I have an eMate, which sort of came to me by accident (no Gollum/"birthday present" references, please). I didn't really get its potential at first, until I started playing with it and asking myself 'why do i like this so much?". Here are some things (which a well-made tablet would have) that made a lot more difference than you would have thought:
1) Silent operation. You would be surprised what a relief it is not to have the grinding of the hard disk and the whine of the fan. (the eMate's backlight whines, but one could imagine that being fixed in a later version, had there been one.)
2) Instant on/"off". I'm in the middle of giving a dialog box the "OK" and something pressing calls me. I just close the lid. When I come back, I open it and I'm immediately in the same place I was. It made me more likely to use it when I didn't have much time, because there was no time-cost "waking it up", etc.
3) Much more "anywhere" than a laptop. You can curl up in whatever position and use it to read, etc. for "comfortable position use" the pen is a huge improvement over the mouse.
4) (don't know if this would hold true in a tablet) about ten hours to a battery charge.
One way I see the tablet being used is to cut down on junk printing. Sometimes when i'm at the computer and I'm tired I print what I'm reading so I can sit somewhere comfortable and read it in any position I want, or while walking the baby around, taking it in the car, etc.
I think once you have one of these, you'll be surprised at how much difference it makes to be able to sprawl on an easy chair with it in your lap at a comfortable angle, scrolling with the pen, as opposed to being forced to look at the monitor and clicking a mouse button or "page down" or whatever.
As for text input with a pen--in addition to handwriting recognition, there is also the 'fitaly' keypad (http://www.twsolutions.com/), something else that can make a lot more difference than you'd think. An optional and hot-pluggable keyboard would be a good thing, though.
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I have an eMate, which sort of came to me by accident (no Gollum/"birthday present" references, please). I didn't really get its potential at first, until I started playing with it and asking myself 'why do i like this so much?". Here are some things (which a well-made tablet would have) that made a lot more difference than you would have thought:
1) Silent operation. You would be surprised what a relief it is not to have the grinding of the hard disk and the whine of the fan. (the eMate's backlight whines, but one could imagine that being fixed in a later version, had there been one.)
2) Instant on/"off". I'm in the middle of giving a dialog box the "OK" and something pressing calls me. I just close the lid. When I come back, I open it and I'm immediately in the same place I was. It made me more likely to use it when I didn't have much time, because there was no time-cost "waking it up", etc.
3) Much more "anywhere" than a laptop. You can curl up in whatever position and use it to read, etc. for "comfortable position use" the pen is a huge improvement over the mouse.
4) (don't know if this would hold true in a tablet) about ten hours to a battery charge.
One way I see the tablet being used is to cut down on junk printing. Sometimes when i'm at the computer and I'm tired I print what I'm reading so I can sit somewhere comfortable and read it in any position I want, or while walking the baby around, taking it in the car, etc.
I think once you have one of these, you'll be surprised at how much difference it makes to be able to sprawl on an easy chair with it in your lap at a comfortable angle, scrolling with the pen, as opposed to being forced to look at the monitor and clicking a mouse button or "page down" or whatever.
As for text input with a pen--in addition to handwriting recognition, there is also the 'fitaly' keypad (http://www.twsolutions.com/), something else that can make a lot more difference than you'd think. An optional and hot-pluggable keyboard would be a good thing, though.