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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.
In other news, I think a dishwasher is a good idea, but won't be using one to wash my clothes any time soon.
Tablet PCs are simply not designed for gaming, so saying you would not use one for gaming is a bit superfluous.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Tablet PCs are sort of like a large pda... At least that's where I see their usefulness. Ipaqs are cool, but the screen is too small to be useful, IMO.
A tablet PC, especially the kind that can unfold to into a laptop, is what I've been wanting for a very long time.
But the price is just crazy, $2600? I'd consider paying $1000. $2600 Could by a pretty slick laptop that cleans the floor with a typical tablet pc.
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
Tablet PCs are cool and just about everyone who plays with one wants one. Then they look at the price and decide to get a laptop with more memory and a faster processor for less...
- -
Are you an SF Fan? Are you a Tru-Fan?
The people who absolutely must have the latest gadgets bought them during the first few months; the rest of us haven't had any reason to buy them.
Next year, there will probably be better operating system and application support, and at that point tablets will actually be useful; but until then the only market which exists is already saturated.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
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.
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
Regardless of how technically sound tablet PCs are, the market for them isn't going to spring into existence overnight.
The idea doesn't improve significantly enough on my good Rhino to have me making a purchase.
Now, when I see RMS running Emacs on one of these things, then, maybe THEN, I'll plunk down some frogskins...
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
already has a camera (ok, only 640x480!), bluetooth, mp3 player, mpg4 video player all built in - only problem is those proprietary memory stick duo cards rather than smartmedia or similar...
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.
Well, I'm sure if Major Tablet PC got promoted to Lieutenant Colonel Tablet PC, he could pull rank and avoid doing the damn obstacle course where he keeps running into things. :P
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!
A friend of mine has the Toshiba Tablet PC. It's pen has a tremendous feel and its excellent for sketching, and typing since it folds out to be a full flegded laptop.
Is it worth $2000+ when I can get a laptop for $1000+ that can basicially do the same thing except Now I can't use a pen? No way. That's the problem with them. they are nowhere near price competitive to traditional laptops. If they were then would be selling like hotcacks.
Its a cool technology that prices itself out of the market. pure and simple.
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
At my office (which is Windows only, none of that Linux stuff here), we use Tablet PC's because they make sense. Doctors and nurses can review charts, make notes, change scripts and do what needs to be done on the spot without having to open a laptop up and start typing or waiting to get back to their desks (and remember everything they wanted to do/say).
No, tablet PC's are not the solution to everyone, but they are for the medical industry. And Microsoft already has deep roots in the medical industry.
Does anyone know of a tablet PC that both boots Linux and has documented interfaces?
if they gave those thing CPUs that topped the 1.7GHz mark instead of 800-1GHz range they'd sell more :P
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?
As many people have said, one one the big reasons TabletPCs aren't doing well is price. What they aren't saying is that most of that extra price comes from the expensive LCD touchscreen, which is necessary for pointing with a stylus and handwriting recognition.
And it's that latter feature that's killing adoption. People just don't want handwriting recognition, especially the kind of power users likey to be eraly adopters of new technology. Why? Simply because handwriting recognition at this stage is still pretty buggy, and even if it wasn't, HANDWRITING ISN'T AS FAST AS TYPING. As I suspect most power users are fairly good typists, handwriting recognition is of little value to them.
And as a "new generation" of users that have grown up with computers matures, there will be even less incentive for handwring recognition. Anyone notice the trend in PDAs has been towards keyboards and away from recognition? This isn't a coincidence, it's the maturing market base.
I, as many others, repeat my argument: if these things were pressure sensitive, they would have been a hell of a drawing tool, but as they're not, they're just some sort of computers which are in some cases even more limited than normal ones.
"We can confirm that Debian does *not* ship the version with the trojan horse. Our version predates it." [CA-2002-28]
I think the answer lies in Bluetooth. Give me a Bluetooth phone, my Palm Tungsten T, and a Bluetooth headset and I'll be happy.
LordBodak's journal.
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.
No, no it couldn't. You've just linked to half a dozen different very expensive products in that form factor. The resulting combined product would be about six times larger, cost more than your house, and have a battery life of about thirty seconds. And nobody would buy it because they'd rather spend all that money on some of whatever it is you're smoking, because it must be some good shit.
