First Tablet Using Pixel Qi Screen On The Way

Azureflare writes "The first device using a Pixel Qi screen has been confirmed. It is produced by Notion Ink, and it appears they took a few design tips from Apple by sticking with a design that has tapered edges. This tablet should give Apple a run for their money, especially considering the recently confirmed rumor of an Apple tablet. 'The Notion Ink smartpad measures 6.3 x 9.8 x 0.6 inches and weighs 1.7lbs; as well as the tri-band (850/1900/2100) UMTS/HSDPA, WiFi b/g and Bluetooth 2.1+EDR it also squeezes in A-GPS, a digital compass, accelerometer and proximity, ambient light and water sensors. Connectivity includes USB, HDMI, a 3.5mm headphone jack and a microphone input, and there’s also a 3-megapixel auto-focus camera with video recording support. Onboard storage is either 16GB or 32GB of SSD, and there's an SD slot for augmenting that.'" Update: 12/25 21:44 GMT by SS : Removed erroneous reference to Nokia.

Comments

Re:Frostie Goatse

[kurt555gs]

Great. Goatse on Christmas. Welcome to Slashdot!

Nokia != Notion Ink

[rxmd]

Come on guys. Nokia != Notion Ink. It's in the title of the article. Is it that difficult to even look at the stuff you post?

Re:Nokia != Notion Ink

[sopssa]

I did wonder why the article never mentioned Nokia and that it looked completely different than their previous products. Wonder where that was even pulled off.

Notion Ink seems to be its own company.

Yeah.... but ..

[Colin Smith]

Does it have a little Apple logo on it?

 

Re:Yeah.... but ..

[upuv]

100% correct. This will be a total flop without the logo.

Re:Yeah.... but ..

[Suki I]

Is it less than $2,000?

Re:Yeah.... but ..

[iamapizza]

Though you joke, 2010 might be the 'year of the tablet' - Apple will come out with an iTablet and thousands of mactards the world over will decide that a tablet is an important device to have in their digital lives. Forget that they'll only ever use it to tweet about how wonderful it is to use the iTablet; other companies will soon decide that they need to create good looking tablets of their own that don't actually do anything.

I weep for huge manatee.

Re:Yeah.... but ..

[Anonymous Coward]

How many people have an appletv? Some things just kinda suck.

Re:Yeah.... but ..

[iamapizza]

Ah, the predictability of fanboys with mod points...

Maemo?

[jspenguin1]

Why run Android? Why not run Maemo? Between Symbian, Maemo, and now Android, it looks like Nokia is spreading itself a little thin.

Although, if Nokia's interest in Android means we get a subsystem to run Android apps on Maemo, maybe it's not such a bad idea.

Re:Maemo?

[sopssa]

It's not Nokia who's making this, and Nokia actually has a Linux phone.

Re:Maemo?

[mellon]

B&N Nook tie-in. Need I say more?

1.7 lbs is heavy

[pmontra]

For the metric world: 1.7 lbs are 0.77 kg. My netbook has about the same screen surface and for 0.33 more kg it comes with a keyboard and an OS I can use to work with. I acknowledge that the tablet form factor enables usages that are off-limits for my netbook but this tablet is way too heavy to be carried around as one does with a phone. That also prevents some usage patterns. I wonder if the 10" screen and the battery that powers it really weight so much. The other HW differences with my my old N70 phone (0.126 kg) are limited to the GPS, the compass, the accelerometer and the proximity, ambient light and water sensors. They look like tiny and light chips. The HDMI output should weight much. Any thoughts?

Re:1.7 lbs is heavy

[CAIMLAS]

What I "don't get" about these so-called tablets is their design limits. Do people actually want to spend that much on a Star Trek gadget that has very limited utility, without a keyboard? "Internet connected" means very little if you can't type w/o an added peripheral.

What ever happened to the 'old' style computer tablets - you know, the kind which were first laptops, and secondarily tablets? You know: the screen rotates/flips over once open, allowing you to re-latch it in place? That would be perfect for this form factor, contrary to the large 17" touchscreen tablet I had years ago. Presumably, the cost difference would be negligible while the functionality increase would be significant. (Given the form factor, it wouldn't even need to be a 100% keyboard or anything like that. Just something small and utilitarian.)

