Slashdot Mirror
Tablet PCs Enter Reality
An anonymous reader writes "It looks like Tablet PCs are finally hitting real-world budgets. Averatec released a Tablet PC with an AMD Athlon XP-M 2200+ processor and will be at Costco and Staples for $1349. Here is a link to a photo overview where you can see how the pen snaps into the LCD area when not in use, what the touchpad looks like, and quite a few other pictures." Element Computer seems to have radically changed their business model -- I had hoped they'd succeed with their $999 VIA-based tablet.
Oh wow, I sure am glad I can spend over $1000 to buy something that offers no services over a pda that I would want to use on the go. Unless of course you're talking about laptop-type activities, in which case, the laptop is the natural choice..
While the Averatec is priced right, for the extra cash I rather have one of Gateway's line of Tablet PCs. They're about $400 more, but you get the Gateway name and warranty (although I'm not quite sure how much that is worth these days). Also they use Pentium Ms which have better battery life over the XP-Ms. However if you're on a budget, this system looks nice.
Due to its Linux-based OS (sound like a Lycoris offshoot). Plus it's below $1000.
Its still big and bulky. Might as well cary a laptop. Handheld could be so much more usefull and still be smaller in size.
http://www.averatec.com/notebooks/C3500.htm
While it's true that they are getting far less expensive since when they came out, they are still out of range for me. I would LOVE to have a pen based tablet to take notes on while in class (at university), but I don't want it to be my primary computer. I'm too poor (need beer money) to spend all that money on an overpriced notebook. Anybody have any ideas?
--sig fault--
dot-slashed?
The site is already slashdotted, but I assume it is this tablet that was announced a few months ago. It's nice to see that companies are already using AMD's 1.35v Mobile Athlons.
eclecti.cc
But will they see any real world use? When a pc is in the sub $1000 range and laptops are roughly the same price will there be much demand. Also is there really a demand for the home user. I can see a small percentage of business/industrial users having a reason for these, but enough to warrant selling them at costco and staples?
Other than the cost, one of my concerns was the amount of heat a tablet pc generates while in use. I was looking into them for use by nurses collecting research data. But after trying a few out about a year ago and noticing how they heat up, I didn't think the nurses would be too happy.
Still it's good to see the price come down. But I still wonder when Dell is going to get into the act.
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
It seems to me that a tablet PC is really aimed at a market that is small-to-non-existant. As far as I can tell, the main selling point for tablet PCs (the ability to write on the screen like a notepad) is duplicated in PDAs. In fact, the only reasons to get one instead of a PDA are 1) it's more like a computer (HD, faster CPU, more RAM) and 2) a larger screen.
Tablet PCs, instead of becoming the indispensable laptop-and-PDA killers they were touted to be, instead combine the worst features of both laptops and PDAs. What results? Low-performance, too much weight (ie less-portable), short battery life, and high price.
There's one more reason people have both a laptop and a PDA. You can get both for less than the price of a tablet PC.
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Everytime I hear about tablet pcs on /. people post about 'using it for linux' and 'can you run linux on it' and everything. Now, I understand this is slashdot, but is it not missing the point of a tablet pc? The only reason that I see to spend more money on a tablet pc is to get the advantages of the handwriting recognition and to do interactive presentations. As far as I know, Linux either does not have the tools necessary to take advantage of this, or what is out there isn't as good as the windows counterpart. I have teachers at school that are absolutely amazing with the tablet pc and lecturing, but everything they use is ms-centric.
Is there anything out there for Linux that makes a tablet PC worthwhile? I would love to look at someone's post about Linux on tablet pc and say "yes, that would be worth it" but right now all I have to say is you're wasting your money.
I think my principles are reachin' an all time low
Now I can stop sketching on scrap paper at work.
Try: http://www.shipitforyou.com/cgi-bin/sgin0105.exe?U ID=2004071911394006&T1=S850+1043&FNM=24
for a picture and specs.
I believe this is exactly what you're looking for. The price is right too.
We received an HP tablet PC as a free gift with a bunch of switching equipment that we ordered. I'm not sure if it had a model number, it seemed to be some kind of demo unit or something. The overall impression was that it was a toy.
The handwriting recognition software was not installed on the unit that we received, so the stylus was just used like a mouse. The screen would rotate around so you could use it like a tablet or more like a laptop; it was a little bulky and short on features for any real work.
For the money I'd rather have one of the new Vaio picturebooks or an ultralight Thinkpad x31 ...
I can think of a few things, and they're all related to one thing: drawing.
