Why not just set up a simply configured Windows system with browsers and apps configured the way you want, and then install an app like DeepFreeze that freezes the setup. The next time they reboot, everything reverts back to its original frozen state. I believe that you can also control just what gets frozen meaning that if you install a second drive (or create a second partition) you can have that data not get frozen so other apps that write data can write to that drive.
And for installing apps, just unfreeze, reboot, install, and re-freeze.
Yes, there are some apps missing, but it looks like the "core" PIM apps (calendar and contacts) are present. Admittedly, I'm not familiar with these specific apps, and Apple's site is VERY lean on describing these, so I ask, are these included PIM apps robust enough for mobile PIM use, or are they just "fillers" awaiting third-party replacement?
Having been a VERY long-time PalmOS PDA user (since the USR Pilot 1000), the prospect of a decent Apple PDA-like device very much anticipated. Palm PDA's were revolutionary, but their technological drive forward has long been stalled. This "phoneless iPhone" could prove to be a HUGE seller.
My main desire for this type of device is simply because it is NOT a phone. Historically, my company has provided a phone to their specifications, and I never had a choice in the matter, so I've had to take a pass on all of the latest and greatest "convergence" devices because of the integrated phones. Now that the phone has been removed, this looks like an EXCELLENT opportunity for a new, more modern replacement to my old PalmOS PDA's.
My only question is will there be third-party apps to enhance it?
...that if the bean-counters a requiring performance metrics, then a percentage of your team will soon be destined for a meeting with the downsize axe. What starts out as an innocent request for innocuous metrics inevitably results in people losing their jobs. It's time you make sure your resume is up to date just to be safe.
AT&T most likely has a basis for a lawsuit, but that basis has nothing to do with the Apple-exclusivity contract, since people who hack the phone aren't parties to that contract.
But wouldn't the purchaser be bound by some sort of EULA? Consider DirecTV a number of years back who, despite the end-user purchasing the hardware, owned the access cards. That was eventually stated on the box the end-user purchased. I haven't seen the iPhone packaging, but I presume there is some reference that the purchaser is bound by some EULA.
Obviously, grey/black market iPhones wouldn't fall into this category, but for someone who wants to purchase a "legit" iPhone, this could be an issue.
Doesn't Apple get a share of revenue from each AT&T contract? I would expect them to respond to this asap.
Sure, they'll probably respond (and I'd wager that they'll wait until AFTER the phone sells on eBay--you know, to ensure some legal technicality ensues due to the sale) but really, if their business model relies (at least partially) on the revenue of another company, then shame on them.
I have to agree 100% with the parent, please mod him up.
The enticing thing about a laptop of this price and capability really is the size. Having a compact and very portable WiFi-enabled sub-notebook for about $200 just blows my mind. There are plenty of times when I wanted to use a notebook, but my $500 wide-screen Acer was just too bulky to take with me. A decent, solid, capable sub-notebook like this just might fill that desire.
In fact, coming from the PDA world, I have always wished that someone would come out with a sub-sub-notebook. You know, a clamshell notebook that measures maybe 5"x8" when closed. Sony's UX-50 was a great start, but was really too small, and like all Sony PDA products, they gave up on it long before they could have improved upon it.
I'm really gonna have to check this out when it's released.
When my friends and I were younger, we were Trivial Pursuit fanatics, and one game, I was asked a science question (don't remember the exact question) but the answer listed was incorrect. I was so pissed that I actually wrote the manufacturers complaining, and I received a letter from them explaining that in some cases, incorrect answers and occasional misspellings were intentionally included to help combat copyright infringements. Should a competitor use the same questions and intentionally bogus answers, then proving infringement was easier.
OK, I understand that the Encyclopedia Britannica is meant to be an authoritative source, but is it possible that some inconsistencies or errors were introduced in a similar manner?
Cool! Now, I can hear music just like the DJ's played it back in the 70's!
Seriously though, while crossfading makes separating songs pretty much impossible, that presentation style was so distinctive. It really is a lost art, because it took real finesse for DJ's to get it sounding right with vinyl.
SageTV has been able to do this for several months now, and incorporates Google Video as well. Granted, SageTV is not an STB as such (actually an HTPC) but the functionality is there. The up side is access to lots of videos on your TV. The down side is that the video content and quality leaves a lot to be desired.
The comment slider on the left is actually kinda nice. It dynamically adjusts what comments are fully visible, "abbreviated", and hidden, replacing the old "threshold" setting quite nicely. It really doesn't take much explanation. Just navigate to an article with lots of articles, and play around with it to see how it works--no manual required.
In FireFox, I am getting some occasional JavaScript errors reported by FireBug, but overall, the new system seems to work well. Give it a chance, and give 'em feedback. That's the ONLY way it'll ever improve. Besides, you can always turn it off during this testing period.
