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Cheap Linux Tablets, And (Maybe) An Apple Tablet
penguinrenegade writes "Element Computer has come out with the first sub-$1000 Tablet, and it doesn't come with Windows. It's not running a stripped OS like Windows CE, but a full-fledged copy of Lycoris Desktop/LX. This company seems to really have it in for Microsoft, with a 'No Windows' policy. Good to see someone finally standing up against paying the Microsoft tax. Maybe now we'll start seeing Linux only OEMs and resellers." Also on the tablet computer front, SeanAhern points out Cringely's latest Robert X. Cringely column, in which Cringley makes the case that Apple is readying a tablet computer for market, and "suggests that 'until next year, the parts won't have been there to make tablet PCs successful. What's missing has been the killer app, and what kept a killer app from appearing was a lack of hardware support, which I believe will be over soon,'" writing "He's got some interesting ideas about where Jobs might go with his Digital Hub idea." (This is an Antaur-based machine, not the Toshiba tablet mentioned in October.)
Apple's bound to make a tablet eventually. If the market demands it, it'll definitely happen, and the current tablets on the market suck. Apple's got the Newton tech for handwriting recog, as well as Inkwell, the most underused feature in OS X...now, all you have to add is a touch sensitive screen and BINGO.
Depending on the software availability angle, this could be a major breakthrough for Linux, being the primary OS for a vendor.
Man that was fast... and this error makes me wonder:
1226 - User 'elementc_ms2' has exceeded the 'max_questions' resource (current value: 10000)
Does that mean there are in excess of 10,000 people trying to hit this site at once? Wow.
If i remember correctly, Robert X. Cringely was the same guy who wrote that Win XP ran DOS underneath becasue "cmd" works and that windows should be based on linux instead because linux is better than DOS. /. , what i dont understand is why this guy is so important?
For all the stupid things i have seen on
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
But, how do you protect that screen? Something big like that just seems to be a huge scratch and scuff collector. Is this the case or am I just missing something obvious again?
"Maybe now we'll start seeing Linux only OEMs and resellers."
Wishful thinking, and I'm wishing it too. The problem is a base. Tablet PCs haven't been doing so hot (at least not in my neighborhood). The only major interest that I've seen on a large scale has been that of FedEx looking to implement them with their current DADS system, in addition to maintaining open communications with cellular towers. I'm a FedEx dispatcher myself, so I'm kept abreast of what technologies we're planning on moving to in the future. Tablet PCs in the field will help keep us even more accurately up-to-date. Currently, our drivers can only transmit when in range of our larger towers (which are only in the cities), meaning that customers wanting updated tracking information on a package routed to a rural area just have to sit and wait until the driver is in range to transmit data confirming that he/she has indeed delivered that package. With properly equipped tablets, we're hoping to eliminate this problem with true real-time status updates.
What's curious is that, though I may have my head in the clouds, I've really not heard of any other major market for these things beyond novelty. The exception being the Apple rumor. Had apple had access to the technology in a financially feasable market (say 1994) I can absolutely see how ClarisWorks 4 could have dominated the word processing market of that day, and we'd have tablet PCs everywhere. As it stands now, I get the impression that people aren't quite sure what to do with these crazy things.
Damon,
http://actionPlant.com
Front Page
It's not much, but at least provides a "look" at one of their products.
-OZ
this:
OS like Windows CE
should read:
OS-like Windows CE
-knowles
Tablet computers hold great promise, especially for medical applications. But the current models are still way too large to swallow.
Except that onemorething.com is a parody site and not actually steve jobs' web-log.
This is from the horse's mouth, a transcript of an interview between Steve Jobs and Walt Mossberg at "all things digital". (sorry I couldn't find the article on a "good" source (ie: google news) so go easy on it.
Inkwell is the Newton's handwriting recognition engine ported to OS X.
For certain uses, tablets are great. I loved the Newton - it was a great computing solution for people who have to stand up. (Like walking around doing inventory control, or doing data entry while inspecting a highway, doctors, etc.)
