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Hardware Makers Unhappy With Tablet Sales
rocketjam writes "According to The Register, hardware manufacturers, tired of continued low sales of the much-hyped tablet PC, are beginning to speak out, complaining that Microsoft has not marketed the platform enough and has over-priced licenses for its Windows XP Tablet Edition. The predicted demand for the devices has not materialized; faced with the tablet's premium pricing, consumers have continued to opt for lower-priced notebooks."
If you have ever tried to use a tablet, you will probably come to the same conclusion we have. They suck as a form-factor. They are undoubtedly cool, but in the long run, they really don't let you do any serious work.
I have worked with both the Fujitsu-Siemens as well as the Compaq tablets, have run Linux as well as Windows on both, and they simply get in between yourself and serious work.
The interface requires too much attention of the user, and the handwriting recognition, while pretty good on Windows, also requires too much attention. On Linux you would have to use some palm-type strok business, or even better, the excellent Dasher application.
Besides specialist applications, such as in hospitals for example, the form factor only really comes into its own during meetings, but it simply does not (yet) offer the simplicity of the two primary office tools: The humble pen and paper.
This is not a marketing or cost issue, it is a form-factor issue. They are cool, but all our demo and test models have their novelty worn off, and are currently going unused. At least we did not pay for them.....
People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.
And lo, let me preach unto thee the ten commandments !
...
Er - hang on a minute, my tablet just crashed
A slashdotting - you get the stick first and then the carrot !
These tablets just seem like glorified PDA's to me. I've never actually seen anyone using one of these breadboards. Personally,I'd much rather get a laptop.
-- Fuck Beta
running linux on tablets doenst make them fly... whole consept of tablets is that makes them stay in the shelves... imo
What people are looking for these days are not tablets, but desktop replacement systems: high-performance portables.
A lot of my colleges have bought PDA's, tablets, etc, but they use them extremely rare, if at all. The digital pen is dead.
At least it doesn't require the 699$ license from CSO
.... even on blurried pictures Mr. Gates still looks silly :-/
M$ did a lot of marketing for the tablets. I keep seeing ads for them, and they have a big section on their web site.
the real reason that it hasn't caught on might also be that the digitizers and or the windows GUI handling aren't good enough to make using the touchscreen and the stylus an acceptable user experience.
we have these things at my lab (for multimodal HCI studies), and while the handwriting recognition of Win Tablet isn't too bad, clicking on things in the GUI is way too unreliable. the windows GUI doesn't allow ambiguous inputs (selecting an area rather than a point), as they would occur with a finger and as they do occur when the digitizer isn't good enough. here, either the GUI should become more robust (= fault-tolerant) or the digitizers should become better. probably both. (tried with a top-notch acer centrino tablet!)
other issues with the tablet is the sheer size and weight of these things. still waiting for apple to come up with a really thin tablet that you actually WANT to take anywhere. at the moment, the tablet's i have seen suffer from over-weight, clunky-ness, short battery-life...
my prediction is that in a couple of years these problems will be solved and people will enjoy clicking on items directly (and maybe handwriting) rather than using a stupid trackpad...!
It says the total cost difference between a tablet and comparable notebook is about $200. Of that amount only $30-$60 is due to hardware, the rest is the extra software licensing cost. That is a $140-$170 premium for Windows XP Tablet Edition. To me, for a machine that costs a few thousand, even a $200 difference does not seem that much. Or maybe people just haven't gotten used to the technology enough to make it a worthwhile purchase yet?
It is sad, we have arrived in a day and age where it seems as though every new technology that comes around the block needs to make it big in the first couple years , or it is considered a failure. Real improvements in productivity don't happen that way. They can take many years before the returns are actually realized. The people who use the technology don't learn it overnight. In fact, it is only now that many companies are finally starting to see a decent return on their investments in technology in the late 1990's.
my dad just bought a store display model from ebay (an Acer) and he loves it and is able to do serious work on it.
With the availibility of OSS, bitchin' about proprietary software makes no sense. (Oh no, not the Chewbacca defense!)
IMHO, all Linux needs is a couple of "success stories" where a hardware mfr opted for Linux and saved itself from ruin, and you'll have hw mfrs falling over each other trying to support the OS.
I have seen many people sporting their new tablets here in boston. I am actually supprised at how they have taken off so quickly. As far as a portable goes I dont think that any portable will ever replace a desktop. When looking for a notebook I look for small and cheap (IBM thinkpad). Most tablets are small, but they weigh a ton. The only differnce between a tablet a thousand years ago and now is that their tablets didnt come with EULA's.
If I wanted easy I wouldnt be an engineer or a patriot.
with tablet PCs. Maybe Windows is better with super gaming PCs, but with tablets with little processing power, Linux's nice, gentle power useage is perfect.
I have over 70 freaks, do you?
Fucked in the ass by M$' hype and now complaining?
I can't believe it. Maybe I should be modded up or down - but either way it will be a waste of mod points. Good Night!
All the Tablet PCs I've seen are just 1024x768. Ideally, a Tablet PC should be a replacement for a writing tablet or book, meaning it should have as high a resolution as possible. LCD technology is up to at least 1600x1200, and I don't understand why there are no models (as far as I know) available with such screens.
Tablet PCs? been there, done that. http://www.theapplemuseum.com/index.php?id=tam&pag e=pda
although its functions were more similar to a PDA, the Newton's goals were much the same as today's tablet PCs. But look what happened to them: they failed in the long run. Maybe the tablet PC will carry the legacy of the ahead-of-its-time newton. It will fail, but will eventually lead to a significant product that will become mainstream tech culture.
I'd use the HTML link, but.....
10 Bits= $.25
100 Bits= $.50
110 Bits= $.75
1000 Bits= 1 byte
Er, pardon me for being thick, but what's this got to do with MS? You decided a Windows OS was best for your hardware, not Microsoft. If it's too expensive Use Something Else; it's a free market out there. Why should Microsoft pay to advertise your product for you?
If you had decided on Linux, would you have expected Linus Torvalds to launch an expensive advertising campaign for your benefit? Who advertised your car? Was it the car manufacturer, or a manufacturer of one of its components?
As for the price of licencing Pen, er, Tablet Windows, perhaps they should look around for alternatives? (Say, what ever happen to GRiD anyway?)
Sounds like sour grapes: "Wah, Microsoft isn't pushing our market enough! And they put a gun to our heads to make us use Windows!" Sell enough computers for Microsoft to care guys.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
...adopt the more elightened view of the New World.
The USA's enlightened view of the new world will not have this problem, after they have exterminated the race and the religion off the face of the planet.
My department ordered three Tablet PC's about six months ago for 3 of our maanagers. This has resulted in a change none of the employees expected but certainly enjoy. The managers have become the defacto note takers at meetings. None of them have spoken too loudly about benefits of the tablets.
I am Lord Snowbeam. Heed my call!
I want a keyboard. A pad is great for taking quick notes, and creative doodling, but for real work I need a keyboard and a selection/navigation tool in easy reach. I seem to remember seeing some yellow, ruled digital pads that you could write on and load the results into your computer. Now that seems handy. my 2 cents
Or, if Steve Jobs had done the keynote...
I played around with one in a CompUSA for a few minutes. Yeah, it was kind of fun to draw a picture of guy sitting on a toilet, and then a super fast race car zooming by, but I couldn't think of any situation where I'd actually want to use one for any particular purpose. I'd rather use a laptop for almost any situation I can imagine. Or, if not a laptop, then just paper and a pen. These are like PDA's that you can't carry around with you, it's got nothing.
Can anybody think of a general use for one of these (nothing too specialized, something that might actually be useful for a lot of people?)
--
RumorsDaily
The tablet PC is partly driven by the same misguided notion that has driven many failed PC hardware and software developments: the belief, on the part of an older generation of CEO's, that there is something demeaning about using a keyboard.
Up to the 1980's, keyboards were associated with secretarial and clerical staff, who were paid less and ranked lower socially than executives. Executives had no skill in keyboarding and were proud of it. The mantra was "I have people to do that for me." The result, unfortunately, was that the decision-makers never got any gut experience in the feeling of keyboard interaction or the power and suitability of the keyboard as a human-interface device.
So, you have all those stupid fantasies of machines that you "will just talk to in English," and the continuing search for handwriting recognition.
Ever since all the bright young MBA's started using Excel and Powerpoint you'd think people would know better. Sure, the upper-mid-level people play the game of "my-laptop-is-shinier-than-yours", but I have still seen upper management eyes gleam at the idea of not needing to use a keyboard. They give lip service to the legitimacy of the keyboard, but in their hearts they feel that a high-ranking person should not be using one.
It's silly. A tablet PC is like a PC with a mouse but no keyboard (yes, I know there is a keyboard buried inside). It's an impoverished communications channel, and no matter how cleverly you design it, it will never be as comfortable, efficient, or powerful as a channel that includes a keyboard or a keyboard-like modality.
It would be far better to research improved, more convenient, more portable keyboard subtitutes (type in the air and let lasers track your fingers, or whatever) than to continue down the silly path of trying to express a human-computer dialog solely with a continous two-dimensional line.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
people won't buy what they don't want.
...
Could this be the begining of the end of marketing?
mmmm
siggy played guitar
... than saying "well, we're making these things freaking expensive, and thus anybody looking at the bottom line (businesses, and home consumers) will think twice about buying one rather than a mid-end laptop". When your "core demographic" is toy-greedy executives and bleeding-edge hardware geeks, you don't sell so many units.