...on the other hand maybe there are some people who wold prefer ads and a cheaper monthly fee?
That is assuming, of course, that the ISP discloses this and actually offers reduced-priced services. The article asserts that the ISP was possibly doing this without notifying the customer, and presumably, not providing a reduced-fee service.
MythTV, BeyondTV, SageTV (my preferred), Windows Media Center, and any of a number of PC-based solutions are available to provide subscription-free DVR capabilities. But it doesn't come easy. Just be aware that Satellite companies and Cable companies are not making it easy for roll your own users. If you have local OTA or analog cable signals, it should be a no-brainer to set up the channels and the inputs, but if you use set top boxes (STB) you introduce some complexity that goes way beyond Joe Sixpack's capabilities. You need a way to control the STB's, so you either need to use IR blasters or serial/USB control which varies from STB to STB.
If you want a completely compatible DVR, then you really need to go with one supplied from your Cable or Satellite provider. Of course, that goes against your "no subscription" requirements. You typically have to pay a subscription, and you cannot typically "do anything" with the recordings other than watching them (like transcoding to an iPod, burning to DVD, etc.) But you do get 100% compatibility. And if you want to record HD content, be prepared for disappointment. Unless you use a cable or satellite provided DVR, you WILL NOT be able to record most Cable or Satellite HD content without their proprietary DVR's. There really is no exception to this (in the consumer-level price range.) If you have local broadcast HD content or unencrypted HD content over cable (satellite encrypts it all) you will NOT be able to (inexpensively or easily) roll your own HD DVR for recording. The excellent HDHomeRun box does a fantastic job of providing recordable content to such PC-based DVR's but it requires "clear" signals--no premiums, unless your cable company inadvertently leaves them unencrypted. And though HDHomeRun is an excellent product, it's certainly not Joe Sixpack-friendly.
I have an amazing SageTV setup that the wife just LOVES, but I dread the day when I have to switch from cable to DirecTV (which may be sooner than later) because of the technical tweaking and changes I'll need to make to accommodate multiple DirecTV receivers. And, of course, we will NOT be able to record HD. That will have to be done with a DirecTV HD DVR.
For me, it was all about features, so we weer willing to incur extra cost, but if it's about the cost, then you really need to assess which is more economical. So, calculate how much it will cost you to build a subscription-free setup, and then amortize that cost over say, two or three years, and see which is cheaper, the home-built subscription-free DVR, or a subscription.
It doesn't affect SageTV's built in EPG data at all because SageTV pays for the US & Canadian data it receives & redistributes to customers.
That announcement is talking about shutting down the free Zap2It Labs Data Direct service, which is not what SageTV uses for the built-in data.
So, it's just the "free" service they are discontinuing, so it apparently does not affect applications that use a paid-for service, only those applications that rely on the free service (which obviously, affects quite a few.)
I ran into a similar problem where my employer was paying for apartment for me while I found a house. Part of the agreement was that my employer, whose name was on the lease, would also pay for cable TV. I called the cable company and asked if I could have Internet service installed, but to have it billed to me, and have only the TV service billed to my employer. They agreed, and I actually received a separate bill for the Internet service. I paid my Internet bills, and my employer received the TV bills.
When I moved out, all of my Internet bills were paid in full, but my employer unfortunately had been late on paying the TV bills, so the cable company tried to stick me with the TV bills, tying the TV portion it to my name and my separate account. As I contested it, they sent it to collections. My employer eventually paid the bills, but the cable company continued to tie my name to the TV portion. It took almost five months to get it resolved, and eventually, my name cleared. The services that they offer have always been excellent, but their customer service has been consistently way below par.
Joost is a cool concept, but unfortunately, it never worked well on my wireless laptop because Joost pumped out the video at way too high a bitrate causing jerky, choppy video. I requested of Joost support that they let the user specify the bitratebut I received no response. Interestingly, my SageTV's PlaceShifter app plays full-screen video without issue--because I can specify the bitrate....
A lawyer is quoted as saying that Sheehan, a high school dropout who is arguing his own case, is in for a world of hurt: 'This poor guy now faces daunting reality of having to litigate this on appeal against Gateway...By winning, he's lost.'"
Just typical of a lawyer pointing out the problem and not offering to help. Maybe the lawyer could take on the case pro bono? Maybe the EFF should get involved with this one?
Our habits were similar until we built a SageTV system. Now, it goes something like this:
1. After a show completes recording, ShowAnalyzer auto-scans the recording for commercial breaks and flags them. This process completes within about 2-3 minutes of the completion of the recording.