If Apple could also market it so that it competes with something like the Wacom Cintiq tablets, but also could have a keyboard plugged in and be like a full blown Mac, I could see it filling a niche.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
then how do you explain this pic I have of the new prototype?
The article talks about the "killer app" for the tablet being home theater (basically). Then it goes to add that the hardware to make that possible - UWB wireless - is just coming out in January.
To me though none of these pieces add up. I can possibly see HD video feeds between components and even PC's being of some use - but to a tablet? HD resolution is going to be wasted on a tablet screen (at least at current DPI for LCD's).
Then once the video gets to the table - what then? A really large glorified remote control? Why would Apple have any interest in that?
In the article he even mentioned the quote from Jobs that I agree with 100% - computers need keyboards. I have zero desire to see a tablet from Apple, partly because I feel it would be a drain on them but also partly because I just can't see how such a device fits into anyones world other than sketch artists. I beta tested some kind of tablet PC long ago, and the device worked OK - but I was hard pressed to find good reasons to own one, and now I have a laptop which I find much handier.
Would an Apple tablet be cool? Possibly, but not in the same way the iPod or OSX is cool...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
So far most tablet PCs have included a keyboard, which is nuts if you've ever used a Pocket PC's handwriting recognition -- the technology is there, just give it to us in a larger form factor (with a 2 GHz processor, 512Meg Ram, a hard drive, and a real OS, not Windows CE). They're also way too expensive, a feature I'm afraid Apple would likely copy.
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
well it's circular thinking..
**What's missing has been the killer app, and what kept a killer app from appearing was a lack of hardware support, which I believe will be over soon**
killer app hasn't come because there hasn't been hardware deployed widely(i take 'hardware support' as this, lack of market), but wouldn't a killer app be the thing that would enable that hardware to sell.. so that there would be enough of them deployed for somebody to make that killer app..
well personally i'd have the 'killer app' for myself, but that would need it to be water proof.
what's that you ask, what would be my killer app? reading while in bath(or while showering, but that would waste water and that would be bad karma right? or maybe while in a rain). really, the places where you couldn't use a laptop are pretty much the places where you can't have the fragility(and being afraid of water) of a laptop. if it was STURDY, and liquidproof there would be lots of uses for it.
well, of course if you were of disgusting mind(such as myself) you could imagine using it for pron while at there..
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
whois elementcomputer.com:
"Domain name: ELEMENTCOMPUTER.COM
Administrative Contact:
Hjorleifsson, Mike mikeh@dtev.com"
OK, lets look here:
http://www.dtev.com
They are a bunch of Linux consultants.
Dtev.com Isn't slashdotted yet!
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
I think most manufacturers are having problems with table PCs because they are trying to make them keyboardless laptops. It will never happen. Why? I hate to write. So do many others and true handwriting technology is so processor intensive you can't currently pack it into a handheld. I'd rather type. I can type much faster that I can write and, well, you see where I'm going with this.
If I were going to deliver a "tablet" PC, I'd make one like this:
Basically, it would simply be a touch-sensitive dumb terminal for a "central server" or master machine on my desk or in my closet. I'd want to be able to "VNC" to my desktop or open one of several "published" X-window apps with a finger tap. Give me a browser, email client (could be a browser), basic word processing (all running off my central server) and perhaps a small collection of rdp and terminal service clients - perhaps also running off my desktop. With a simple GUI to configure a connection to one (or more?) parent hosts and little or no built-in brains, this could be made dirt cheap (all the processing is handled by the server) - you are paying mostly for the touchscreen - which doesn't have to be very big. I'd pay a couple hundred bucks a piece or so to have one sitting on my coffee table or in my bedroom.Remember, this isn't supposed to be a PC in it's own right. It's supposed to be an extension of my main PC. 90% of what I want to do with a "tablet" is monitor something or do a quick browse without having to run into the other room. If you try to make it be a computer in-and-of-itself, it will be prohibitively expensive, heavy, hot and large.
