cheaper with more value.
Microsoft's push for the Tablet PC is an attempt to get people who don't know how to type to buy computers. There are many people who never typed before and are frustrated by computers. The paper/pen metaphor is supposed to appease those people. Unfortunately, anyone who has avoided computers up to now clearly has NO USE for a computer. Especially one that costs SO much!
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
I'm suprised to see everyone comparing them to laptops or desktops (gaming?). I want one specifically for things I can't do with a laptop. Lie in bed and sketch. Curl up on the couch and write by hand. Yes, typing is faster, but when working creatively cramming at a table isn't quite as inspiring.
It may have come from Microsoft, but it's an extremely stable and robust filesystem that is very well understood, and will probably be the de-facto standard for many years.
As for Mac and PC format floppies, this is not really the issue I was getting it. Macs and PC's used different filesystems on floppies, but the media itself was exactly the same. This is not the case with the multitude of flash memory formats out there.
I've been using the Motion computing one (M1200) for almost six months now and for windows work it does everything I need (mail, documentation, some programming, some SysAdmin tasks). I still keep a linux workstation, but have been relying more and more on cygwin and a linux instance running in VMware on the tablet.
There are some points though that I would like to make in response to a whole lot of messages above.
1) The screen is 12" and 1024x768, but I regularly use the VGA port when at my desk to run dual desktops on a monitor running 1280x1024. With the tablet in portrait mode next to it it works very well.
2) The pen interface is more natural then a keyboard. You just start marking up documents, or jotting down notes. This doesn't replace the keyboard (not by a long shot for some tasks), but more accuratly it replaces paper.
3) These boxes have more then enough umpf for everything except your high end games. With the 1GHz Centrinos coming out I expect that even the games will be OK, but is that really a buying criteria for an office/work machine?
4) Having searching of handwritten notes is invaluable, and makes paper replacement not only viable but desirable.
Alright, given the price and specs they aren't for everyone, but neither is any other machine available. This product fits a large niche, and as the upgrade cycles occur in companies and governments I expect them to be adopted about at the rate PCs were in the mid 80's. That is nothing to sneeze at.
I'd agree that the tablet PC wouldn't be very good for your conventional FPS or any game that required alot of 3D stuff.
However, I do think that the tablet could work for RTS games like starcraft, where your mousing accuracy would no longer be a limiting factor.
If you took it a step further, I bet you could make a bunch of neat strategy style games that a pen interface would be better for. Imagine being able to give your troops walking directions by drawing on the screen.
I'm interested in picking up a tablet and seeing what I could make with it, but the cost is just too prohibitive to do it just for kicks.
Just recently purchased the Acer C104CTi ($1699, P3-900, WiFi, DVD/CD-RW, 1394, USB, 10.4" TFT,Convertible,...). I like the college notebook size and the 3 lbs weight (anything less would be too flimsy). At work I use it to capture notes in meetings, translate notes into text, and then email out. With the WiFi, I can maintain connectivity at any meeting w/out wires. At home, I watch TV, cook, workout, etc all while surfing the net. The touchscreen comes in handy when you just want to lay the tablet down and use the pen to click through websites.
IMHO, tablet PCs are not supposed to do everything that a regular laptop does, otherwise they'd just be laptops. Some people say that they can type faster than they can write. That may be true, but when you're in a meeting and someone is bangin' away at the keyboard, most other people take offense. Of course if you had a Tablet, you can write without annoying anyone (except for maybe the jealous guy next to you).
Tablets are niche products now, but soon they'll be commonplace (just as laptops were once niche products). Of course between now and then M$ will need to firm up the Tablet OS, and more software apps will need to be updated to take advantage of the pen function. I can also envision new apps that will take advantage of the WiFi/pen entry.
I've only had the tablet for a few weeks, but it's definitely a sweet addition to my suite of power tools. With the tablet, I only need to go back to my desktop for gaming, photo editing, and other high-end apps. I'm quite pleased.
I agree. Another problem is selling these to corporate clients during a recession and a tech bust. A simpler model as you describe could play well in the home if done right.
Your family already has a fast, new pc? This would make a great companion, eliminate fights between who gets to use the computer.
There is also a significant number of folks out there running very old machines at home. They have probably been thinking about upgrading for a while. Heck, there are still people that don't even have a pc.
Turn these babies loose at bestbuy. When you make people say "oh man, this is great!" they will open their wallets. Just make sure to tether them...you don't want to turn them loose from the store premesis.
Flip-top tablet PCs are ridiculous. They take the sole point of innovation that sets TPCs apart from any other computer -- the fact that it's a portable, fully-featured computer with ONLY a screen and no keyboard, mouse, chassis, etc -- and they ruin it by sticking a keyboard to the bottom. Having added a keyboard, they feel compelled to beef it up with an optical drive, more PCMCIA slots, touchpad, etc.
Madness! Sheer folly! The entire POINT of a tablet PC is that it's small, light, and requires NO peripherals to interact with it other than the unit itself. It won't play your games (yet) but it will play DVDs, browse the web, and run just about any productivity app you can think of. And it's in a form factor that's much more portable than a laptop. So portable, you can use it while you're walking! (Just YOU try walking down the street whilst using your laptop...) The only true tablet PC is one with a slate form factor.
Tablet PCs are failing because
1) End-users don't know what they should be used for
2) No marketing! Hallllo, is this thing on? Where are the tablet PC TV spots?
3) Outrageous prices. These guys aren't quite as powerful as a conventional laptop, and should be priced accordingly. Manufacturers who do not understand this fact, will not see many sales. Sadly, this is most of them.
The reason Toshibas are selling so well is that they're really laptops and not tablet PCs. Talk to Motion Computing if you want to see a successful tablet PC manufacturer.
The market is yet small, but for those with the best products, there is plenty of room to grow.
Everyone knows that consumer electronics sales are cyclic. The 4th quarter is usually the hottest (Christmas, etc.), while the 1st quarter is usually the slowest (pay off the credit cards). Even global cell phone sales fell in the first quarter (link)! Granted, they didn't go down as much, but nobody's talking about the demise of the cell phone. (Also, the number cited on the link is for the entire industry. Individual companies may be significantly higher or lower.) Will the tablet PC die? It depends on what the critical mass point is. PDAs aren't for everybody, but they aren't dead, either. The more reasonably priced tablet PCs may end up with sales figures that are 0.5% of PC sales, but that would probably be enough to keep them going. I mean, look at this company.