Make hardware CHEAP (and reliable), and people will buy it. It's that simple.
Freedom: "I won't!"
1- bundle the tablets with GNU/Linux ...
2- Advertise heavilly
3-
4- PROFIT
I have a Compaq TC1000, and it's dead slow with Microsoft XP Tablet edition - can't even play my sweet DivX movies.
Tried putting linux on it, and guess what? It DOES fly! Smooth playing DivX and all.
Sadly I haven't got the pen and wifi to work in linux (yet).
The whole TabletPC concept is built on using Digital Ink as another data type that can be transfered between applications, edited, converted to text, etc. By running Linux on your TC1000 you are loosing all that. If that wasn't a concern why buy a Tablet PC at all? Just get a laptop.
I admit the TC1000 can be slow, but until Linux can come up with an equivelent scheme and handwriting recognition engine that can be integrated into applications running Windows is the only way to make use of the features.
Also $200 of the price of the tablet will have been the copy of Tablet PC Edition. If you've paid for it you might as well use it.
"Taligent is still pure vapor. Maybe they'll be the last who jumps up on Openstep... "
From Pen Computing Magazine #22, June 1998
Why Did Apple Kill Newton?
(C)Copyright 1998 David MacNeill
Early Friday morning, February 27, 1998, Apple Computer made official what the Newton cognoscenti had strongly suspected for six months: the Newton handheld computing platform was dead.
The rather terse press release gave the basic facts: Apple will cease all Newton OS hardware and software development, no more products will be made after the existing stock is depleted, and Apple will continue to provide support to users. Brief mention was made of development of a new low-cost Mac OS-based mobile device in the future, but no details were offered. But the most galling omission was the lack of an answer to the question on the minds of hundreds of thousands of shocked, angry Newton owners: Why?
Before I attempt to answer this question, let's take a quick tour of the mercurial five-year career of Newton. This will serve to prepare you for the several explanations we will be considering.
A brief history of Newton
During its turbulent five-year life, Newton technology was close to death several times, yet always managed to survive. Department heads came and went, but the essential concept of the personal digital assistant (PDA) was too compelling to die easily: A small, inexpensive, pen-based computing device that would accompany you everywhere, and that would learn enough about you to make informed assumptions about how to help you keep track of the myriad little bits of information we all must carry. It would be simple enough for anyone to use, a true computer for the rest of us.
I was fortunate to participate in the Newton beta test program and to co-author and deliver the training materials used to launch the product. The moment I saw that beta unit my life changed, and I wasn't the only one. I still remember the excitement of holding a pre-release Newton NotePad (as it was labeled then) in my hands for the first time, said Clinton Logan, ace developer for LandWare. Truly unique products like that don't come along very often.
For those of us who bought into this vision, it seemed like the future was arriving ahead of schedule. Like the buyers of the original 128K Macintosh, we gladly paid the high price of admission just to participate in this achingly cool dream that had taken physical form. We loved it and made it work for us in ways unanticipated by its creators, which is the true measure of great computer design.
What is Newton ?
Newton had an identity crisis from the very beginning. Former Apple CEO and Newton champion John Sculley first showed the prototype to the press in Chicago on May 1992, where he described not only the device but also their platform strategy. A central theme in Apple's advertising and promotional materials at the time repeatedly used the phrase What is Newton? Some have suggested that Apple never actually answered this question to anyone's satisfaction.
Consider the name change. The product was originally called the Newton NotePad to suggest its personal assistive features, but that was later changed to MessagePad to emphasize the product's communications capabilities.
We had always intended for Newton to be a platform, not just a product, said former Newton Systems Group chief Gaston Bastiens, now CEO of Lernout & Hauspie, an eminent speech recognition company. Unfortunately, all the press took away with them was the handwriting recognition aspect, which was over-emphasized. The whole thrust of Newton was to be a personal communicator as well as a personal assistant. From a conceptual point of view, John was absolutely right. The infrastructure for two-way wireless at the time was not there; we all knew it was a couple of years away, but it was always part of our platform strategy.
John Sculley generally gets both the credit and the blame for the origi
Government's idea of a balanced budget: take money from the right pocket to balance...oh who am I kidding?
Friend: Let me give you my new number. Got a pen?
Me: Uh, hang on a sec. Let me get out my tablet. Just have to boot it up here...just a minute more. Okay. I've got to open Outlook... New contact...new number. Damn, it's not recognizing my handwriting. Wait, wait. Okay. Done. Now let me give you my number.
Friend: *writes it on back of hand with a pen that costs a quarter, never needs to be recharged, and fits in a shirt pocket*
Support the First Amendment. Read at -1
How many people write faster than they can type, *especially* when they have to write such that the computer can understand what was written? It is hard enough for me to write with the expectation that another human will be able to decipher it, a computer, forget it.
The only advantage is for diagrams, and ultimately, there are far better ways of doing that even, back of a napkin, notebook, whiteboard, even touchpads provide 'good enough' capability for things like teleconferencing, why in the world would someone want a tablet?
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
2) Too expensive. Even the tablets with keyboards (yes, some of them have keyboards) are much more expensive than a comparable laptop.
3) Short battery life. See point 1, above.
4) Fragility. You're carrying around a color LCD plus digitizer (i.e., $$$). You're writing on it. It's collecting dust and dirt. Pity about that scratch, crack, ding ...
5) False mimicry. The parallax between screen pixels and moving pen point makes it really, really clear that you're not using a pen on paper.
In short society isn't ready for the tablet yet. Much how society wasn't ready for the Apple Newton. Even if it did work perfectly and was efficient to use, it still wouldn't be the big seller. At this point for small uses the PDA still is the most practical with its pocket size form factor. And a laptop is more practical for more intensive sit down application. Plus the price of the tablet makes it to much to expensive to carry around on service calls or to areas that may be higher crime rates. Pen and Paper is more affordable easy to use, and can be used. Plus it is still an issue of battery life, which makes them impractical because people dont want to find a charge point every couple of hours.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Last time I mentioned this I got modded as flamebait, so I'll just AC. But the PocketPC is amlost the exact same thing as the Tablet. MS came to Taiwan with a hardware spec --note, this is a software company-- and said we're only going to allow an elite group of "winners" to be in on our next big thing.
They had promises of 300% growth and investment banking reports backed them up. Most of those companies that got suckered in --some of them even dropped Symbian and other Linux based PDA development to do so-- got fucked. PocketPC sales are almost as bad as Tablets.
I'm not surprised over the lack of demand. These things are enormous!
www.lonseidman.com
BrentO writes: "According to Common Sense, computer purchasers, tired of the low-powered CPUs and high prices of the much-hyped tablet PC, are beginning to speak out with their wallets, complaining that they just don't want to spend two thousand dollars for 1998-era computing performance. The predicted productivity for the devices has not materialized; faced with the tablet's premium pricing, manufacturers are finally getting the picture."
Seriously, when I talk about buying computers with network admins, and ask them to name a price point at which tablets make sense, the number seems to be (normal laptop) + $150. As it is now, the price penalty is much stiffer, and you end up comparing low-powered tablets with high-powered laptops. Sure, you can get a $1400 Compaq tablet - but it's got less than half the CPU power of their $1400 laptops.
What's your damage, Heather?
when the tablet has 100 dpi, less than 1/2 inch thick and weighs less than 1/2 lb that's when i will seriously consider it. until then it's just another stupid MS ploy.
we got desktops, laptops, PDAs, wireless , infared...
looks like we have plenty allready, if a gadget is bigger than a PDA then it might as well have all the features of a computer (laptop) so a tablet is just too big & clunky and from some of the other replys i read there are some serous problems with these tablets, maybe it takes more than a glass of water to get one washed down lol...
Viewsonic has (had?) a video, keyboard and mouse wireless extender tablet. It uses 802.11 to transmit the user io to the pc. However, it only runs under XP. It would be perfect for my wife's medical practice if it ran under win2k. Does anyone know of a hack site that might provide that driver? How about a driver for Linux?
I heard that Microsoft is planning to buy some pharmaceuticals company to relive users of neck and back strains. :)
I also used one for about 2 months straight for a school project. I was doing a lot of mobile work, so this thing proved itself very useful for someone who moves around a lot. I did, in fact, noticed that when my head is not at a lowered position, I get slightly mild aches in the lower part of my neck. Also, it is not very comfortable to write anything on a Tablet PC. I used to think that these were going to be very productive and easy to use, but it terns out the only asset that I treasure is the mobility of the tablet -- nothing else, nothing more.
... by the lack of Microsoft bashing in this thread! It is their profit model that kills products like this:
1. Spew vague crap about half-baked tablet idea
2. Tell lapdog hardware boys that this is their future
3. ?
4. Profit! (or drop it if it turns out to be another Bob)
They ask the hardware boys to fill in number 3 without thinking about how people use tablets. The old Newtons still sell for high prices because they were based on a rich model of how people work with actual tablets. It is the "half-baked" part in number 1 that dooms these ideas, and their insistence that this is just another way to force Windows down everyone's throat that keeps them from developing an idea around fundamental notions of how people get work done.
I don't really understand what people are complaining about myself. I have been using one (Motion M1200 now M1300) for 10 months and love it. When I'm sitting at my desk it is using the keyboard mouse. Pick it up and use the pen. The pen takes a little getting used to but it really works for everything other then programming and command line (but you can use it for both of those with a little effort).