Re:1.7 lbs is heavy

[Klivian]

The weight is not a problem, it's not really something you are going to carry around like a phone. As you say, it weight slightly less than your netbook which is a device with some of the same use cases. A pad like this will be a more stationary device, used for leisure net-surfing and light reading. The people behind the Crunch-pad had the right idea, coach computing. The main use for such a device will be in living room chairs or sofas, flipping trough web pages. For such use the keyboard and mouse/trackpad solutions on laptops/netbooks are just in the way, a good sized touch device will be much more usable. The biggest problem on this device will be the screen, it's on the small side with it's 10". A 11-12" would be a better fit. And it does not have a very good resolution either.

Re:1.7 lbs is heavy

[MartinSchou]

Well, it DOES have bluetooth and USB, so it's not like you can't hook up a keyboard and/or mouse when you're somewhere suitable for that kind of usage.

But if you're using it in places where you can't put it down to use the keyboard, it's a bit of wasted weight to carry around. The keyboard in my laptop weighs in at around 50 grams. Not much, but every bit counts.

Re:1.7 lbs is heavy

[sopssa]

I would actually really like something for while I'm lying in sofa. Even if its just for browsing web or remote desktoping to my main pc. I use PC->PS3 streaming to my tv, and if tversity or something else needs updating, I really hate to get up from the sofa and walk to other room to do that. Yeah, maybe minor, but still quite annoying. But the web browsing (even if reading) is a good note too.

I do have a laptop too, but it's not really usable for those things, while tablet would be. You can easily put it on the side or table. Of course, I would really like to have good battery life with it, if it's for random usage like that. But maybe quick stand-by does the trick.

Re:1.7 lbs is heavy

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

The trouble with the laptop convertible tablets is, in the majority of cases, what the demands of being convertible does to their build quality.

Across a variety of models and brands, I never found one that didn't feel like a pile of wobbly shit compared to the equivalent standard laptop from the same company. Building a single, rotating, joint that works as well as the usual two hinges just didn't seem to be in the cards.

Re:1.7 lbs is heavy

[icegreentea]

They still exist. In fact there's lots of them. HP has a bunch of really nice ones, and Lenovo's X series are all apparently very very nicely put together. That being said, they're all a bit pricey. But Asus and Gigabyte have both released netbook style laptop-tablets. Asus has their T91 (brand new version just came out lately) and same with Gigabyte's T1028.

University students seem to love them. Everyone wants a laptop-tablet. They just cost too damn much.

Also, character recognition is getting really good. I mean, its annoying to write out urls by hand, but its not so bad. It's a choice thing. In exchange for loosing flexibility, you presumably get a much much cheaper tablet.

Re:1.7 lbs is heavy

[emj]

The weight is a problem, and the screen is perfect size, but you might be right that the resolution if you use the greyscale mode, but I wil have to try to be sure it's enough..

Re:1.7 lbs is heavy

[icegreentea]

I think you're over stating the weight issue. You know those nice leatherbound clipboards? They weigh about 1.7 lbs. That (paper) notebook (200 pages) that I've been carrying around taking notes in for the last 4 months? Weights at least 1.5lb.

Re:1.7 lbs is heavy

[RoboRay]

Have you tried the OLPC? While the XO certainly has other shortcomings, it's rotary joint seems very solid to me. I'm constantly flipping mine back and forth as I switch between web-surfing and e-reading.

Re:1.7 lbs is heavy

[Blakey Rat]

What ever happened to the 'old' style computer tablets - you know, the kind which were first laptops, and secondarily tablets?

You can buy them from HP. (And other companies.) I have a ... tx1000? I believe is the model.

The problem is, they're too heavy to really use as tablets for more than a half-hour or so at a time. This device might be also, but it's much lighter than my HP tablet, so maybe it would be fine.

Re:1.7 lbs is heavy

[Anonymous Coward]

The weight is not a problem, it's not really something you are going to carry around like a phone.

Eh? I thought the whole point of a tablet was having a computer you could carry around and use without having to put it on a surface. For example, for dealing with "charts" in a hospital context.