If I could take my Palm(tm), add low-power, built-in wireless networking, stretch the screen to about 10"x6" and add an Xwindows/VNC client, I'd be getting pretty close to having what I, personally, want in a tablet.
Just my opinion, but this comes from many time when I've caught myself wishing I could just have my monitor follow me from room to room.
"terrorism" and "pedophilia" are the root passwords to the Constitution
What I want is a cheap pad that I can read eBooks on. Websurfing, word processing, drawing, etc. are nice add-ons, but the killer app is being able to have a couple of these slates lying around, with a very long battery life, able to hook into the household wifi network, and deliver any of the ebooks in my library at a moment's notice.
Right now, the market is oriented toward overpriced, notebook replacement devices, with hi-res screens, bright backlighting, extra bulk for the fold-under keyboard, and *shudder* Windows as the OS. I recently got a Sony Clie NX60 off of eBay. It works ok for what I want (need to buy a wifi adapter card though), but ideally it would have a 640x480 screen, the size of a writing tablet (roughly 6"x8".) I would have gotten one of those RCA REB1200 ebooks, but the proprietary OS and lack of programs/wireless was a big downer
According to Microsoft's Steve Ballmer:
"There are no plans to stop pushing tablets. When Microsoft first started out, people didn't want tablets. We realized: Death would eventually take care of this."
Breakfast served all day!
- Taking notes. I am a student, and I find the tablet PC excellent for taking notes. I have the advantage of digital note taking (easy to manipulate, easy to store, easy to organize) with the advantages of paper notes (drawing diagrams, complex mathematical symbols easy to write). Moreover, MS's new OneNote application automatically records the lecture to
.wma, which I can replay on my mp3 player while I run (I suppose one could do the same thing with any other audio recorder, but OneNote is also the best note taking application, so it's nice that the recording feature is built in).
- Drawing. There are obvious drawbacks to drawing on the computer as opposed to pencil & paper, but there are a hell of a lot of advantages too. Undo buttons and layers are the most obvious. Unlike tablets that have to be connected to your computer, tablet PCs are mobile, allowing one to draw anywhere. What I'm really looking forward to are tablet PCs with transflective screens, so they'll be usable outside.
- Removes need for a PDA. My tablet is only 3 lbs, so while it is clearly bulkier and heavier than a Palm, it is easy enough to bring with me whenever I expect to need my schedule (I'm looking for a nice leather portfolio for it at the moment, that would make things even better). Unlike a PDA (or at least, unlike my old Palm III), it doesn't have to convert everything to text. So if you want to jot down a quick note, rather than painstakingly entering one letter at a time and correcting mistakes, you just use regular handwriting. So long as you can read your own handwriting, there's no need to ever convert it to text (though the recognition for cursive is pretty damn good, so long as you're writing dictionary words).
- Reading. I know someone above pooh-poohed the notion of using it as an e-book reader, but there's no doubt it's useful for that function. The fact that the display can be rotated is a tremendous benefit. It's just so much easier to read on a tall, narrow display than a wide, short display (this is why newspapers have columns). I'm not just talking about e-books either. Even reading websites offline is easier (surfing can be laborious, given slowness of text entry with the pen).
A tablet is probably a poor primary computer (one can use docking stations I suppose, but mine is only a 1 Ghz Centrino, not exactly blazing). I think that for students and artists, it's probably a better secondary computer than a laptop. For business folk who do lots of typing on the road, probably not so much (on the other hand, business folk who mainly review documents, check email, and take notes at conferences might be well served by a tablet)."The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
I've really really tried to use Ink. And I'm sorry, but it sucks. It's caused me the same problems it caused me when it was on the Newton.
Even if I write like an angel, it screws up my words and sentence spacing.
Moreover, I can honestly type a hell of a lot faster (50+ wpm) then I can handwrite or shorthand.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"