If you're an artist (the kind who actually draws), I could see some use for a tablet. Especially if you want to get into doing computer-based things without going through the hassle of scanning, or if your computer skills are significantly inferior to your artistic skills. Penny Arcade, IIRC, uses a tablet PC for all the artwork now.
Some of our factory people have tablet PCs - they bring up a PDF of a schematic, and they can draw on it while they discuss things with engineers. Useful.
I think the tablet PC has uses... its just that they're not going to be for everyone, ever.
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Mod me down, you fucking twits. Go ahead. I dare you.
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Sometimes, when a good, hard slashdotting like this takes place, people suggest that Slashdot be nice and create an internal mirror of the site before posting. Then it is inevitably pointed out that this would be copyright infringement and take hard-earned food from the mouths of the developers, ad-clickthrough-sellers, etc.
But no one seems to have a problem with caching proxies -- right?
Therefore, I suggest that instead Slashdot create its own caching proxy specifically for use with the sites it tries to melt. Maybe it would simply forward you directly to the site if the site was still responding, and respond with its internal cached copy if the site was struggling.
Taco? Anyone?
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Ummmm...check the link to the $999 Tablet PC. at the end of the writeup.
Isn't Lycoris Linux? Okay, maybe it's no Gentoo, but I'm sure it could do the job just fine. =P
...but I can't wait for Apple to release one! (Why hasn't Apple ever tried this? They're the ones that are supposed to innovate!)
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I've seen quite a lot of adversity directed at Tablet PCs which I really don't understand.
I've been using a TC1000 since November 2002 and it's an absolutely fabulous piece of hardware. It's the kind of stuff people on the cutting edge of technology should be embracing, and instead of asking what you'd want one for, finding out what you can use it for. Writing on the screen isn't as gimmicky as you'd think - taking notes, annotating diagrams, documents, roughing presentations is incredibly easy. The form factor means you can pull one out in a meeting without hiding behind a laptop screen, you can pass it around more easily to show people ideas and you can get information into it quicker.
To put it bluntly, since buying a new laptop - because I started to believe that it was a gimmicky toy - I am really missing the tablet functions and realise that I was wrong. Sure, my new laptop is faster, bigger, better, etc. etc. but the tablet functions just opened up a new way of using a PC that I really miss now. I can't comfortably lie in front of the TV and work, and note-taking isn't as easily transferred to emails, document etc. Before I could quite happily rough a document outline up in a meeting and have it mailed off by the end to all present. Can't do that with a laptop, or handwritten notes come to think of it. So, they aren't just giant PDAs, they're a new platform that needs to be exploited by apps like OneNote. I certainly hope the form-factor succeeds and heaven help us if we're tied to desktops and laptops for the foreseeable future, because that would severely cripple the importance of the computer in it.
Weird isn't it. How /. can be so contradicting. Nobody reads the articles, yet most of the linked site's go down. But hey, who doesn't like a good paradox?
OK I read people saying things about a tabletpc that just arent accurate. It is NOT a overgrown pda...its..well..its a really cool laptop with many of the pda benefits tossed in. So what can I do with it thats so cool you say:
1. I can read books on it comfortably
2. I can lay outside and surf the net easily and comfortably
3. I can use it as a nice picture fram system when im charging it
4. I can comfortably watch tv on planes during long trips
5. I can print to its journal our documentation, and then mark it up and highlight it before returning it to our tech department
6. I can take notes on it without offending people by using a laptop, or being as loud as many laptops
7. I can start our software, then hand it to a customer with a quick button click to rotate the screen to face them.
8. I can draw things on graph paper on it
9. Its easy to carry around and play with while waiting in long lines-you just can't juggle a laptop to do that very well
10. I can lay in bed and comfortably read.
11. If you have any graphical book, comic book, whatever-you can display it one page at a time in a nice near paper sized format
12. Its cool in a nerdy way-what more could any slashdot guy want?
I have a motion m1300. The one thing most important when choosing one of these is weight. mines around 3 lbs-don't get a larger one weighing more then 3.5 lbs or you won't find it comfortable and easy to use.
I really don't understand the logic behind tablet PCs as they are currently being marketed. This is not to say there isn't any, but can someone very much in the market, very interested in buying, explain it?
I love my Ipaq, but I don't understand why I'd want a way bigger, way clunkier version with a desktop OS not intended for its purpose.
Largely, the main intended purpose of the Tablet PC seems to be to get WinXP (or an XP-a-like mod thereof) onto as small a form factor as possible.
So the question is, why do you want XP on a form factor the characteristics of which are inclined to diametrically oppose themselves to XP's own defining qualities? I'm not just trashing XP for its being an MS OS. PPC2003 doesn't really bother me as a handheld OS. But I am asking why an OS/GUI for a not at all comporable machine could ever be expected to function ideally as the OS for all form factors and functions no matter how different.