The main use for such a device will be in living room chairs or sofas, flipping trough web pages.

Oh, you just don't know who wants these or what you're talking about.

Re:1.7 lbs is heavy

[CAIMLAS]

Yet, a place suitable for hooking up a keyboard isn't half as useful as somewhere an attached keyboard would be: a plane, train, or bus; waiting in line somewhere for an hour, etc.

If I'm somewhere that I can hook up a USB keyboard, or use any sort of 'non-integral' peripheral, I've got a desk/table, and somewhere to prop the display. I'd be better off with a full laptop, in that situation.

Re:1.7 lbs is heavy

[blackest_k]

What I really want is a usb display-link qi screen with touch screen input nice and thin and light probably with a built in usb hub.
that I can use with my netbook in one of three ways

As a traditional secondary display used side by side
As a input device where sketching a diagram would be handy and other input that a mouse and keyboard doesn't address

finally attached to the back of my netbook screen where it can do duty as a tablet or ebook reader. Some simple suckers to attach it would be good enough.

When you look at the many picture frame designs samsung do a 7inch frame 800x600 with usb display link and 1 gb of storage for £60 retail about the same cost as current console game releases. It should be possible to have this device available for this sort of price or combine it into a picture frame similar to the samsung for not much more than their current device.

I can't see why you would want a tablet when you already have a netbook and the pixel qi technology would extend battery life with the internal display turned off.

I'm sure this could become a common i/o device

there are some similar screens that almost do what I want but currently are not quite there in form functionality or price.

http://www.mimomonitors.com/

Re:1.7 lbs is heavy

[Anonymous Coward]

I really hate to get up from the sofa and walk to other room to do that.

Jabba, is that you?

Re:1.7 lbs is heavy

[fast turtle]

It's called a Waccom Cintiq. Only thing is, they're damn expensive even for the 12 inch model. Work quite nicely and I want one for my Graphics work and yes you can use it as a 2nd display.

Re:1.7 lbs is heavy

[Bigjeff5]

What's the point of a tablet with a keyboard? In my mind, that defeats the whole purpose. If it has a keybaord attached, it's not a tablet anymore, it's a laptop with a touchscreen.

You would use something like this while walking around and taking notes, which, if you've never tried it before, is very difficult to do with a laptop. Combine it with handwriting recognition technology, which is getting pretty good, and you've got a pretty damn awesome and versitile notepad - one with massive amounts of storage and infinitely more usefulness than a pad of paper.

There are also thousands of other niche applications that a tablet like this can and is used for. You could use an actual tablet like this for with spreadsheets and inventory-type software on the tablet, for example, and then either plug it in to a dock of some sort or just send the data via wi-fi to a standard desktop or laptop for further work. Using a notepad and pen you've still got to transcribe the information before you do anything with it. Field diagnostic software for industrial vehicles and heavy equipment is another great use for something like this. In other words, any application where a computer would be useful but sitting at a table with a keyboard and monitor is not possible or is inconvenient would be where you would use a tablet PC.

In other words, you would never use this as a replacement for a laptop. It's not something you'd be playing WoW on, and movies would be at the very edge of its usefullness. If you have no use for a pure tablet, why would you want one? And just because you don't see a use for it, doesn't mean other people are not desparate for a good, cheap tablet. If you want a laptop, buy a laptop. If you want a laptop with a touchscreen, buy a laptop with a touchscreen - though, if you've noticed, there aren't a whole lot of them around any more, and that's because they are not all that useful since you have a keyboard and mouse attached.

Re:1.7 lbs is heavy

[Bigjeff5]

There is also the on-screen keyboard; I don't know if they have gotten any better in recent years, but if it is running Android it should be pretty good. Assuming the touch-screen is high enough quality, of course.

Re:1.7 lbs is heavy

[Bigjeff5]

They also aren't quite as sensitive as the high-end standard Wacom tablets for many times the price.

Yeah, it's slick as hell, but as a graphic artist if you've already learned to separate your physical hand location from what your eye is looking at (i.e. watching a screen while drawing on a tablet), it doesn't seem like that big of an advantage at a massive cost.