Don't become a regular here -- you will become retarded.
With tablet PCs has generally been positive. We've tried out two different models, the Toshiba 3505 and Compaq TC 1000. Both have their shortcomings but both are incredibly useful as well. I purchased the Toshiba for our CEO who uses it constantly for presentations, notetaking, and normal ultra portable laptop use. The Toshiba itself is, IMO, the absolute best of all the tablets. It was certainly built to a higher standard. The Compaq is pretty well built too (a surprise to me). I was very impressed with the way you can detach the slate (screen) from the keyboard. We're using it as the basis of one of our future products. My only real gripe with Compaq is the Crusoe processor which is woefully underpowered. Good battery life or not, it takes way to long to boot and start background apps. However, for our, less processor intensive projects (it will be running some web based apps) it is just fine. The Toshiba with it's 1.3PIII isn't nearly as bad. It has plenty of power for a business laptop. I was surprised by the gaming comment in the original article since not one of these machines were ever intended for such use. Go buy a Dell Insprion 8500 if you want that (an excellent machine in its own right). The biggest gripe I would have is the price. Tablet PCs are dreadfully overpriced IMO.
/. This product was never meant for Nerds and Geeks. This is a business machine that will find it's niche with Sales, Marketing, and Management departments, not IT. It is pretty darn decent at doing the job it was built to do.
I'm not too surprised to see this product being hacked to death on
There is nothing inherently safe about liberty. That's why so many people died protecting it.
".. can you run one before you need to recharge?"
My HP/Compaq TC1000 runs for around 2.5 hours with the built in WiFi turned off. Once enabled, depending on my connection rate, I get about 1.5 - 1.75 hours. NOT enough for a day of meetings without a power plug nearby. I'm very disappointed with the battery life on this unit.
The battery is removable, so I'll be purchasing a spare.
My friend has the Fujitsu that allows a higher capacity battery, and he routinely sees 3-3.5 hours with WiFi.
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.
They're positioning the TabletPC as a laptop you can write on. I think that's the big mistake -- trying to make this a laptop, when they can't possibly compete with laptops for the price. You end up with something that's too big, too heavy, runs too hot, eats batteries too fast, and is too damned slow to be as useful as it could be.
What I want is, essentially, a letter-sized PDA. Something I can take notes on, browse the web via 802.11 or whatever, read email, and that's about it. If I want to do CAD/CAM, or gaming, or write a 200-page document, then I'll use a desktop. No Windows, no Linux even -- Palm OS would be ideal.
With such a tablet, I could leave it sitting on my coffee table. We're watching a movie, and someone asks "what else was he in?" I hit pause, pick up the tablet, tap "on", and it instantly comes on, just like a Palm. I hit the web browser, go to IMDB, write in my query, and answer the question. Then I set it down and resume the movie. Total time, from question to answer and back to movie: 60 seconds.
Do that with a tablet PC, running *any* OS.
Keep a little cradle on the side that it can charge from, hook that via Cat-5 to the network, have some kind of synchronization software running on some server, and you've now got the ability to hot-sync, with no computer in your family room. Pick the thing up when you go to work and read all the news, while on the subway, that got synch'd to it overnight. Go to starbucks on your lunch hour and catch up on personal email. Whatever.
Anything you can do with a PDA, you should be able to do just as easily with a tablet. It's a logical extension of the PDA to a larger form-factor for reading full-sized documents, web surfing, collaboration around a coffee table, etc. But it doesn't need to be a full-out laptop.
Really, this seems to me a no-brainer, and it should be trivially easy for a hardware maker to implement. Just take the guts from one of the newer Palm models (with the 400 MHz XScale processor), add 64 MB of flash RAM, a CF slot (bundled with a 64 MB card, obviously the end user can expand that) for long-term storage, stick in bluetooth and 802.11, and build it all into a lightweight 1024x768 portable display. Add recharchable batteries, stir, and put out a press release. Sell it for $700, and I'll buy one tomorrow.
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.
You're right... the Fujitsu is the nicest of the bunch.... when it works.