:-).
Once I combined mine with a small portable scanner I found the amount of paper clutter in my offices to go down to a bare minimum (almost made me look like a type A person
I think people don't give it a fair try. It may be expectations, price or a combination of both. Any way you cut it though, this style unit does work for a number of people much better then a laptop.
Sure, there are plenty of good and productive uses for them. But I'm not going to tell M$ what those are. Perhaps I should be supprised that such a great innovation machine as MS claims to be, haven't themselves figured this out from the start?
>The 800mhz to 1.x ghz range just isn't enough for anyone, anymore.
My home desktop is a 600Mhz, my work desktop is a 450Mhz and my laptop is 233Mhz laptop from 1997! They all work just fine, I don't play too many games so what would I need more horsepower for? I run Gentoo on the 600 and the only time I have feel that I need more speed is when building KDE which takes about 16 hours. And the office desktop has zero reason to be replaced, heck it's a PIII and many of my co-workers still have PIIs.
It's true what you say, but tablet style apps is under development for linux. 'jarnal' is a clone of Microsoft Journal, so you can all ready turn your expensive tablet pc into a notebook (as in pen-and-paper notebook) under linux.
Handwriting recognition is the big problem. It is gonna take a long time before the open source community has come up with one that's as accurate as the one in XP Tablet Edition. Sure, you've got plenty of great graffiti-style gesture recognition software, but no real working handwriting recognition apps.
Btw, I got my TC1000 for about half the price, so turning it into a small laptop and loose some of the features for a while might not be that big of a deal for me as for the ones paying full price.
And I have to admit I'm writing this under XP.
I needed one thing, battery life. if they had a tablet pc with the battery life of my centrino dell laptop, i would have opted for that if it were not a huge price gap. however at the time there were only 1-2 tablets that fit the bill, and they were significantly more expensive than my dell 600m (i think,.. bad party last night...)
and there isnt very good linux support for either, i guessed there would be a better chance of getting a system up on the centrino pc than a tablet.
You take a P3-900, a 20GB disk, that nice big screen and jam it in a tablet and you get.... sucky battery life and a 5 pound tablet. I think that is what really killed it for me, I was lucky to get 3 hours out of it.
Also, I found the wireless card very lame, when compared to a Netgear PCMCIA card it had much less range. The wireless card also really did in the battery.
I think the tablet concept is really cool and I was pretty excited about it but it just turned out to be a flat notebook. And a cruddy "desktop replacement" style notebook at that. I want a tablet that is about 1/2 an inch thick, has good wireless and lasts for 8 hours on a charge.
In all seriousness, donate off those mofos for tax write offs.
I work for a non proffit in KS and would gladly get you the paperwork to get those things donated over. They might not work in the office but in the classroom, which is where I work, they work GREAT.
(ergo the selling problem -- too expensive for those that need it)
The ultimate network admin tool needs HELP!
I remember reading on a linux tablet pc list that Lindows was attempting to port their distro to the tablet pc, and the only issue they were having was the usb cd-rom would only boot the XP disc, and other bootable cds always crapped.
Otherwise you can use tftp and network boot to install linux, and there's a hacked wacom driver floating around to handle the tablet.
There are just not enough people that require a tablet PC and the price alone 1200 dollar laptop with more horesepower bells and whistles then you have the 2400 1.2ghz model tablet pc. What are you going to buy?
When all these manufacturers abandon tablet sales, we'll see a dirth of them for-sale @ ebay.com (tigerdirect etc).
Just like the all the 'internet appliances' that were dumped, I can get a tablet too.
Well, even if the form factor was usable who could afford to buy it now? I think most of their potential customers have had their jobs sent overseas and are now working down the street for minimum wage. me
You're a fucking genius!! Wow! You're smarter than the marketing department of one of the largest companies in the world? I'm so impressed!!
Oh yeah, your website isn't working.
First, they castrated the PDA by removing the keyboard[1] and now they're attempting to screw people's productivity further by selling PCs with the same paradigm.
Handwriting is too slow. It is too slow on paper, why do you think shorthand appeared? It is much worse on PDA and tablet PCs to the point of uselessness. The tablet format is useful for single sentence notes and very little else.
For crying out loud just learn to touchtype, it *isn't* that hard...
[1] Psion Revo is still my number 1 PDA, I'm orders of magnitude more productive on it than my colleagues on their Palms.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
Woah.
Apple's Steve jobs had previously mentioned that the tablet market was non-existant.
Specifically, here's what the westion was, and his answer to that:
M: A lot of people think given the success you've had with portable devices, you should be making a tablet or a PDA.
J: There are no plans to make a tablet. It turns out people want keyboards. When Apple first started out, "People couldn't type. We realized: Death would eventually take care of this." "We look at the tablet and we think it's going to fail." Tablets appeal to rich guys with plenty of other PCs and devices already. "And people accuse us of niche markets." I get a lot of pressure to do a PDA. What people really seem to want to do with these is get the data out. We believe cell phones are going to carry this information. We didn't think we'd do well in the cell phone business. What we've done instead is we've written what we think is some of the best software in the world to start syncing information between devices. We believe that mode is what cell phones need to get to. We chose to do the iPod instead of a PDA.
The full interview is avilable here.
That sounds delicious!
Do I pay less for a laptop with a keyboard or more for a Windows-only machine whose input method is more cumbersome, expensive to implement, and error-prone than a keyboard? Hmmmmm, hard decision....
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
HP's CEO refused to brandish her own Tablet PC - holding up what looked like a leather-bound paper organizer instead. (Gates reaction here is quite a picture - see photo #5. Fiorina only relented, and presented HP's Tablet PC after backstage wrangling. Gates then banned HP staff from the after-show party)
Here's Fiorina holding her leather organizer instead. Of course, being the richest man in the world, Billy got his way and had her hold a tablet PC by the end.
What gets me is how childish this all seems. "You didn't play right! You and your friends can't come to the party!"
Ruby on Rails Screencast
I just bought a remanufactured Gateway model from ebay. I have been pleased with it. I leave my keyboard at home and take just the tablet part to work and connect to the network. It is perfect for transporting large quantites of data from work to home and no confusion over where the most current data is. Since our copier will scan documents to the network, I can minimize the amount of trees I carry with me. It does not take much space in my exisitng briefcase. I use it for taking or consulting previously prepared notes during meetings. I admit the input can be cumbersome at times, but I have learned to adapt. One thing I do like about it is that when it is in it's stand, you don't have the main part generating heat sitting in your lap, it acts as it's own radiator. My only complaint is the damn OS that came with it. But that is another topic http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/06/09/001923 6&mode=thread&tid=106&tid=137&tid= 185
Plumbing and car maintenance are things that require a certain special expertise in order to do at all.
Any schlub can learn how to type. If you let someone stumble around a keyboard for a while, over time they'll probably learn to type faster and with less risk of repetitive stress injury than someone who was trained using the classical "home row" method. Even at beginner levels, typing is faster, more efficient, and not as complex for your brain to grasp when compared to writing with a pen. Push the button, the letter comes up. What could be simpler?
I defy you to examine the signature of any executive whom you defend as righteously too lazy to type. I bet they just have a couple of vague loops for their initials and a squiggly line for the rest of their name -- something that's enormously difficult for a human to interpret, let alone a computer.
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
I would love to have one to surf the net and stuff like that. Surfing the net doesent require a keyboard anyway. Would I use one to type up a document? probably not. Is a person going to use thier laptop to 3D model? probably not going to replace thier desktop if for nothing else screen resolution here. It's all about using the right tool for the job.
I hear people saying thier useless but I believe they have thier place. If they were cheaper I would buy one.
Got hosting
Check yourself. Cute computer, eh? And all that in a public talk about Debian.
in other news:
Most dot com companies went bankrupt after having no sellable product
Long lines are expected at the Department of Motor Vehicles
A man lost a poker hand drawing to an inside straight
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
...anyone with half a brain cell was not really surprised.
Film @ eleven.
What I'd really want would be a wearable server (not the type Intel is talking about). It'll run a webserver + db, and a web-browser. Users will mainly be using the browser to interact with it. Cert based authentication (https).
The display would be one of those snazzy shades/glasses.
For input - a tiny camera, a tiny microphone, something that detects where my eyes are looking at and a small keypad at my waist or that thought pattern recognition thing.
There's also network input - where me or permitted parties can submit/post files/objects into my server.
How it should work:
Getting input- using my eyes and the keypad, I specify a rectangle for the camera to capture.
Once the image is captured I can store it raw, or automatically run OCR on it, or annotate it with my voice on the microphone. For more text input could use the keypad or something like dasher.
The object (image/audio/etc) is then chucked into a database, with date and time, and possibly context/category (e.g. "presales meeting").
Retrieving - just browse the wearable server and download the images and other objects (movie, files, documents) - each day could possibly be thumbnailed.
If I need to exchange data with someone - they send me a link (possibly valid for a short time, alternatively they validate my cert and give me access) and I download from their server.
I mean, what's the point of typing and writing, if a lot of the data is already typed and written, drawn. e.g. it's already on the whiteboard, and your paper notepad. It is actually very hard to beat paper.
If the camera is hi-res enough you can do the handwriting recognition on the images anyway.
I mean, why lug a big A4 tablet around when you can have a small book-sized computer strapped to your side.