If you're really cheap (relatively speaking) and enterprising you can actually make a Cintiq clone with an old LCD and an appropriately sized tablet (the drawing surface needs to be the same size as the LCD) for a lot less - though that will still set you back hundreds of dollars, and if you screw up you might as well have gone out and bought the Cintiq.

Note that I am not an artist, but my roommate is a helluva digital artist. All of my experience is second hand.

Re:1.7 lbs is heavy

[blackest_k]

They are lovely tablets the cintiq

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEI97_Ka-n4 has a great comment.

I was searching ''cintiq cheap'' on google
But i couldn't find any result with both words, except when there was an ''isn't'' between both words

The trouble is wacom have cornered the market on great tablets and patented the best technology, what i'm looking for is basic drawing capability and touch screen input. (if i was an artist then the cintiq would be very nice but ...).
i'm thinking more scribling notes sketching a graph writing a formula rather than creating great art.

There probably is a diy solution netbook screens are quite cheap and there are vga to lvds converters and there are touch screen kits. So it might be doable but i sure would love for some company to put it together for me. :)

Pixel Qi

[Snowblindeye]

For those of you who, like me, had never heard of Pixel Qi, its apparently a screen manufacturer thats the commercial offshoot of the OLPC project: Pixel Qi

On a different note, I like that it has an SD slot. That way you can upgrade memory for close to the cost of the actual flash. Not holding my breath for Apples tablet to have one.

Re:Pixel Qi

[Anonymous Coward]

memory? you mean harddisk? no, its not the same thing.. I don't care if its flash or whatever, its not RAM..

and I hate swap file too

Re:Pixel Qi

[sopssa]

It's a memory card. It's not a hard disk. It's not RAM. Memory is perfectly fine word in this situation.

If you hate swap file, disable it and see how your computer works then.

Re:Pixel Qi

[emj]

If you hate swap file, disable it and see how your computer works then.

Been running without swap file since 2004, if I go to swap I'm doing something stupid anyways. There are good things with swap files, but your computer handles fine without it. Hell I even use ram disks to get better performance in some cases, since I use flash as "secondary memory" I sadly have to use ram disks.

Think I'm going to start using the term Primary memory even though I thought it was a stupid term when I started using computers.

Re:Pixel Qi

[sopssa]

Yeah it works if you know what you're doing, but usually swap file is there for a reason. For example any of the recent games would lag to shit if OS couldn't put the other things to swap file while you're gaming.

Re:Pixel Qi

[Dragonslicer]

Yeah it works if you know what you're doing, but usually swap file is there for a reason.

It's there for when the operating system wants to have more data in memory than you have physical RAM. If you have 4 GB of RAM and never use more than 3 GB of it, the swap space will never get touched.

Re:Pixel Qi

[Blakey Rat]

I turned my swap in Vista (yeah, yeah, I know) off for about a solid year until I ran into a program that couldn't cope with that. Not sure what it was trying to do that was failing (trying to allocate gigs at a time?), but I just set my swap size to like 150% of physical memory size, and that program was happy.

Anyway, I did tons of useful work on my computer with swap off... there was only one program that couldn't cope with it, everything else (and the OS itself) was golden. Try it.

When I installed Windows 7, I didn't tinker with the VM settings, though... some combination of laziness, and 7 being faster enough to not bother.

Re:Pixel Qi

[Hadlock]

I'm sort of the opinion that swap files are a sort of vegistal device left over from the pre-2004 days where >512mb or RAM was relatively uncommon. Nowadays most people's computers come with their motherboards maxed out at 2gb, and power users hunt for motherboards that will support north of 12GB (yeah 64 bit means a theroretical max of umpteen terabytes^64, but most motherboards still only do 2-4gb, some will do 8, and your options drop exponentially as you go above 12GB). For even the power user (Excluding graphic designers and physicists), 16 gb is difficult to fill in this day and age.

Re:Pixel Qi

[angel'o'sphere]

Think I'm going to start using the term Primary memory even though I thought it was a stupid term when I started using computers. Emphasize mine ...

