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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."
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
The CEO of our company was an early adopter of the Tablet PC (Toshiba) and he's actually very happy with it. However I have noted that he rarely ever uses it in it's tablet mode. He is more oft to use it as a nice mini notebook.
Now while the Toshiba makes a very nice notebook (albeit a weak one with a PIII processor) it is WAYYYY overpriced as a notebook. I have used our CEO as an example to prevent any further purchases. I nice Dell lattitude can be had for much less.
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The healthcare company I worked for at the time had a bunch of the original tablet computers from Fujitsu. Microsoft never updated the Pen Windows after Win95, so we were left with a ton of $4500 bricks only months after.
I posted exactly the same message as yours above, a couple of years ago when this marketing hype coming out of Redmond was starting up again for the Tablet PC. I got a ton of replies from the trolls when I posted that the minute the market started going south, you would be stuck with an expensive pen computer w/o drivers. The trolls replies were that "the technology wasn't there in '95" and "now Microsoft was committed to the Tablet PC because the technology is there" and "this was going to be the hottest thing since electronic sliced bread."
Since there are not enough of these devices sold, nobody is going to waste time writing Linux drivers for these M$ abandoned tablets, when there's lots of other things to be done. You will be left with an obsolete brick in just a few years.
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.
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.
Just try writing on a tablet PC with one hand while holding the damn thing in the other. You can't do it. You'll be searching for a table in no time, and probably have to sit down too, because there's no table high enough to use while standing. And if you try holding it with your elbow, it's at the wrong angle for writing. Clipboards work because they're light enough that they don't require much leverage to hold with a grip.
You need something that fits in the palm of your hand, and that means six inches wide at the most.
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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)
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That's a good point... and we've been trying it. We are currently piloting two systems--one that requires vocal training and one that does not. We're doing it this way because most docs will not take the time to do the training.
The only reason that this is a consideration is because even the dictation people miss a bunch of words... so everything dictated as to be re-edited. If voice to text systems get 95%, it might be usable and would save an assload of money.
Digital dictation systems that connect to software for transcription haven't worked well either.
Of course, it doesn't help that we docs were all trained to dictate, scratch something unreadable in the chart, and move on.
Davak
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!"
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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.
Me... I just photograph the classroom whiteboard with my Zire 71... and jot some comments into the comment field for that photo. Have a tape recorder running as well.
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Oh ok. So MS promised to keep on marketing tablets; the HW mfrs purchased on that basis, then MS failed to live up to (i.e. broke) their promise? Seems like a cut and dry case for a lawsuit then - some sort of fraud going on there (by MS).
On the other hand, I LOVE it as a way to take notes for class. I'm not a big fan of Microsoft, but the beta for One Note has been excellent. Creating a new page for each day's lecture is convenient, separating graphs and charts from ordinary text is useful, and of course the ability to quickly insert space in the middle of a page is great. Moreover, it has an integrated recording feature, so I can review lectures later on my mp3 player while I run. It looks like I'm going to have to pay through the nose to get the full version, although its not in at the bookstore yet, so I don't know what the student discount will be.
Moreover, the tablet is also quite useful for those of us with artistic inclinations, giving a portable Wacom tablet that doesn't need to be plugged into another computer.
No, the tablet form factor is not good for data entry. Although, it is easy enough to buy a docking station if you do want it to double as a work station. For myself, I have a desktop already, so all I need my portable to do is take notes and organize contacts & schedules.
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