You only need a big display if others need to see what's on your screen. In which case just plug the wearable server to a projector.
If you want to do lots of typing etc, you'd probably do it on a desktop or notebook PC with a proper keyboard. The hardcore could plug a keyboard into the wearable server, but the wearable server might be more as a super PDA thing and less of a general purpose computer. I don't know about you, but typing is a LOT easier than writing or talking.
The only part where pen-based input is useful is probably for drawing. That said, lots of artists are pretty handy with a mouse nowadays. Recently saw one on Tech TV and he was really fast at coming up with stuff.
I was in the market for a portable computer for school about a month ago. I ended up settling on the closeout Compaq 2ghz celeron notebook (it was only 700 bucks). I was willing to spend up to around a thousand and would have REALLY like the digital paper functionality of a tablet (prerparing for M$ bashing) and for the new OneNote in Office 2K3. I looked at this program in the beta and it seemed like exactly what I was looking for to be able to get rid off all of my handouts (most of my proffesors create PDFs to hand out and you can simply import them digitally) and to combine ALL of my note taking. The thing is the program loses almost all of it's creative functionality on a laptop, it was really designed for a tablet. Considering I wanted to be able to play a few games and run other software on the computer a 1ghz PIII mobile vs a 2ghz celeron at a 5-800 dollar price savings seemed a no brainer. They need to come down in price and up in system performance before they'll take off. Otherwise they'll just go the way of the mini-disk.
It's all about the benjamins. Consumers don't want to spend that much and Microsoft, like always overcharging.
Why can't these manufacturers do what Sharp did to their Zaurius line; use Linux. It kills 2 birds with one stone; affordable tablets and stiffs microsoft.
... an integrated cell phone (that can actually be held and used like one), an integrated 3 Mpix camera/scanner (if it can read handwriting, it can surely read a newspaper), an integrated full quality audio system (supporting MP3, OGG, FLAC, etc), infrared port, ethernet port, 256 MB of RAM, 40 GB of storage, and of course ... run BSD/Linux.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
You can't compare prices between Tablet PC's and regular notebooks. Recently me and friends were looking into buying small form factor notebooks (Sony TR1, Fujitsu P series, Panasonic W2, etc.), but it turns out that Tablet PC's are always equally priced or sometimes cheaper for the same base features.
Who's seriously going to want to write their word documents? I type about 5x faster than I can possibly scribble with a pen, and with fewer errors to boot.
But I'm dying to get one of these to draw on!
Maybe if they bundled some of the better pressure sensitive pens and photoshop and painter instead of office, they'd find that people were more interested in using them as digital sketchbooks. I know some people say the digitizers aren't up to it, but from what I've read on tablet pc forums, it depends on which one you get. The ones with the newer Wacom based digitizers are supposedly pretty good if you're using one of the decent Wacom pens, which are all interchangeable with the crappy ones bundled with the tablets.
Maybe they should try pitching them more towards art students, and maybe try to bring the prices down a bit. I wish apple would make one of the convertable flip-over type tablets because I'm betting they could get it right on the first try. It's probably the only way I'd ever consider buying a mac, but I'd buy one in a heartbeat if they did it.
Introducing the new Occam Fusion! Now with sqrt(-1) fewer blades!
Offer me laptop with a stlus-optional touchscreen and a keyboard (hold the trackpad or keyboard-embedded nubbin), and I'll consider it.
Tablet PC hardware gives us a glimpse of where laptops should have headed. They typically have a much lower power consumption and, hence, could run a lot longer on a given battery size. That's what most people need. They don't need a 2.8ghz P4 to do word processing or compose e-mail. They don't need 17" screens either. But rather than embrace a real need (battery life and light weight), laptop manufacturers have concentrated on turning out machines with more horsepower than a blown Ferrari with nitrous oxide. When people happily use desktop machines running at under a gigahertz, it really makes you wonder why the slowest HP laptops now have either an Athlon XP-M 2200+ or a 2.4ghz Celeron CPU.
Want to sell Tablet PCs? Get rid of the swivel feature on the display, put a full-sized battery in them, load them up with Windows XP Pro, and sell them as long battery life, lightweight, practical laptops.
I bought a new laptop for work about four or five months ago, and I looked seriously at the TabletPCs. I'm a developer, and spend way too much time in meetings, writing on my little Palm Pilot. A TabletPC would have been great. But...
I also need it for development work, and the damn things are just to friggin' weak! I wound up buying a 2.8 Ghz P4 laptop with 512MB RAM and a 40GB HD for less than the cheapest TabletPC. I haven't seen a TabletPC with a decent processor, RAM or hard drive yet. The ones around when I bought my laptop were all P3s.
No wonder they're having a hard time selling them. Your average business consumer is going to look at the two laptops and say, "Wow, I can write on the screen! That's great! But why are you trying to sell me this old P3 laptop when there's a nice P4 sitting right next to it that's cheaper?"
There isn't much talk here of using tablet pcs as if they were inexpensive Cintiqs with hard drives... Which to me seems their real beauty. They are relatively CHEAP lcd drawing tablets, and the most attractive ones come with fold-out keyboards and harddrives, to boot. The real problem seems to me to be that manufacturers are indeed addressing the wrong market: To run a graphics-oriented OS, they are building an anemic graphics-processing computer. Without fail, as pointed out above, if you want to run, say, Photoshop on a laptop, there are much more powerful choices available. No one is making the tablet PC equivalent of the new Voodoo or Alienware laptop with a replaceable mobile graphics card, super fast processor, huge drawing screen. And that makes no sense. I mean, if you want to draw on the damn thing, why can't you buy a tablet that will run at a modern speed, i.e. the cutting-edge that some competitive graphics markets (like game level design) demand. This is why I think Apple may be off-base about Tablet PCs being a market to avoid: Yeah, the only people who would want a Tabletbook are, you know, that vast minority of long-haired artist types who like to use Macs for graphic applications like drawing and stuff, or notating music,or DVJing... I guess since most Macs go to the accounting crowd, this is a very small market indeed. I think what may have happened is that an attempt was made to introduce the machines broadly, rather than to the niche market of people who use electronic drawing tablets as part of their daily commercial repertoire in the first place. And maybe they did this because those people all use Macs. On the other hand, maybe the introduction of a killer PC-only ap like Adobe Atmosphere could change this equation for tablets.
If they'd just make the swivel, tablet pc turn it around and lock it screen on powerful laptops, the kind people use to do processor hungry work, and destop replacment computers, they might actually sell a few more! Think about it this way. You buy your new 3.4Ghz fully loaded laptop with everything, and it has the tablet style swivel around lock flat screen. Work on the road for a while like normal. Bring it home, flip the screen around, put it on a stand like its just a monitor, plug in keyboard and mouse, maybe a docking station. Boom, instant desktop, no fuss, no mess?
*There's Klingons on the starboard bow, scrape em off Jim!*
Clearly the Microsoft employees in the PC Magazine division are doing THEIR job! Something else must be to blame.
microslop has offices in one market street in san francisco. in the lobby, there's a small booth set up offering a "free demo" of the tablet pc. so exciting! that'll help the hardware guy's margins, i'm sure.
i mutter, "get an ibook" everytime i pass the microslop droids. and i would, too, if i had the dosh...
REPORT ALL OBSCENE MESSAGES TO YOUR POTSMASTER
"...WAYYYY overpriced as a notebook."
Yep, and underpowered. If someone came out with one of these babys using a Centrino processor or better, then I would have considered buying or recomending one to my clients. But when a client asks me to recommend a notebook, well, I just can't recommend something with a PIII processor at this point.
For example, someone noted above that the Tablet PC's main use within his company seemed to be during meetings. That's fine, and some of my clients could use that funtionality. Hell, I'd even be interested in it as something I could take to a bar and write on or browse the web wirelessly. (Wireless notebooks, by the way, are *great* for resolving bar arguments.)
However, it would have to be priced as something that maybe cost a few hundred dollars more but gave you equivalent performance to a high-end notebook. It's been marketed as a notebook with extra-funtionality, but with the current processors on most of them, they'll be obsolete in a year.
The Tablet PC needs to not only be marketed as a notebook with extra funtionality, but built like one. I guarantee you they would be *far* more successful if they matched the specs of the rest of today's laptops.
I've got two tablets: a ProGear which I bought for $600 when the SonicBlew decided to clear inventory, and a Toshiba Poretege 3500. I can tell you that, primarily, the biggest problem with these tablets is a cruddy software interface. I assume you remember the first incarnation of Windows CE, and how much of the interface was a lift of the Windows 95 GUI. Tablet XP is the same way. While the underlying components are all there, they are implemented to allow quick transition from XP to XP Tablet. The interface on these devices should be more along the lines of CE's CURRENT design, which presents much more information on a single screen, with a much more streamlined (read specialized) human-computer interface.
I'm developing software for the Toshiba, but have had a chance to use it for classwork (I'm a Senior in Electrical and Computer Engineering at OU), and I can seriously say that for people like me that take a lot of notes (read digital packrats), tablets have lots of potential. I can search my handwriting for specific keywords, or "print" a document to the Journal and mark it up, which is a great feature for professors that provide notes to follow along with in class. While everyone else is scribbling madly to keep up, I just pick the "highlighter" and highlight the notes, and maybe make some of my own in the side margin.
As far as the form factor goes, they're getting smaller, and lighter. Look at Acer's TravelMate, for example.