What is wrong with the term main memory?

angel'o'sphere

Re:Pixel Qi

[Bigjeff5]

Just a wild guess, but it may have been using memory-mapped files for sharing data with other processes. If it was temporary data (i.e. a cache of some sort) and was never intended to be saved, then they may not have actually mapped a file, in which case they would have been using virtual memory, or as you call it, swap space. It's a fairly advanced technique and pretty complicated to get it right when not using an actual file, so I could imagine if you disabled virtual memory it would cause problems.

People need to need to realize that virtual memory is more than just a RAM overflow buffer. Modern OS's use it for moving idle process's memory onto disk, freeing RAM up to speed up program load times and the like, and it effectively expands the useable amount of RAM available. Programs can sit idle with their data "in memory" and ready for use, while the OS can remove the data out of physical RAM until it is actually needed. This makes RAM usage much more efficient and generally speeds up the machine unless you have significantly more RAM available than your system actually uses.

In other words, you'll never see a performance boost from turning off virtual memory, it doesn't make any sense why you would, unless your OS sucks at it (i.e. it moves data to cache that is regularly accessed). Also, if you are using a 32 bit OS with virtual memory off and regularly use 3 gigs of RAM, you probably crash a lot. The most useable physical RAM available in that setup is just over 3 gigs due to the 32-bit addressing limit and the needs of other devices to have physical address space, so with VM off you will get all sorts of lock-ups.

Many years ago it made sense to turn off virtual memory, because back in the days of windows 98 and 2000 and the like the process wasn't very refined. It is today, and if you see any change in performance after disabling virtual memory in any OS newer than WinXP sp2 (sorry, Windows is my metric for such things) it will almost certainly be a negative impact unless there are other very serious issues with your computer. This goes for pretty much every OS out there, if anyone is behind on this issue I'd expect it to be Linux, but I'd still be surprised if it was behind at all.

Re:Pixel Qi

[emj]

In other words, you'll never see a performance boost from turning off virtual memory, it doesn't make any sense why you would, unless your OS sucks at it

Or your swap performance suck so much that you rather get "out of memory" errors. But you are right with fast disks swap should always be on, but there are cheap modern systems that have such abysmal disk performance that you don't want to bother with it..

Apple's Evil Plan

[SuperKendall]

I'm starting to think Apple is in fact not producing a tablet at all, but instead leaked the rumor they are to force innumerable companies into expending vast sums of R&D dollars on the form factor which only a small niche of people actually want.

Apple's tablet, if any, will have a keyboard option and lean more towards a laptop I think...

Re:Apple's Evil Plan

[CAIMLAS]

My gut tells me you're right about this. Apple will likely learn a bit about the mistakes the others have made, demo all their prototypes, and then get a fair amount of free/cheap R&D out of their faux product announcement.

I'd like a 7"-10" tablet with a keyboard - basically an Eee or similar, with a touchscreen and able to convert into a tablet. But one of these things? Only thing I can see doing with it is sitting up in bed with it propped up watching a movie, or maybe have it in the car for GPS.

Other than that, I love the hardware in this thing, and the software isn't the horribly crippled iPhone OS. I'm not going to buy an apple product, simply on principle; they'd have to sell it at near-cost (so like 1/4th their 'sale' price) for me to be interested. Anyone else (including MS, ironically), and I'd jump at such a device.

Re:Apple's Evil Plan

[MichaelSmith]

Actually this article has got me thinking that I would be better off with a tablet in the form factor of the screen of my eeepc 701, and an external keyboard. Same unit all over but more useful for quickly looking things up.

Re:Apple's Evil Plan

[Anonymous Coward]

Serves them right. You shouldn't speculate about things for which you have no information.

Re:Apple's Evil Plan

[Bigjeff5]

There is this little guy, it doesn't seem to be vaporware but they are still in their beta phase, which means what you would get right now will not be as good as whatever they release next year. They seem to be on top of orders right now, but again it's not a completely polished product.

It sure looks slick though, I've been thinking of getting one myself.

HSDPA ??

[itsthebin]

384 kbits upload is not good enough

I would not buy a UTMS comms device in this day and age unless it was HSUPA.

NIINN (Notion Ink is Not Nokia)

[weston]

See subject.

Plus, it makes one of those INAs (is not a/acronyms) we all know and love.

