Linux Based Tablets Are Coming

CrypticSpawn writes "Read some good news on Diracian; there will be a Linux tablet coming out running Lycoris's Linux distribution, Lycoris Desktop/LX Tablet Edition. What's great is the tablet is the Protege by Toshiba, so you get a laptop and a tablet wrapped up into one. I guess I am a gadget fanatic, I love my Zaurus, now I want this. They even have pictures of it here. Also found another reference of this tablet on PC World, without the pics."

Comments

Have the best of both worlds (Im a tabletPC owner)

[Sadfsdaf]

You do know that the swivel isn't the only way to combine a tablet slate and a convertible "notebook" style, right?

HP's and Motion computer have DETACHABLE keyboards, meaning that you CAN have the best of both worlds.

I would know, I have a Motion M1300 with mobile keyboard.

A detachable keyboard is very very nice, I can break out the keyboard for my social sciences where text notetaking is all that's needed and keep the keyboard in my backpack when I'm in a math class. If I need to draw a couple of diagrams/charts/etc side by side in my text-heavy classes, I could do that too :-)

Say what you will about the sucess of tablets, having handwritten notes searchable to prep for tests is happy-fun-good-times. Bringing a plain laptop isn't good enough for most classes, I'd end up bringing a sheet of paper along with it to draw diagrams, and because of that it fucks up my organization when looking over my notes later. Tablets keep everything ORGANIZED and searchable.

I really couldn't see some start-up company doing this on their own. There's some serious stuff in there, all the modern tablets have pressure sensitivity (the "button" is on the tip of the pen, not the screen like with palm pilots) and I'm pretty sure that Linux doesn't have drivers to support that last time I looked, so doodling or professional drawing won't work (Penny Arcade is drawn on a tablet, for example). Also there is very little integration with the tablet in slate mode (no keyboard), think of linux w/o using the command line . Linux without the convienience of power nor the UI integration of Tablet XP. We're talking about copying and pasting handwritten stuff between programs here, if you want to get indignant.

Tablet PCs have a LONG way to go with Linux, unfortunately.

Skeptical

[tftp]

The device, regardless of the OS, will not be adopted by corporate masses any time soon. The reason is that the PHBs are really conservative people. It took them 20 years to progress from pen and paper to a notebook. Expect 20 more years to move them to a wearable computer with HUD and voice recognition (by then it will be standard. You can have it even now if you want to.)

Consumers and early adopters are free to buy the thing, and they probably buy most of manufactured tablets already. They have too much money to burn, apparently, and for some students expenses are already so high that one or two more thousand does not matter. These tablets are used with varying success; some say that they hate writing, other say that they love it. Personally, I barely can write, and I would really hate to write on a heavy, bulky tablet (I could tolerate PDA's Graffiti until it gave up the ghost.)

The rest of tablets are used where they actually make sense - think about your average UPS or Fedex driver, for example. There are huge warehouses all over the country that are full of boxes. If you are in charge of that, you'd better keep track of every single box that goes in or out, because you can't check inventory often, and if any is missing you easily can owe to the owner more than you can earn during the rest of your life.