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Apple Tablet Rumors Again (Still?)
LSU_ADT_Geek writes "With a conventional netbook clearly out of the question, researchers for Piper Jaffray said Thursday there's mounting evidence to suggest Apple next year will introduce its own take on the market in the form of a tablet-based device that will sell for $700 or less."
Axiotron Modbook
Note that I am not connected with Axiotron nor do I own a Macbook
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
Please begin metamoderating news submissions in firehose if you don't find the quality of submissions to your liking, but it did bubble its way up because someone else thought it wasn't a bad idea to talk about.
Since you've obviously never used a tablet, I figured I should offer the perspective of someone who has. Mine's convertible, but lives in tablet mode 85% of the time.
In point of fact, not only is it useful, but the idea that a netbook could substitute is laughable.
Why? I take a lot of meetings. In the 8 months, I've accumulated 1000+ pages of notes. With a tablet, they're searchable, organizable, and can contain embedded scans of the business cards. Much more convenient to write, especially while standing or sitting without a table.
Why else? I read a lot of PDFs, many running hundreds to thousands of pages. Nice to read, flag, and annotate them on a long screen, and to have them all in one place. Netbook? No thanks. Printouts? Lots to carry, and I hate wasting the paper for something I might not need again and only need to read quickly. Plus you loose searchability on your annotations. Sure, reading on a computer isn't ideal, but I have often found the tablet solution to be a good choice.
What else? Marking up word documents w/o re-writing them can be easily done with a pen.
Other useful features ... paging through docs with your fingers, multi-touch interface to google earth and stellarium.
Of course, it doesn't run linux. :(
Finally, it cost $750 (refurb) ...
Apple slammed netbooks as being junky.
Apple has been in the tablet market longer than anyone. You can still get a Newton in the sub $150 range from EBay. According to a comparison with the Samsung Q1 UMPC, they still stand up against modern tablets.