Also INA is a TLA.

Pretty neat, A?

Is it too late?

[Lord Byron II]

Can I get one in time for Christmas??

Re:Is it too late?

[sopssa]

Move to Russia, they celebrate it 7th January. If they released it now, you could actually get it for this years Christmas.

Re:Is it too late?

[Suki I]

LOL!

Re:Is it too late?

[Lord Byron II]

Troll? Why was I moderated "troll"? Funny, sure. Unfunny, maybe. But troll. My feelings are hurt.

Confirmed rumor

[mybecq]

especially considering the recently confirmed rumor of an Apple tablet

Confirmed by whom? The rumor mills that run on dry water?

Re:Confirmed rumor

[upuv]

I can confirm it is a rumor. :)

Re:Confirmed rumor

[jscotta44]

Thank you. I was just ready to post the same thing. No one has confirmed the rumor. It is still just rumor and has been for over ten years. I hope that Apple does produce something in the tablet sized form factor. It just has not happened yet. Maybe next month that will change, but there is no confirmed rumor.

On a different note, people keep making the same mistake when they compare things to Apple. "This tablet should give Apple a run for their money," says the poster. Really? Why do some people (especially geeks and Steve Ballmer) only compare hardware checklists when comparing to Apple? Apple products are more then just specs. It is the entire user experience. Remember all of those announced "iPod killers"? Wellwhere are they now? Right. Buried along with their technical specification sheets.

Re:Confirmed rumor

[PopeRatzo]

Apple products are more then just specs.

They're also sugar and spice and everything nice and ponies all wrapped up in a shiny package that screams "I have a bigger credit card balance than you".

Re:Confirmed rumor

[AK Marc]

They're also sugar and spice and everything nice and ponies all wrapped up in a shiny package that screams "I have a bigger credit card balance than you".

Not everyone places a value on their time of less than $0.10 per hour. Apple "just works" compared to both Windows and Linux. That has a real value. Just because you think your time is worthless doesn't mean anyone else does.

Re:Confirmed rumor

[noidentity]

They merely confirmed that the rumored rumor is true; there is a rumor of an Apple tablet.

Re:Confirmed rumor

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh yeah, my 1GB iPod shuffle* really bankrupted me.

* the previous model, not the current more-style-than-utility with no damn buttons on it and a more complicated interface on the damn headphones cord model.

Re:Confirmed rumor

[Anonymous Coward]

Get a job. You'll be amazed how it affects your bank account and thus what you can afford.

Re:Confirmed rumor

[Anonymous Coward]

"I hope that Apple does produce something in the tablet sized form factor. It just has not happened yet." Except when they nearly started the craze with the Newton, but not many want to remember that...

Jesus.

[CAIMLAS]

No, not the baby variety. And no, that's not a tablet - that's a freaking death star of a handheld.

I really like the specifications, and the pictures are sleek and sci-fi like, but I can't help but think that thing would be a literal pain to use. The edges look sharp and uncomfortable. I'd think they'd put more of a 'bulge' or 'bubble' around the edges so you'd have something to (comfortably) grab with one hand. Not just on one or two sides, but all around it.

Oh yeah, and I'll probably be getting one. It's the first "awesome" ARM based platform I've seen in some time which justifies the cost. (Of course, if they're mentioning $300, the lying fuckers are likely going to release it at $400, which is, IMO, just outside the price envelope. A netbook with similar specs, maybe.)

Re:NIINN (Notion Ink is Not Nokia)

[JustOK]

i

   

possible Christmas presentt...8)

[Anonymous Coward]

It would make an awesome Christmas present. All the nerds at my high school (including me) want one, but it must be really expensive, and I doubt "Santa" will give me one either. *sigh* I'll just have to wait and hope...

Re:possible Christmas presentt...8)

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't be so hard on the kid - he's a member of the Entitled Generation, after all.

Who writes this stuff?

[Dupple]

"A recently confirmed rumor" is the same as, recently confirmed speculation, recently confirmed guess etc.

Re:Who writes this stuff?

[Bigjeff5]

Actually saying "A recently confirmed rumor" gives you a whole lot of information without having to walk you through it step by step.