And why does a tablet PC need anything even remotely close to an AMD 2200+ processor? Are people intending to do high end CG renders on these things? Cinematic quality video-edits?
I guess if you wanted and absolutely would not settle for anything other than the most recent, bloated, processor-intensive desktop version of Office available under XP with all the bells and whistles turned on and for some extremely hard to discern reason wanted to use it on a tablet, you might need a 1GHz machine, but far more?
What's the rationale for this being a mass market device?
There is a pretty interesting book on how the first tablet computer came about by Jerry Kaplan called "Startup". They came up with the idea of a pen-based computer while flying on Mitch Kapor's private jet, and started a company called GO. This was back in the 80's I believe. Here is a link - you can read the reviews for more info.
Well, how well does the handwriting recognition work(if it is even there at all, i saw no mention of it)
To me anyway, the allure of a tablet pc would be that you can write on it. MS software, from what I have read anyway, is pretty nice in recognizing handwriting.
Apple appearently has had some handwriting recognition stuff included since 10.2, but has yet to really do anything with it.
I guess they haven't seen a worthwhile market for tablet pcs yet, or are still smarting over Newton....
Other than drawing-related tasks, I've never thought tablets were good for much. However, I was in a hospital elevator with a pharmaceutical company salesperson a couple of days ago and she whipped a small tablet PC (about 8 inch screen, I'd guess) from her purse, popped out the stylus and started tapping and scribbling away. It was running XP. Apparently she was able to document her last sales call and check her to-do list between the 5th and 21st floor. It was obvious she was accustomed to using it in short bursts, whenever she had, literally, 90 seconds to spare. I thought it was kinda neat, actually.
When a tablet is used like this, as a sort of super PDA, I'm sure it's more readable and, for some, more comfortable. I'm not sure I'd have any use for one of them, but I no longer think of tablet PCs as silly and useless devices. For some people, obviously, they're the bees knees.
How well do the laptops handle pressure sensitivity in artistic applications? I know that a Wacon Cintiq has "512 layers of pressure sensitivity" (more than enough for me), but it runs about $2500 each (after a $1000 price drop, mind you!) If I were to do my web comic (link delibrately left blank, go away /. :) with a new tablet like this, would it be reasonably sensitive, or just on-off? Would I be better off with a regular old drawing tablet, where I can't look at it and see the screen as well?
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It's not that nobody reads the articles; it's that nobody who posts comments reads the article. The people who read the articles and the people who discuss them are two completley distinct groups. And no, I didn't read this article.
I'd rather be lucky than good.
TabletPCs are NOT touch-sensitive. They use EM resonance based pens, so you can lean your arm on the device while you write, or hover over it. Some can even measure the tilt of the pen, or determine the difference between the tip of the pen and the eraser end.
Element Computer's "tablet", however, has a touch screen like a PDA. It's not even close to a tablet, and would not work like one even if it had the right software.
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First Apple release a new ipod, now an article about a laptop with a different kind of hinge. It's all happening at once, I can't keep up.
I never used a tablet, but after using a laptop for 6 months now, i could imagine how a tablet would be immensly convienient in crowded areas.
I always find myself being very concerned with somebody bumping into my laptop when using it on the subway - or anywhere there is people walking by or standing close to you.
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...is very practical for doing your work in bed or at beach.
There you are, staring at me again.
I'm a particle physicist and it seems to me that these tablet PCs might be suitable replacements for the traditional logbook. The idea is that it would be a community tool that can be could be carried around the detector as people fix things (think of a big industrial setting), connect to a database via wireless to log changes, recognize the handwriting for multiple users, embed eps or jpg/png/gif in the log, etc.
Has anyone used these in an industrial setting? What do you think?
Lawyers spend most of their time writing and editing. In a typical firm what happens is that an attorney will write something, print it out, edit it with a pen and then hand it either to a junior attorney or a secretary. Then the secretary or junior attorney will input the changes. It's a total waste of time, because then the typist has to go back and try to figure out what the hell the lawyer was talking about.
With good software (and I admit that XP is only getting there), an attorney could edit right on the screen. Now some of you will ask why attorneys can't do that now on screen The answer is that editing is an interactive process where often people want to scribble in the margins or otherwise engage with the document.
My prediction? When tablet PC's get good enough, you'll see the ranks of secretaries thin out at some law firms. People who understand IT (and most lawyers don't) will be able to shrink the overhead at their firm. Everyone else will be lunch.