2. We watch the show with SageTV's ComSkip plugin enabled, and when a commercial break begins, playback just jumps forward to the marked end of the commercial break, resuming the show content. It's slicker than snot.
3. Should we want to watch commercials, we either temporarily disable the ComSkip plugin, or we just FF or REW into the marked commercial section.
And the auto-marking is 's amazingly accurate--probably 98% accurate. The combination of SageTV + ShowStopper + ComSkip plugin gives us very successful commercial marking. No, it's not perfect, and sometimes shows get mis-marked, but it's very rare.
Other home-brew DVR's like MythTV and BeyondTV have similar capabilities.
And when we want to do something else (food, bathroom, phone, etc.) it's just a simple press of the Pause or Stop buttons
Commercials are not evil. Forcing us to watch them is.
I don't know exactly how SlingBox works, but having lots of experience with ReplayTV, MOXI, and now SageTV DVR's, nothing is actually "live". Everything you watch, live or recorded, is technically a recording. The video is never streamed live to the viewer, but it is first captured to a hard disk then played back, so you are never actually watching "live" TV, only recordings. Sure, the delay may be minimal, but technically, it's not a "live" viewing.
Now, if the SlingBox is doing a record/playback process, then it should be a non-issue. But if it is simply doing a "pass through" then there may be some legal issue here. And if it is re-encoding or transcoding the content, then an argument could be made that the resulting content is actually a copy, not the original (which could open up a different can of worms.)
Maybe, maybe not. It increases the value of the TV rights, but hurts ticket sales. The reason there are local blackout provisions in the broadcast agreements is specifically because the MLB believes that letting people watch games that aren't sold out hurts ticket sales more than it increases the sale value of the broadcast rights, so presumably it is going to feel the same way about anything that allows evading those restrictions.
Sorry, but I disagree with the MLB's assessment of this. It all comes down to ticket cost for us. Meaning tickets, concessions, parking, and all that goes into going to a game is just too expensive.
For example, (and I know it's not the MLB) we used to want to go to Chicago Blackhawks NHL hockey games, but at $50-$75 or more for seats, it simply wasn't worth it. And because the games weren't locally broadcast, we simply didn't watch them meaning the team did not have our otherwise eager support.
So we ended up looking to other ways to get our hockey fix like going to minor league or college games. The tickets were much cheaper, the fans were more dedicated, and the players seemed to play harder because the HNL was their ultimate goal.
The Folio looks like an excellent idea, but it certainly diverges from all previous Palm offerings. It does retain a number of the "Zen of Palm" elements: It does have instant on, and instant off. It does have full-screen, saved-state, instantly switchable apps. It does have hard buttons to launch frequently-used apps quickly. But I believe that the Folio's audience is very different. Just look at what's not included: Gone is the touch screen--no drawing or hand-written note taking capabilities. Gone is handwriting recognition/navigation. (OK, so the keyboard obviously replaces that, but I and many others always had huge successes with Graffiti.) Gone is the long battery life. Gone is the tablet design. Gone is a pocketable device. (Pocketable doesn't necessarily mean shirt-pocket--cargo pants have nice big pockets to accommodate a decent sized device.)
The Folio targets email and web-browsing users that do lots of keyboard input. Again, this diverges from Palm's original PDA's that, though they could handle text and graphic input, were more suited as "viewing" devices. Yet, previous Palm PDA's could handle user input in many ways very well, as long as the user took the time to understand the requirements.
The Folio looks like it will fill a need, but I'll take a pass for now. After well over a decade of using Palm PDA's, I'm still waiting for my "dream PDA" to come out. I think the Palm V styling was the best ever designed, and has yet to be surpassed. I'd like to see that design revived, but larger, say 4"x6" or 5"x7", making it easily pocketable in the front pocket of cargo pants. A touch screen with a flip-over cover is essential for graphic input. It COULD be a clamshell design with a keyboard, but the screen would need to be the "twist and flip" design found on the old Sony NX70V and some newer TabletPC's. I find the tablet form factor so useful, so for me, it's an essential. It would include Wi-fi and Bluetooth and an SD expansion slot. It would have the nice 5-way nav-pad and a few extra hard buttons. Oh, and the battery life needs to be measured in days, not hours. And how about adding some basic "smart" Newton-like drawing capabilities? You know, draw a rough circle, and the OS cleans it up into a perfect circle or elipse; draw a rough line, and the OS "corrects" it. Why has this never caught on?
Battery time and handwriting were two of the things that were good about my Palm V...
Good? They were GREAT!!!:-) I've said it before, and I'll say it again: The Palm V (and Vx) was Palm's finest PDA. It had excellent battery life (measured in weeks, not hours), Graffiti was solid, the screen was viewable in both bright sunlight and in the dark (thanks to the backlight), it had a sexy, sleek design, and when combined with Palm's hard case, it was completely front-pocketable.