They are saying that there was a rumor that the first tablet with a Pixel Qi screen was on the way, and that rumor has been confirmed as true. Thus, a recently confirmed rumor.

Being a rumor does not automatically mean it is false. It simply means it is unreliable. With no evidence to back it up, it could be true or false, and to anybody who does not actually know the truth it is just a guess. But someone does know which it is, and usually it is more than one person who knows which it is. Speculation and guesses are totally different, and are generally proven correct, not confirmed that the statement was true. I.e. speculation that the real estate market might be a bubble was proven true when the market crashed, and the lottery winner's wild-ass guess was correct.

Rumors, however, depend entirely on the source. If the source is making shit up, the rumor will eventually be shown to be untrue. If the source is an insider that actually knows what is going on, the rumor will be confirmed when whatever company anounces it publicly.

See the difference? A completely different set of criteria prove rumors compared to speculation and guesses (speculation is nothing more than an educated guess). A rumor is a known fact to someone from the very beginning (whether true or false, it doesn't matter), whereas speculation and guesses are unknowns to everyone until proven true or false.

Hey, it's Christmas.

[Azureflare]

Sorry guys, I DID post a correction on my submission that it should be Notion Ink, not Nokia, but I'm guessing everyone is kind of sleepy from all the christmas food.

Hard to design feather light devices..

[emj]

Your N70 is not 10 inch and had a lot worse battery life, the question is how much lower in weight you can go, the SmartQ 5" weights 160grams and the 7" 480g, but everything that has a screen around 10" weights between 700g to 1 Kg. I think it's going to take awhile before people manage to design really light weight platforms. There is something missing at the moment to get light devices..

Re:HSDPA ??

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, you need at least 640 kbits -- that should be good enough for just about anyone.

Re:Hard to design feather light devices..

[PopeRatzo]

There is something missing at the moment to get light devices..

Upsidasium.

Can we stop?

[moniker127]

Not everything is a rip off of apple. The apple tablet isnt even out yet, or even seen by anyone yet, and they hint at this one knocking apple off. Apple does not own a patent on rounded edges!

Re:Can we stop?

[daveime]

Apple does not own a patent on rounded edges yet.

FTFY

Re:Hard to design feather light devices..

[emj]

Yeah you could pack enough helium in the device it might make the device light.

it uses an nVidia GPU

[Anonymous Coward]

Bugger! There will be fuck all chance of getting a standard Linux distro on this thing with an nVidia GPU. Hopefully nouveau can reverse engineer the drivers pretty easily with their current tools and experience.

Water Sensor?

[Maximum Prophet]

Is it waterproof, or are the water sensors so that it can call for help, just before it dies after being dropped overboard?

Re:Water Sensor?

[Anonymous Coward]

More like void the warranty, if the hardware has logged water exposure.

Re:Water Sensor?

[cheros]

It will tell you that you have voided your warranty before it dies..

Star Trek still predicting the future

[IonOtter]

Neat! It's a PADD! That, or a PADD crossed with a Tricorder.

Re:HSDPA ??

[vegiVamp]

640 kbit should be enough for everyone, though.

Apple invented "design!"

[Anonymous Coward]

"it appears they took a few design tips from Apple by sticking with a design that has tapered edges."

Yes. Apple invented tapered edges.

Did you also know that Apple invented the mouse, the GUI, the "dock", the MP3 player, multi-touch gestures, the all-in-one PC, back-lit keyboards, touchscreen phone, the PDA...?

Apple is SO amazing!

.
.
. /s

Not true (swap as cache)

[Sits]

Almost all modern operating systems will push out memory that looks inactive to swap so that the memory can be used as a disk cache instead. I have access to a 4Gbyte machine where only 2Gbytes of memory are "in use" but it still uses swap.

Re:Not true (swap as cache)

[emj]

If you have a 1GB binary that gets loaded half of it can be evicted from AM, the next time that is needed you will fetch that binary from the filesystem. So my system still swaps, in away. BTW utilize 80% of my memory because of cache usage..