I've had to send mine back TWICE for a failed NIC. The first time they replaced the systemboard, and it worked for about a month. It just went back for the second failure. Wireless works great, and the handwriting recognition kicks ass, even with my shoddy penmanship.
The Toshiba is a close second, although it is more of a laptop with a pen than a tablet. The weight difference between it and the Fujitsi is noticable. And even though BOTH are running WinXP Tablet, the Fujitsu's handwriting rec. works better.
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.
The sharp Zaurus reads 3 of the 5. It doesn't read Smart Media or Memory stick.
"Da ist ein Technölüst in mein Unterpanten!"
The ones I've seen typically cost more than notebooks. What surprises me is that they had such good sales last year.
If you're a billionaire who doesn't need to care about dropping a few grand of electronics on the floor every so often, this is a killer toy. No surprise who the poster boy was. But likewise it's no surpise they're not taking the market by storm.
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.
The problem with the Tablet PC (and the reason that I never expected it to sell well) is that it's the sort of device that a lot of geeks say is, "cool," but it is NOT the sort of device that solves problems for most people. It's one of those things that many people might take for free (just because the concept seems cool), but the minor benefits of the machine aren't enough to outweigh the cost or the other negatives (for the vast majority).
There might be a few markets where the benefits outweigh the costs (vertical medical applications, maybe?), but I can't think of many where they are truly cost-effective. After trying to use laptops and PDAs for notes and schedules and such, I still find that the easiest thing for ME to use for most of my needs like that is still a piece of paper. The cost ($2 vs. $2,600) and "user interface" of a cheap paper notebook still make it superior for a lot of things, even if it DOES seem cool to geeks to be able to write on a screen with a stylus.
I don't expect Tablet PCs to take off any time soon, and I still think that PDAs as we know them are dying, too. (I thought Steve Jobs was wrong about PDAs in the beginning, but I know fewer and fewer non-geeks who use them.) A Tablet PC is interesting technology, but it doesn't solve a problem that people really want solved.
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.
My conclusion: A TabletPC is a luxury, but heavy PDA replacement and isn't very usefull as a replacement for a real laptop. Most of the software needs a complete rethinking and the hardware is feeble. So i bought a brand new Apple Powerbook and I'm happy now.
My detailed experiences with TabletPC Software were: Microsoft XP TabletXP Edition was quite unstable (2 crashes a day), Microsoft Journal works fine, Microsoft OneNote Beta was absolutely not usable (imho wrong concept for a notetaking application), Covey TabletPlanner is ok, but you wouldn't need another Outlook (it works fine on a TabletPC). The absolute KilleApp in the note-taking area is from my point of view Mindjets Mindmanager for TabletPC (good concept, consequent implementation, high value).
My experiences with Compaq hardware: The TabletPC's connection between main unit and keyboard is very unstable and could be damaged easily. The built-in WLAN connection is very weak, I needed a extra Orinocco WLAN Adapter to get in working in our office. The missing bluetooth adapter is very unconveniend and I see no reason for that (the price couldn't be an argument).
vendors like Acer and Hewlett-Packard (HP) have even experienced declining sales of the products
Therein lies the key. Notice that Toshiba isn't mentioned. This is because Toshiba is cleaning their clock! The 3500/3505 has the right mix of features -- mainly processor speed -- and consumers/businesses have figured this out.
Someone above said a Tablet PC is like a big PDA. Exactly. It replaces your PDA which makes a whole lot more sense than trying to replace your cell phone. I pity anyone who carries all three...
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.
GSM service around here is still pretty poor. Unfortunately I have yet to find a TDMA phone with Bluetooth.
LordBodak's journal.
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.
Good grief, why do you slashbots always get into this mentality of one size fits all. Tablet PC's are failing because not everybody wants one?
Good grief. The computing market is huge, there is room for a variety of ideas because there are a large variety of problems to solve. Tablet PC makes sense for certain problems, just like a laptop does.
I just don't get this mentality.
The touch screen jacks the price. Ever look into buying one of those things? Nasty.
A man who can't pronouce "nuclear arsenal" shouldn't have one -sig ends here.