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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 !
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.
sigh, even those who don't know what SCO is post SCO jokes nowadays.
The IT section color scheme sucks.
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.
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.
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
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?)
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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.
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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!"
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
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.
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?
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.
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
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!
Well ok... but my contention is that laptops dont have the storage or the heat management that desktops have. I have so many files (200+GB)I spend about an hour a week deciding what I can delete and what I cant live w/o. I see the need for a laptop, but only for making my work portable. What about games? The demands of videogames on proc and GPU are huge. Laptops cant keep up with that. They are fragile, and collect so much dust which cant be cleaned out. I could build a desktop for under $500 that a $1500 laptop wouldnt even come close to eating my tracks, especially if it was mac. Thoes things are way over priced. They dont make laptops that can match mid-level desktops. I figure that you would spend about 10 times more for portability in a laptop.
If I wanted easy I wouldnt be an engineer or a patriot.
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.
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
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.
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.
"...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
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.