Also, what some people fail to realize is that there are two distinct types of tablets. All of the ones I've highlighted, with the exception of the ProGear are "convertible" machines. A second (cheaper) form factor is also out there, the "slate" machines. Check out a great overview at TheTabletPC.Net.
As they say with many other things, don't knock it 'til you try it.
Mike Hollinger
Michael C. Hollinger
There could be a great market for the Table PC's in college *IF* there were a way to start getting textbooks on CD.
I remember when there was a hype over eBooks a couple of years ago and one of the future visions were specifically for this. Students could download their text book, have multiple bookmarks in each text, highlight, have a dictionary loaded...
If that part could come true but with regard to Table PC's...I would love to do that. I wouldn't have a backpack full of notes, paper, books, and a laptop.
And unless I'm looking in all the wrong places I can't find my books digitized.
But there could be a market...
Abiit, excessit, evasit, erupit.
But in fact they're fucked companies. They have shareholders and employees who lose their jobs when their executives are seduced by a personal visit from "the richest man in the world." While the idiot CEOs who drive their hardware companies off the cliff are cohorts, the people who lose their jobs through such scandals are not in on the game. They're just screwed.
I got a Motion M1300 some months ago. It has allowed me to do serious work, and a lot of it, but with some reservations.
Any time large amounts of text need to be inputted, either the keyboard or the mic-headset comes out of the satchel. It's too tedious to write with a pen. However, I don't know how to write in cursive well enough to do it regularly, so ymmv...
Handwriting recognition is not an issue for me because I actually buy into Microsoft's idea of how Ink should be handled. I leave Ink stored as Ink, search it as Ink and use it as Ink. I input ascii by attaching a keyboard and typing. And never the twain shall meet. I'll use the recognizer now and again to insert words into a search engine (and I use InkIE for URLs), but not for much else.
XP Tablet edition is OK, made 1000% better when a 3rd party gesture recognizer is installed and configured.
All in all, I use it in more situations and more often than I used my previous laptop. Not more often enough to justify the huge price increase over a similarly equipped notebook, honestly, but the new-gadget factor mitigates that for me.
The biggest problems, IMO, are with the implementation and not necessarily the idea. The current crop of (MS-ordained) Tablets fall pretty short of a Star Trek PADD. Even the lightest one is too heavy to comfortably wield one-handed, and the coolest one still runs hot enough to cause user fatigue. The Electrovayas are the only ones that can last longer than 3-4 hours on a charge, and those weigh 4-8 lbs. On top of it all, the computers aren't generally powerful enough to handle XP's bloat, especially when using power management off AC power.
Tablets are also too fragile. Not that notebooks aren't, but these are hardly a replacement for a pen and paper pad.
Battery (life, weight and heat) and unit durability are the real issues IMO. Not the interface or handwriting recognizer.
Speech recognition, especially in noisy environments, is just not there yet. This is just about the only purpose (besides playing mpeg4, which is not really necessary in a corporate environment) which demands a lot of CPU in a machine like a tablet PC. So since it doesn't really work, why bother? I'd rather have something with an ultra low power CPU (maybe a midrange transmeta chip?) and wireless network. It should be running some light and reliable OS - I don't care if it's linux or tron or geos for god's sake, so long as it works. But basically, I want a big PDA. It doesn't need a lot of resources if it has wireless networking, which should be 802.11g. Why G? So I can walk all over a building and still get decent rates. B is certainly fast enough but when you're far away, you get poor rates, and if I'm depending on network storage for everything, then I'm going to need some decent bandwidth at all times, even in that wiring closet.
A tablet PC is not a replacement for a PC. Organizations like desktop PCs because they sit still and you can lock them up. I work for a community college and out of ~24 laptops in one department, ~8 of them were stolen. Tablet PCs are going to have the same problem. Make them cheaper and less powerful, and theft will both occur less often, and cost you less when it happens. A tablet PC simply doesn't need to be more powerful than a pocket PC. As long as you can still run vnc, an X server, and/or a terminal services client on it, a slow machine will still be just as useful as a fast one will be, today. When speech recognition improves further - I won't even go into handwriting recognition, which also sucks - then roll on the high-power tablet PCs. Until then, follow the KISS rule.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Fujitsu has sold laptops with touch screens for years.
An EM digitizer is not the same thing as a touch screen.
The best-selling Tablets are already notebooks (convertibles). Your idea was usurped before OEMs were even contacted about Tablet PCs.
One "Tablet" on the market now doesn't even convert to slate form!
Microsoft's entire plan is to change the notebook to add the digitizer layer so the special OS hooks will work. Their idea is yours, only they had it in 1998. Grats.
How is this better than my Palm?
Bill
(or Zaurus?)
bamph
I was ready with $3,000 in hand to buy just about any laptop I wanted about 1 month after the tablet PCs were available for purchase. I wanted a tablet really bad because the idea of it is very cool, especially for school where you're taking notes, there are some notes (i.e. diagrams, charts, etc) that aren't feasibly input with Word or Visio. So I liked the idea. Then I tried out every tablet on the market (except the Toshiba which was impossible to find, though it was touted as the best.) And I HATED it. They wanted $2,000 - $2,500 for one and the speed was slower, the screen was TERRIBLE (resolutions and viewing angles didn't even compare to lower laptop models), and the biggest annoyance is that the drawing slightly trailed your stylus. That was the one thing I wanted was no trail on the stylus. If it's going to replace pen and ink, it's got to behave more like pen and ink. In short, the technology apparently was not there to make the system worth the price for me. Dude, I bought a Dell.
Okay, so Tablets are too expensive and have flaws.
Just like the human condition is misery, that's the computer condition.
To hell with bias, even if it's relative to Microsoft. If Satan gave me a donut that smelled good I would still eat it and relish its donut-ness, even though it came from Satan.
Warts and all, Tablets are still fucking cool.
And I hope they succeed well enough to allow for necessary refinements in the near future.
Fuck geek pessimism, it'll never lead to anything good...
Stats from my tablet test of 3 seconds ago:
(Slightly less than) 2 second resume out of hibernation
(Slightly less than) 8 seconds cold boot to login (~4 seconds to desktop from login)
FUD, anyone?
Actually, there are linux drivers for many of the old P1 fujitsu tablets. I know; I worked on one of them.
e so urces.html
http://www.softwarekombinat.de/linux-point510-r
I feel tablets are cool, however, I think, you either want a notebook computer with detachable keyboard, or a PDA like device with larger screen.
A PDA with a DIN A5 screen could be cool. Think about it: Notebooks (the real thing) come in various sizes, from very small ones to larger ones, with Letter or Legal size.
Current PDAs just are comparable to those smaller notebooks. Tablets are more like bigger ones, but they aren't PDAs. They are full fledged expensive portable computers.
Do you want to sell computing devices with big screens? Take my advice: Do not pretend to put into them much more power that into a PDA, neither charge them much more than for a PDA.
And of course... PDAs are still expensive, even when are fading from the market. The reason is clear, besides the advantage of phones with PDA capabilities... How much paper and pencils you can buy with $200-$500?
Conclusion: If you want big volume of sales, let the prices fall. Keep away from useless aggregate value (XP).
Just MHO.
Got Pike?
Random tablet thoughts:
;) So they're laptops with a flexible use, you can use as a tablet when necessary. That's a good idea. The ones *without* such a keyboard though, eh ... less flexible, and and less protected screen, seems like all the advantages of ripping a laptop apart and gluing it back together with the pieces misaligned and the keyboard broken. "Sorry, Mr. Fratznubble, we put your screen on backwards and broke your keyboard. That'll be $200, please."
... I hope they have decent battery life, and they do have a swivel-away keyboard.
...), but the real issue is neck position. Laptop use enourages even more slouching and neck craning than I usually do, thanks.
1) you can get a nice name-brand x86 laptop, through sites like techbargains.com, for well under a thousand dollars, in some cases less than $700. Not the highest-end, but way better than anything available at anything like that price a year or so ago. March of progress, long may it wave. The cheapest near-equivalent tablets I've seen have been ViewSonic (ever bought a viewsonic computer, as opposed to monitor? I have not, have no idea, but therefore not a *positive* idea of their machines' quality) refurb'd machines at TigerDirect, at $999. Which, really, is not bad, except those particular machines have a huge bezel surrounding the screen, no keyboard (see next point), and battery life isn't great.
2) Some tablets have built-in keyboards that swivel around underneath for tablet view -- now there's an idea
3) So far, the power claims aren't great. I'd like to see the upcoming Antaur tablets reach the market
4) I would be much more interested in a tablet style computer if I had a desk stand to put the tablet itself in front of my like a conventiona lLCD monitor, and hook up a USB mouse / keyboard. I don't like most laptop keyboards (ThinkPads being an exception, and my Toshiba isn't *too* awful
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
If you want to taste tomato, you eat a tomato! If you want to taste lettuce, you eat some lettuce! If you want to taste oil, you drink some oil! If you want to taste vinegar, you have some vinegar! What is the point of salads?
Friend: Let's have some lettuce. Ready?
Me: Uh, hang on a sec. Let me get out my salad shooter. Just have to load up the lettuce here...just a minute, here's the tomatoes. Okay. Now I've got to mix the dressing... add spices... put everything away. Damn, the shooter jammed. Wait, wait. Okay. Done. Now let's eat.
