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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.
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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...
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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
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.
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
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
For many people the answer will be nothing. In my case I am using a Toshiba Portege 3500 Tablet PC for business meetings and for a couple of papers I am doing at university. It is great. I dock it to a larger monitor and USB I/O for development work and have it dual booting Red Hat 9 as a reasonable Linux laptop but I have to give credit to MS (as much as I hate them) for the journal program. ,and the Palm, daily for several years. There is no way they could match a half my paper writing speed and I couldn't draw full blown equations, graphs or diagrams.
It is the journal program and the full paper size that means it can really replace paper for note taking and the trick editing keeps helps deal with lecatures who change their mind about stuff on their white board. I can take notes from my third year engineering maths course better that I could on paper. I have a PocketPC and have used both it
The bottom line is the Tablet PC is the most natural interface I have used and I love every over priced cent of it. Most people won't need the features but if you do it's great.
".. 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.
Tablet PC screens are not touch-sensitive and thus do not have the layer of flexible, scratchable plastic film that PDAs do. Tablets require the use of their own pen which emits a small magnetic field sensed by the Tablet. Thus the Tablet screen knows when the pen is close. At that point it activates the cursor which you move around with the pen near, but not touching, the screen. Then when the pen actually touches the screen the Tablet activates the on-screen "ink" mode. Since Tablet PCs have much larger screens than a PDA you are likely to have your hand resting on the screen. They are designed for that and your wrist would not affect it.
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.
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.
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.
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).