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Pepper Pad, an Open Alternative to MS Origami
SilentBob4 writes to tell us that MadPenguin has a look at an open alternative to Microsoft's Origami, the Pepper Pad. From the article: "The Pepper Pad, like Origami, is a mid-point form factor PC that is bigger and more powerful than a PDA, but smaller and less optimized for traditional desktop PC tasks than a notebook computer or a desktop PC. The Pepper Pad is a good buy for people who would like to have a light-weight, dirt-simple, point-and-click open source device for watching videos, listening to music, reading e-books, and doing simple web surfing with a view screen that is actually easy to read. If you want do more than that, you are really better off getting a small Linux notebook, unless you are willing to get under the hood (which you can do with the Pepper Pad!) and start compiling for yourself."
I don't get the "gotta have" with this.
Tablet PCs that are able to run Linux are cheaper, if you're looking for a hard-disk based solution.
Supposedly the handwriting recognition of Windows Mobile is very good.
I think that handwriting is a MUCH better approach than trying to do voice recognition, which another poster said. You could use it in a croweded room and not worry about either interference or being heard, or in a library. Depending on the application, handwriting recoginition could be better than a keyboard too. It'd probably be faster for almost everyone (even if it would be possible to type faster, I would guess almost no one would spend enough time learning to reach that point) and would have essentially no learning curve.
Finally, you might look at a project called Dasher. I don't think I'd actually want to use it for anything big, but it's a very interesting concept and pretty darn cool.
I play go at a coffee shop near my office once a week. There's a guy who comes there with this Vaio thing -- I haven't looked at it very closely because it didn't interest me much, but essentially it's a little black brick with a small (6 or 7 inch range) but high resolution screen. It's probably a bit smaller than a 200 page hardback novel. Still, once he props it in an upright position, plugs in something to the upper left (wifi perhaps?) and plugs in a foldable keyboard, it takes up more room than a 12" laptop.
Add in a fresnel lens (think Brazil) to keep from going blind, and I don't see any advantage. And for those who like to keep their hands on the keyboard, using a touch pen is worse than a mouse. I saw a video demonstrating some of the earliest interfaces (early Englebert groundbreaking stuff in the 50s). At first they used a pen but found that people became very tired very quickly when they had to point at the screen with it repetively. With the Sony mentioned above in the propped up position, using the stylus pointer would be very tiring.
The fact is, we have hands of a particular size, visual capabilities of a particular resolution, and pockets too small to fit a device that meets those physical requirements. A pocketable AND usable computer is going to take some big leaps -- for instance glasses that function as high res displays (at reasonable prices, weights, and appearances) and a real break from finger oriented input. Whoever figures out how to free input from dependence on the human hand will make a bundle -- and they should because it isn't going to be an easy feat.
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hi geoff lane,
... a touch screen keyboard. Ick. Slow. Frustrating. You CAN'T touch type with a touch screen keypad, but I actually WAS able to touch type with the rubbery, annoying little Pepper Pad keys!! It wasn't fast or easy, but it was possible.
Get rid of all the buttons and use a proper virtual keyboard on a touch sensitive screen.
You are right about the thumbpad keyboard. The keys are rubbery and gummy, and they kind of roll under your fingers. It's annoying. BUT. Consider the alternatives. Unfortunately, the alternatives are not good. You suggested a touch keyboard, but IMHO, that would be even worse than the rubbery, slippery thumbkeys. From having used the Pepper Pad to write much of TFA, I can tell you that you will need a light USB keyboard if you want to do any serious writing at all.
However, the Pepper Pad is not a notebook computer. A notebook computer can be a serious production machine. The Pepper Pad is a toy. It's fun to play with. The touch screen is really quite fun. So the Pepper Pad is really only for watching video, writing a few short emails or URLs or Google searches, and that's it.
The reason that I reviewed it at this time is because of all the hype around Origami. Do we really want people to get sucked into another Microsoft DRM'd device? (Origami). You can bet that Microsoft and its partners are going to spend billions to push the Origami. Origami is not on the market yet, but I will bet dollars to donuts that it is going to suck compared with the Pepper Pad. And one of the things that Origami is going to feature is
If somebody made an ARM powered laptop with solid state storage then I'd be very happy. No moving parts, silent, incredible battery life.
Probably because the article is pretty much Linux boosterism. They start with the untrue claim that this has beaten the windows devices to market. Some Windows devices have already shipped.
I get a bit tired of apple/linux advocacy of the 'lets ignore every defect of our system' variety. Its like watching the idiot talking heads on the Sunday chat shows. Today the left will be trying to explain why driving on prescription drugs is no big deal whil the right try to claim that the resignation of the CIA Director had nothing to do with the gay hookers being ferried to the Watergate building to spice up the poker parties attended by GOP congressmen and the guy he appointed number 3 in the agency.
If only the partisans on either side would just once admit 'hey one of our guys screwed up'.
I blogged on Pepper earlier. I won't go into the full details but I think that the PC makers have so far botched the midi format. The original premise was that the format would be cheap, so the makers don't want to make the devices too good in case they poach customers from the existing laptop market. So they make sure that a couple of features they identify as essential for 'power users' are stripped out.
The feature that has been stripped out of all the devices to date is video out. The Pepper device has composite out for a TV but you can't hook it up to a projector to do PowerPoint (or open office equivalent). Without that capability the device is no use to me personally and I suspect no use to most of the intended early adopters. Adapters, add on cards don't cut it, the capability has to be native to the machine.
The main early adopters of a device like this are likely to be salesmen. They have the budget to buy toys, they do a lot of travel. Without the ability to present its useless.
The other killer app I suspect would be photographers who want a super-duper media vault. But anyone doing that is almost certain to want to have photoshop on the device as well and the ability to hook up to a full size display when available.
The thumb board is a welcome development, although it is forced on this device due to lack of good open source handwriting recognition (too many patents for that to be viable) I think it will quickly appear on the windows ones as well.
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The point is, Origami looks suspiciously like a Newton.
You say that like it's a bad thing.
Everyone who sees my Newton 2100 (which I still use on a daily basis) is impressed by one particular thing: its screen real estate. Yeah, it's bigger than a Palm Pilot, but it also does more. Plus, you don't have to learn some new inane way of writing; you just write (or print). That's the second thing that impresses...writing in English (and yes, we've all heard the Trudeau jokes, but the HWR on the 2000 and 2100 was simply superb) anywhere on the screen instead of writing hieroglyphs on top of each other in one spot and numbers in another until the touch membrane is deformed.
This Pepper Pad needs its bright color screen combined with the Newton's ease-of-input and battery life. Then then they'd have a winner.
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