Friend: *eats head of lettuce from bag*
the one redeeming feature that I have seen in these tablets is that most of them have screens that SWIVEL 180 degrees. Having that in a high-end (say one with a 16" screen) notebook would give me a woody. Namely, I could have a laptop, and then when I arrived at my destination, whip out a keyboard and mouse (from my *checked* baggage, tyvm), swivel the screen.... I could even see bluetooth being handy.
Wow, thanks for the great pointer.
I dusted off an old Point 510 and have the external CD-ROM hooked-up ready to load linux.
Just another great example of Microsoft failing miserably whenever they attempt to Innovate. It just goes to show you having billions of dollars in your warchest still can't match the innovation of smaller companies and groups like Apple and some of the projects found on Linux. -First it was 1993 The Microsoft Home software series (180 Software titles that flopped) -Then it was Microsoft Bob. -The ActiMate Plush toys of '97 (They turned into something from a B Horror movie when they got low on batteries) -Buying out WebTV and bundling IE and MSN with it because it might actually take off and Microsoft would have no control over it. -PocketPC is still the minority in the handheld market, and is having major issues making inroads in the Corporate Markets. -The over-hyped Microsoft "Orange" SmartPhones were dropped by the carrier even before production began. -The XBox failed to produce profitability or market dominance as "expected." -Tablet PC's a new take on a recycled idea yielding poorly designed and fragile PC's with mediocre tablet software that is nearly impossible to draw or write in script with. -And of course Windows still sucks, forcing the majority of discerning computer users to continue using alternatives. With many countries switching or thinking about switching to Linux some of us should start changing our tune about the end of Apple to singing about the beginning of the end for Microsoft. And just like Apple, just because we sing it doesn't mean it has to happen right away. Microsoft just has too many fingers in too many pies to do a sufficient job at all the markets they have extended into. Think the last years of the Roman Empire where they had over-extended. And soon the trampling hordes of the Linux Visigoths will be knocking on Big Redmond's door.
Something intelligent here.
The point of having a tablet PC is not to have a $3000 laptop replacement, but instead, a cheap, portable, wireless display device. It should cost no more than $1000, be able to stream music and video across the network, although it probably wouldn't have the best speakers. But what it can do is interface with your home entertainment center, browse your files over the wireless LAN and provide an efficient and easy way to input data.
They went for the laptop replacement and found out most people would rather have laptops. Duh!
What they need to go for is a very slim, less than 1" thick, coffee table addition. That's cheap enough we don't have to worry about breaking it, strong enough we can toss it around, but fast enough to play streaming video with a resolution of at least 1024x768. I would expect 1280x1024 in a 8"x11" format to do well, sub $1000, of course.
Frankly, I'm tired of hardware manufacturers complaining about MSFT. If they didn't want to be 0wn3d by Microsoft, they shouldn't have handed them their monopoly status, by, for instance, accepting Microsoft's terms on dual-installs. Now that MSFT has them by the short-n-curlies, they start whinging on? Tough luck, and MSFT could care less--they'll just negotiate with someone else, since the hardware is a commodity and therefore any given manufacturer is easily replaced by another one that wants to play ball.
All that time that the manufacturers were getting discounts and special arrangements with MSFT, to whose benefit did they think those benefits were designed to serve? Did they really think that MSFT was giving them a 90% discount on the retail cost of the OS, yet MSFT wouldn't come out the winner in the long run?
Listen up, Dell--think you can't be replaced by manufacturers out of China, or India, for 75%? And then what are you going to do--sell Linux? You already helped kill that market by giving in to MSFT.
This is what makes Palladium a certainty--MSFT will simply use any manufacturer that complies with their wishes, and ignore the feedback that Dell/HP is passing on from their customers.
--
$tar -xvf
When tablets first became viable, GO Corporation came up with a beautiful operating system for them - PenPoint. And Microsoft killed them. Crushed them like a bug.
PenPoint avoided most of the things that people are complaining about. For a start, PenPoint did not have a menuing interface. Menus don't work in a tablet structure. It was entirely gestural. The paradigm was a "page". The user started with a blank page, and started writing. If the user started writing letters, it would start converting that to text. Deletion was by crossing text out. Insertion was with the proofreader's "reverse carat" checkmark. The user would get a new blank page by "flicking". p>
Microsoft saw that they had to kill it for one reason - PenPoint didn't use the OS/Applications model. If you started writing letters, text tools would be available. If you drew a square, graphing tools would appear, etc. There was no concept of "open a program, browse for a file, load the file into the application". All pages were available, and the tools needed were connected to the pages. Important pages could be marked with tabs.
Microsoft announced a terrible product called "Pen for Windows". It was credible enough (because it was from Microsoft) to kill PenPoint in the market. But it was also terrible (because it was a 1.0 product from Microsoft) and would up killing the entire Tablet catagory.
Don't assume tablets are awful because Microsoft makes tablets awful. Tablets require a totally different way of thinking about things, and PenPoint was (IMO) the last real re-thinking of the computer interface (if you don't believe me, read up on it.)
"How perfectly Goddamn delightful it all is, to be sure" Charles Crumb
The main problem with these is that the market target was wrong. I would myself want one of these but NOT at work, rather in the bed ! In the morning (or at night if I had problem with sleep) I would use these to browse the web for news or whatever. Or check todays agenda etc. Or in the kitchen when doing the breakfast.
The main problem with this is that they are WAY TO EXPENSIVE regarding the functionality ! If the price had been a quarter of today and marketing targets the uses I mentioned above, they would have been a success !
Mundus Vult Decipi
I'd buy a tablet tomorrow if I could fire up Mathcad, and start scribbling complex math formulae all over it, having it neaten it up, and then run all sorts of neat analysis on it - ever try to write a big formula on a computer? I usually give up and go to a peice of paper. A mathcad program that could take scrawled formulae as input would be a killer ap. Incidentally, my Palm already does this, but only for extremely simple formula.
If the "tablet" was around 200.00 then it would be worth it, but, you can get a nice notebook for less than half the price of one of theos things with a dvd player/cd burner, nice big hard drive, ect...
tablet Hardware makers " why won't anyone buy out tablet pc's??? they are only 1600.00 more than a laptop!"
To tablet hardware makers: make them cheaper!!!!
is just a damn toy anyway!
They're probably also going to be shocked when they discover people won't rush out to buy fuel cell powered laptops either.
What, you mean people would rather be able to recharge their laptop batters for free and in the convienence of their own homes/offices instead of searching frantically from store to store for a six pack of new fuel cells?
Who could have known!?!?
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
If only they didn't cost so much. Compaq and Toshiba's Tablet PC offerings cost at least $1700, and a top of the line notebook from Dell costs like $1500, including DVD, CDRW, 15in. screen, etc. When they drop to less than $500, then I'll consider it. MS needs to refocus on what people need in Tablets. I don't need the latest processors, the ability to watch movies, etc, but I could use the ability to write notes on a big screen, open up the usual productivity apps like Excel and Word, etc. And they need to drop the price on the Tablet PC OS itself.
How many more time does Microsoft have to do this to one of its "partners," before these greedy morons learn? Any company who enters into a partnership with Microsoft has the same chances of emerging unscathed from the coupling as a male black widow spider.
Here's a tip, fellas: Microsoft has billions of dollars to fall back on when what they say will be "the future" crashes and burns. You don't. And they don't care about you once it becomes clear that whatever you're doing for them won't put dump trucks full of cash on the road to Redmond.
Stop partnering with Microsoft, Goddammit!
The internet is abuzz with "instant reviews" of the new tablet PCs. Woop-dee-do. For anyone contemplating buying one of these I'd recommend you wait... a good long time in fact...', 'First of all, I question the value of a review written by anyone after one day of using a new product. The only reason I can think of to do this is that it allows you to say glowing things about the product and still be "objective". Perfect for anyone being rewarded (directly or indirectly) by the vendor. What a potential buyer of any new device really needs is a review written after a few weeks of usage, that would be in this case:
After the thing has been treated like a pad of paper for a while: Dropped a few times, been stacked with other materials including stapled paper and paper clipped paper and so forth, carried under ones arm for a while, tossed into the passenger seat of your car, thrown from that seat onto the floor when you slam on brakes thanks to that stupid driver in front of you. It needs to be evaluated after its run out of batteries a few times when you really needed it to keep working. One needs to know what a good "fall-back" plan is for the device (like always carry a real pad of paper with it, or a spare set of batteries, etc). Does the screen get scratched with use? That would be the case if like Palm devices it has a semi flexible plastic screen. Or is the screen hard like glass, scratch-proof, but easily broken in a fall? Do you HAVE to us a special pen with these? Won't a regular palmtop stylus do? or a fingernail in a pinch? I sometimes find in meeting that I take TOO many notes. When I get to a PC I can often summarize these notes with a sentence or two. How will this compare to loading all your notes, scribbles and all onto your PC for permanent review. Will I treasure or loath these added use of my disk space after a year or so?
I think there is a future for these devices. Lord knows, the industry has shown a willingness to keep trying no matter how many times they get it wrong. The question is: Is this the time they finally get it right?