It's all about the OS, so we wait for Apple

[johncandale]

The first iphone was shit, no video camera, no picturemail, no internal expandable memory card slot, no switchable battery, etc, even the iphone 3g in 2008 didn't have most of that. The one thing it did have was a touch screen that actully worked close to a psychical keyboard and a OS that worked. Us a windows mobile phone for 10 minutes then a iphone for 10, you go, hey, thats so much better!

The OS will make or break a internet tablet and I'm sorry but android is a long way from being good enough

It's the software, stupid.

[RogueWarrior65]

So it has a hardware feature list. Whoopee-effing-do. It's all about the software, children. If the software blows, the hardware is irrelevant.

bush computer?

[ResidentSourcerer]

THIS might be a reasonable computer to use in the back country especially if you could use a stylus instead/in addition to a warm finger. (A limitation of the iPhone is that a gloved finger doesn't work. And an ungloved cold finger doesn't work.)

Consider:

* Every field guide with enough pix to give a chance at identification. Alternate keying systems. Seine Keys. (Too many keying systems depend on characteristics that aren't present all the time -- E.g. flowers. A seine keying system allows you to fill in what is known. (Leaves alternate/opposite -- margins entire or serate...) After each one the number of remaining plants are shown.

* Bird Shazaam. Point the microphone at a bird, wait for it to cheep, chirp, or squawk. Instant Identity. More significantly: Connect it to a high gain microphone, let it sit for an hour, and it does a survey: (27 different chickadees making terratory calls. Two juvenile whiskey jacks learning to sing, and the first robin in spring.)

* Take a picture. GPS location and compass orientation of picture is added to the metadata. Then you can make notes on the picture.

* GPS mapping that shows enough map to be useful.

Thing is: it's already too big to fit in any pocket I have. Make it 9" x 12" so that it's the size of a standard clip board.

Re:bush computer?

[emj]

There is a Bird Shazaam app that can identify birds?

Re: It's not the software, stupid.

[terminalhype]

You obviously don't understand what the Pixel Qi screen is all about. Software is changeable, but the Pixel Qi screen is about as innovative as it gets...as in true innovation, not the Microsoft marketing-drivel-definition. Maybe you should learn about it from Ms. Jepsen's blog: http://www.pixelqi.com/blog1/

RDF

[mdwh2]

The RDF grows evermore - even when Apple's product is non-existent, we still have fans claiming that companies are only doing things because Apple allegedly thought of it first!

Wow, so existing products will give Apple's a non-existent product a run for their money! Brilliant! Come on, can we not have a single Slashdot story that doesn't give a free Slashvertisement to Apple - even when they don't have a product out? (Although I suppose we should be lucky we get a story about a non-Apple company at all, here on Appledot.)

Sadly merely pointing this out will get me modded down - moderation simply doesn't work on Apple stories.

Re: It's not the software, stupid.

[RogueWarrior65]

The article boasts a hardware feature list. Very little of that is innovative. Sure, it may be the first device to incorporate ALL of that stuff but who gives a rip if the software driving it is total sh*t.

Re: It's not the software, stupid.

[emj]

Because we want to see PixelQi screens, it's apparently a big difference from the one on the OLPC. This is not interesting because it's a tablet, it's just the screen.

Why should anyone claim Apple thought of it first?

[SuperKendall]

The RDF grows evermore - even when Apple's product is non-existent, we still have fans claiming that companies are only doing things because Apple allegedly thought of it first!

The mind of the Apple Hater is so dimmed by rage, I find it often messes with your reading comprehension.

In no way did I claim Apple thought of the tablet idea first. Indeed as I noted, I find the whole tablet idea to be niche, the kind of thing that technical people drool over but few of them actually buy, never mind the general public!

Apple just takes bad or marginal ideas and makes them work for normal (and technical) people. I still think any "tablet" from Apple is going to be way more like a laptop than the UMPC's of the past... people will call it a tablet, but it'll really just be a laptop with a touch screen. Then people like you will bitterly point out it's just a laptop with a touch screen, and the rest of the world will not care, they'll just find it (possibly) a more useful variant on "laptop".

That is if anyone buys them, I remain dubious as to how much the world wants large touch screen devices. Great for mobile input, I just don't think touch as an input mechanism scales that well to larger screens.