Finally, after reading all the praise and contempt for Microsoft I haven't seen anyone else point out that there is very little risk for Microsoft here. They are only responsible for the operating system, and from what I can see its mostly a derivative of their other products. If it fails, no big deal for them. The hardware guys are taking all the $$ risk. They'll scratch and claw at one another until only one or two companies are making them at a profit. The worst thing that can happen for Microsoft is that price pressure will bring the average price for these things down to about $200 where they belong, at which point it won't be viable to run an expensive operating system on them. In the mean time MS will rake in the licensing fees. They'll do well in the medium term. I have no problem with a Microsoft that is forced (mostly against its will) to continue innovating, even if that innovation is largely just variations on a theme. The existence of open source alternatives is going to keep Microsoft honest from here on out. It will eventually transform them into a different company than they are now. Smaller, less critical to our infrastructure, probably doing a lot more consulting and a lot less of everything else. If HP and a few others have to pay the price for Microsoft's continued success in the mean time, so be it, they did so quite willingly. There is already a non-MS box out there at a much lower price (made by a non-US company of course) and there will soon be more. I can wait.
Who would want to buy a Tablet PC. It's like carrying a laptop in 1 hand like a PDA. If they really want to make a good Tablet PC, it should be roughly 4 times the size of a PDA yet half the size of a laptop. That's the only way I think it can sell. Oh yeah, that Google Hacks book from O'Reilly is pretty stupid. You can already learn how to do that for free w/ Google.
.smell my feet.
Oh well, I've bought the Evo TC1000 and all I have to muck about this 'gadget' is that the whole handwriting recog stuff is not usable under linux thus I removed the 2nd partition again to let windoze rule the world again. But beware thou the cpu is only 1.0 GHz its more than adequate for the office job. In fact I bought this thing for university because typing on notebooks is not fully accepted (its disturbing) and the handwriting has often replaced my old school paper block. Thou I'd wish there would be more applications supporting the digital ink stuff - I know wrong place to charm pro MickeySoft, and I completely agree that the Apple Newton was better so MS did a poor job implementing the bought Newton tech. but after like 2 month of using this thing I'd say its pricy and the promised 5 hours of battery time must have been measured with static reading or typing (wireless off, harddrive off, and the gf2go chip on powersave too) Still I feel very comfortable with my Tablet PC just because technology has gotten much better. This thing is clearly nothing for surfing the net (typing url even with the PocketPC graffity stuff is hard) but you'll always have your keyboard slide in when you need to type faster or more text at once. and for all those who happen to have a TC 1000 I speak from heart - never ever unplugg the damn keyboard - the Tablet PC under normal use gets quite warm, but then again its weight of only 1.6kg if you handle the thing correctly is like a charming touch to the holding hand ;-)
Go on and flame,... I just could not resist after I got hold of a promotional Example I got addicted to it.
But I'd love to join some linux group working on a Linux Tablet Edition with an even better recognition kernel.
BTW: The correct phrase is "toe the line".
I have a desktop at work, where I'm sitting at a desk and not moving too far {except to traipse across the room to hoik the power lead out of a crashed Windows box}. I have a laptop which I can use in most other places. No Wireless network at home, but I do have the twenty-metre CAT5 lead that came with my broadband starter pack, and that's plenty long enough for my two-up-two-down terrace.
.....
I also have a brand new Palm Tungsten E, so new I haven't learned half its features yet but I'm generally impressed so far. The handwriting recognition is nice for entering a little text, and the ability to draw on the screen is great. Also nice is the way it keeps all its applications "always open" - I don't have to remember to save an unfinished drawing before I play a game of chess or switch off. It's a bit like KDE's session restore, but more so.
However, I can't imagine using handwriting, nor the on-screen keyboard, to enter a whole lot of text. I still like a proper keyboard. Sure, it's not perfect, but I've got so used to it now, I wouldn't want anything else. Decent key travel gives proper negative feedback. And I can't see any use for voice input either. In a large office it would be next to unworkable. Highly-directional headset mics would solve half the problem - other people's voices getting into my mic - but not keep my voice out of other people's ears!
So it's really a case of horses for courses. And an expensive, keyboardless laptop with a processor that isn't quite upto the job of running a burdensome OS is only ever going to be useful to a few people
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Personally, I'd love to have a transformable tablet PC. If they'd just make one with a larger screen, a faster CPU, and give it a decent price (not the $1000 markup of the current ones), it would be an easy choice for me because I'd get all the functionality of a modern laptop plus the ability to fold the screen down and read a book or browse the web in portrait mode. I think that would be cool, especially if the PC was running some kind of tablet-Linux OS and not XP.
..wayne..
1. The machines are very under powered.
2. They come with Windows built in
3. They are very expensive, from 2 to 4 times more than an equivalently powered laptop
What I look for:
1. $300 price tag
2. At a strong arm processor running Linux
3. 800x600 minimum screen resolution
4. Wireless access
5. Linux preinstalled
Just like racism only applies against African-Americans.
Hope this lesson in Slashdot Correctness has helped.
Tablet PCs miss a huge market. Think output, not input!
Typing and mice aren't perfect, but for most people perform well for input and control. The real problem is reading from a PC. What I need is a low-cost dumb display.
I need to be able to move away from my PC and read. A lightweight, mono touchscreen, with wireless connection to my PC would be great for browsing and reading.
I just got sent a 100-page report in Adobe PDF to comment on. I don't want to print it out; neither do I want to sit at my monitor. I need to have a dumb display.
With a simple touch pop-up keyboard on screen, it would serve for basic browsing - like searches and filling in forms.
I wouldn't use it as a PDA.
I want a computer that I can haul around to look at and edit my drawings. A keyboard and trackpoint is pretty clumsy, IMO. A portable digitizing tablet which you "draw" on the display screen directly to the display screen rather than a separate tablet is pretty nifty to have.
I haven't bought one of these yet.
I'd actually like to see a regular PDA that's 1cm thick with a 10x13 cm screen, much like the PADDs on Star Trek, I think that would be the best of both worlds.
I can think of one other MAJOR computer company that doesn't offer a table PC for the very same reason.
The CEO of that company used the same rational when asked why not: (paraphrased) "How much does a laptop keyboard cost us? About $5? People get a heck of a lot of functionality out of that $5 part." That was just before the launch of the tablet PC. The interview with Jobs you quote was from March 2003. So I don't think Apple really deserves all the credit.
Back when people like NCR were making dual-platform pen computers such as the NCR-3125, MS licensed Windows less expensively if a manufacturer licensed Windows for _all_ of their machines, which most (all?) did.
That meant that Windows for Pen Computing was essentially free w/ a machine, but if one wanted PenPoint, one had to pay extra for that, even if one didn't get Windows for Pen Computing (dual-boot setup).
I'm baffled that Microsoft is re-creating this scenario by pricing Windows XP for Tablets higher than Windows XP for anything else, especially when one of the promises of the pre-Windows 95 era was that pen computing would be bundled by default.
My guess here is that they're paying extra for bundled software / technologies---don't they have to license Paragraph's Calligrapher HandWriting Recongnition?
I'm pretty sure they bought Aha! Software outright though (sure wish I could find a copy of InkWriter... for Windows 3.1 for Pen Computing), so that (morphed into Journal) shouldn't be it.
That said, I find my Fujitsu Stylistic quite nice, and've almost finished transitioning to it (now my NeXT Cube is relegated to network services / driving a NeXTLaser (and the odd bit of PostScript illustration or interactive TeX work), my ThinkPad has gone to my wife, my daughter is getting my Newton MessagePad, and I've connected my Wacom ArtZ to my wife's Mac for the kids to use w/ Disney Magic Artist....)
William
(who'd've bought an iBook or PowerBook if Apple would just break down and make a pen convertible, ironically they bundle InkWell for free w/ Jaguar---they should just add some additional pen-oriented UI (gestures))
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
This looong series of steps only has truth because you're talking about a Windows laptop, where Standby and Hibernate modes aren't really that reliable or practical, so everybody shuts everything down all the time.
However, it is possible for the only required steps to be to open the laptop, wait almost no seconds, do your work, hit the keyboard shortcut for Save, and close the lid.... (I do not mean this as a troll)..if you use a Mac laptop. Mac OS X Sleep mode is so reliable and instant wake/sleep that a lot of us simply leave tons of apps running, and open and close the thing at will. Like this:
You open the lid. The OS is available as soon as you get the lid fully open. The app you want is already running because you left it running, because you know that's perfectly safe on this OS. If you are lucky, the app's already in the foreground. Right away, you do whatever you needed to do. You hit Command-s to save, and close the lid. It's asleep right away. Battery drain drops to a mere trickle, and it's ready for action whenever you choose to open the lid again.
I can't keep up with demand for Scots Tablet, though ...
"Hmm, was it Bob... no, let's see, here's that email about overpricing the tablet OS, nothing really wrong there though.... perhaps it was Phil that came up with...AHA! Here it is, dated 1998, the exact wording is...'Let's make a hardware reference design that takes an ordinary laptop and remove the opening portion and just slaps a touch screen on instead'.
Excellent! now to find who wrote it and fire his as- oh. shit. Bill. Fuc*& Bastard sonofabitch!
Everyone on here complaining that the tablet is not for serious work has obviously never tried one in the way that it is supposed to be used.
:-P
.. anything but a place where idiots talk about something they've never even used.
First, you wouldn't ask someone to wait while it boots up if they were to give a number -- because the unit can be put in sleep mode. I simply flip the switch and the unit is available -- there is no bootup time waiting.
Also, If I need a keyboard then I have a docking station which provides it. Since the unit can be hot plugged into the docking station and the power cord then battery life is also not a problem either.
And what are the other complaints? Handwriting recognition? Actually, the worse I write the better the recognition.
Any other myths?
You guys complaining should actually USE a tablet pc first or at least read about them on a real website. Go to tabletpctalk.com or tabletpcbuzz.com or maybe the new one tabletquestions.com
Gesh.
If they had launched these things on the upswing of the economy, they might have actually caught on as a nitch device, or at least as a "gotta have" for the hip do-nothing maketing technophiles in many companies, leading to at least halfway decent sales.
Instead they were launched at the *bottom* of the economy, nobody had any capital money, and those that did sure as hell weren't dropping it on something like tablet PC, which was a solution in search of a problem.
Notice that most of the ads showed it replacing the cocktail napkin? Note to Microsoft: if there are cocktails, my laptop is at home.
I wish apple would make one of the convertable flip-over type tablets because I'm betting they could get it right on the first try.
I 100% agree with you. I was holding out and hoping for an Apple laptop/tablet, which would combine the creme de la creme of two fields -- Apple makes the best laptops, and tablets are the best kind of laptop.
Unfortunately Apple has been mum (though OS X has integrated handwriting recognition, so there's hope). Instead I broke down and bought on Acer. It has been incredible for these reasons:
- it's small. not quite as small as the smallest vaios, but it's very, very small. people see it and say "hey, that's a sexy laptop". When I pop the clips and flip the screen, their jaws drop.
- it is an excellent paper replacement. if you like to do your thinking using graphs, rough sketches, outlines, or on a whiteboard, it's very handy. i used to go through reams of lined paper, now I use MS Journal. draw, erase, move, highlight, undo, everything.
- if you like to doodle, you will love it (the Acers are pressure sensitive, and Alias Sketchbook is a nice app).
- it's a perfectly functional laptop. i'm typing on it right now. i code on it.
- in a couple of minutes I'll take it out into the living room (integrated wireless). flip it around, and browse the web with the stylus. most web pages display better in portrait orientation, and most don't require keyboard input. the only sucky thing is typing in URLs -- make sure you have a rich list of links in your favorites list, homepage, etc.
If you've read this far, let me also describe the first truly new computer-interface experience I've had in a long time. the built-in microphone sucks, but here's what you do:
- get a headset with a boom mike
- plug it in, configure XP Tablet voice recognition
- flip it into tablet mode
- dictate to your heart's content.
Long-term usage of a computer without a keyboard is quite possible with this setup. The voice rec is about 85% for me, but with the stylus I can be correcting previous mistakes while I continue to speak. It feels very natural.
Okay, now the drawbacks:
- pen alignment isn't perfect. i keep trying to recalibrate it, but it never quite lines up right, especially at the edges of the screen. the can make detail sketching a pain in the neck.
- the TFT LCD screen is bright and sharp, but contrast changes significantly with viewing angle. this can make sketching a pain in the neck (lines look too soft from one angle, to dark from another. hard to tell what the final will look like on other monitors).
Best anecdote: last night I took it to a party, put it in tablet mode, put a cheap wooden picture frame around it, installed a slideshow screensaver, and hung it on the wall. it looked like a digital photo frame, and drew a lot of startled compliments.
I can't recommend it enough. If you like drawing and are considering getting a laptop, it's well worth the extra money (after rebates, the Acer was about $1800).
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention -- there is one other problem. The Microsoft APIs for recording pen data are well-documented and fairly easy to use. It sends rapid data packets whenever you move the stylus (even when hovering over the screen). Each packet provides pressure and x/y. They CLAIM is should also send pen tilt data, but even though the packets contain x-tilt and y-tilt data, they are always 0. so my goal to write a 3d app that models how and where I am holding my pen isn't working yet.
however, it's proof that you can program on, and for, tablets fairly easily. Just instantiate an InkCollector object, register it on an hwnd, and you're off the races.
But why do you have to log in after hibernation?
Aren't you already logged in?
If you do have to log in after hibernation, I think our friend with an Apple laptop has an excellent point - you open the case, your favourite application is open and you simply type and close the case. You don't have to log in or anything.
Or perhaps I misunderstood you? It seems surprising that you should have to log in (i.e. type your name and password into boxes) in order to wake up from hibernation.
Even if you can just open the laptop and write, if it takes you time to boot you are probably better off with a Palm. After all, you can hit the ON button on a Palm and be in the last application you used instantly. Then you can write (or even type on the fancier ones).
Seems to me that just the large form factor and the wait for action dooms the tablet to irrelevence - the Palm's way of working is far superior.
D
IAAD, and have just bought the toshiba (now heavily discounted) as a good notebook (PIII 1.33G seems faster than most 2.2GHz P4 notebooks I have played with + 1G RAM - I use vmware for development) and to play with the tablet.
The thing that gets me is that at work it is brightly lit (I am an ED physician) with lots of overhead flouro. I start using the tablet, and I get masses of glare. Great for meetings in rooms with no direct light (i.e. uplighters) where the PHBs live, but if we were to use this technology on the wards, it would be very fatigueing, unless they change the lighting.
Anyone else found the same?
Humorous signatures are over-rated.
I had my boss get me a tablet about 10 months ago. I find it very handy for some things, and not for others. Much like any piece of technology.
For taking notes during classes or seminars I like it a lot. For letting my 3 year old draw pictures, it's great. IMO it would be great for students in class. For reading PDF's the portrait mode is great because I can finally see the whole page, and I can read it in a natural position.
For network admining, it's terrible. I hate trying to fix a server problem with it.
Basically it's suitability is based on what your intended application is. Just like anything else.
Er - hang on a minute, my tablet just crashed ...
Why else do you think he came down with TWO tablets?
You don't get in close with The Main Man wihtout knowing a thing or two about redundant backups!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I've seen the Acer. It's a little too small for me. I want one of the 12" ones. The Toshiba 3505 is nice but too slow and power hungry. The new Fujitsu T3010 seems about right though.
Wacom puts the pressure sensor in the pen, and they make the best digitizer that most of the tablets use, so on most you can just buy one of the better sensitive pens and never use the crappy bundled one that comes with the tablet.
I think the tilt sensor might be pen-dependant too, I'm not sure if it's actually sensed by the screen or if it's a gyro system in the pen itself or some kind of differential compare in the pen between top and bottom (most likely I think).
Introducing the new Occam Fusion! Now with sqrt(-1) fewer blades!
The ability of marketing people to forget anything that happened more than five years ago is truly amazing. The "Tablet PC" is just a renaming of the equally unsuccessful "pen computing" boondoggle of the early 90's.
There are a number of reasons why pen computing failed that are equally applicable to tablet PCs, including the oft-overlooked fact that even if handwriting recognition was as reliable as typing, a mediocre typist can still type faster than he can write.
The main reason tablets have failed for a second time is this: there's no general demand for them, and the niche applications they do appeal to are better served by small, cheap devices.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
I hired a few for my wedding, I'll encode the video of their use at a later date, but we used them for Usher duties:
http://trap.me.uk/wedding/tabletpc/pics/
It was extremely fun getting Linux working on them, and they added a techy feel to the wedding. I'd probably use them more if they were lighter. I'd be disappointed to see the technology die due to poor marketing or reliance on MS.
OK, so it wasn't that funny...
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Furthermore, executives don't generally use pens any more than they use keyboards (except perhaps to sign documents generated by other people). An executive's job is to read things, listen to people, think about the business, and tell people what to do. A tablet PC assists with none of those. What they want is (yes, I'm afraid it's true) a voice-controlled system, the 21st-century version of a dictaphone.
(This is from a Motion M1300)
Since the device I used prior to the Motion was the terrific Psion Netbook PDA, I am very much aware of the difference between the two in terms of boot-up time. The Psion was truly instant-on: activate power, begin working.
Testing with my M1300, I get these stats:
Cold boot to login prompt: 31 seconds
Login prompt to desktop with three folders open and seven applications loading at startup: 12 seconds.
You can login from hibernation or not, depending on how paranoid you are. Resume from hibernation takes a couple seconds.
There's also another suspend mode that turns off the screen but keeps processes running, from which resume time is nearly instantaneous.
"Wacom puts the pressure sensor in the pen, and they make the best digitizer that most of the tablets use, so on most you can just buy one of the better sensitive pens and never use the crappy bundled one that comes with the tablet."
Except that it doesn't work that way. My wacom stylus does not work on my Toshiba 3505. TabletPCs are not good for drawing on, the screen is too small and there is no pressure sensitivity built into the system. The amount of plain ignorant comments on slashdot when it comes to tablets is astounding, people shooting their mouths off without ever having used one or having used the shittiest of the crop in a store and dismissing them as a result. Guess what fags? They aren't meant for coding. Don't try to using them for the typical gay slashdot activities, its not what they're for.
On the other hand, ya know what they are great for? Physics and math notes. Fucking fantastic for physics and math notes. You wanna draw free-body diagrams, you wanna do linear algebra or analytic geometry, they simply cannot be beat.
"I think the tilt sensor might be pen-dependant too, I'm not sure if it's actually sensed by the screen or if it's a gyro system in the pen itself or some kind of differential compare in the pen between top and bottom (most likely I think)."
Typical slashdfag. When in doubt, speculate speculate and speculate wildly. A gyro? in the pen? does that sound even remotely likely to you? Refrain from patting yourself on the back for your astounding intelligence and very special but unrecognized!!! talents for just one minute, smoke less crack and try using your beloved internet to find the real answer for a change.
..but there are "TabletPCs" that run Windows CE 3.0 or higher.