There are so many days when I wish I still had one!
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Why not just set up a simply configured Windows system with browsers and apps configured the way you want, and then install an app like DeepFreeze that freezes the setup. The next time they reboot, everything reverts back to its original frozen state. I believe that you can also control just what gets frozen meaning that if you install a second drive (or create a second partition) you can have that data not get frozen so other apps that write data can write to that drive. And for installing apps, just unfreeze, reboot, install, and re-freeze.
Yes, there are some apps missing, but it looks like the "core" PIM apps (calendar and contacts) are present. Admittedly, I'm not familiar with these specific apps, and Apple's site is VERY lean on describing these, so I ask, are these included PIM apps robust enough for mobile PIM use, or are they just "fillers" awaiting third-party replacement?
Having been a VERY long-time PalmOS PDA user (since the USR Pilot 1000), the prospect of a decent Apple PDA-like device very much anticipated. Palm PDA's were revolutionary, but their technological drive forward has long been stalled. This "phoneless iPhone" could prove to be a HUGE seller. My main desire for this type of device is simply because it is NOT a phone. Historically, my company has provided a phone to their specifications, and I never had a choice in the matter, so I've had to take a pass on all of the latest and greatest "convergence" devices because of the integrated phones. Now that the phone has been removed, this looks like an EXCELLENT opportunity for a new, more modern replacement to my old PalmOS PDA's. My only question is will there be third-party apps to enhance it?
...that if the bean-counters a requiring performance metrics, then a percentage of your team will soon be destined for a meeting with the downsize axe. What starts out as an innocent request for innocuous metrics inevitably results in people losing their jobs. It's time you make sure your resume is up to date just to be safe.
Obviously, grey/black market iPhones wouldn't fall into this category, but for someone who wants to purchase a "legit" iPhone, this could be an issue.
Sure, they'll probably respond (and I'd wager that they'll wait until AFTER the phone sells on eBay--you know, to ensure some legal technicality ensues due to the sale) but really, if their business model relies (at least partially) on the revenue of another company, then shame on them.
I have to agree 100% with the parent, please mod him up.
The enticing thing about a laptop of this price and capability really is the size. Having a compact and very portable WiFi-enabled sub-notebook for about $200 just blows my mind. There are plenty of times when I wanted to use a notebook, but my $500 wide-screen Acer was just too bulky to take with me. A decent, solid, capable sub-notebook like this just might fill that desire.
In fact, coming from the PDA world, I have always wished that someone would come out with a sub-sub-notebook. You know, a clamshell notebook that measures maybe 5"x8" when closed. Sony's UX-50 was a great start, but was really too small, and like all Sony PDA products, they gave up on it long before they could have improved upon it.
I'm really gonna have to check this out when it's released.
When my friends and I were younger, we were Trivial Pursuit fanatics, and one game, I was asked a science question (don't remember the exact question) but the answer listed was incorrect. I was so pissed that I actually wrote the manufacturers complaining, and I received a letter from them explaining that in some cases, incorrect answers and occasional misspellings were intentionally included to help combat copyright infringements. Should a competitor use the same questions and intentionally bogus answers, then proving infringement was easier.
OK, I understand that the Encyclopedia Britannica is meant to be an authoritative source, but is it possible that some inconsistencies or errors were introduced in a similar manner?
Cool! Now, I can hear music just like the DJ's played it back in the 70's!
Seriously though, while crossfading makes separating songs pretty much impossible, that presentation style was so distinctive. It really is a lost art, because it took real finesse for DJ's to get it sounding right with vinyl.
SageTV has been able to do this for several months now, and incorporates Google Video as well. Granted, SageTV is not an STB as such (actually an HTPC) but the functionality is there. The up side is access to lots of videos on your TV. The down side is that the video content and quality leaves a lot to be desired.
The comment slider on the left is actually kinda nice. It dynamically adjusts what comments are fully visible, "abbreviated", and hidden, replacing the old "threshold" setting quite nicely. It really doesn't take much explanation. Just navigate to an article with lots of articles, and play around with it to see how it works--no manual required.
In FireFox, I am getting some occasional JavaScript errors reported by FireBug, but overall, the new system seems to work well. Give it a chance, and give 'em feedback. That's the ONLY way it'll ever improve. Besides, you can always turn it off during this testing period.
I'd like to see an impartial peer review of all existing patents to weed out the crap.
MythTV, BeyondTV, SageTV (my preferred), Windows Media Center, and any of a number of PC-based solutions are available to provide subscription-free DVR capabilities. But it doesn't come easy. Just be aware that Satellite companies and Cable companies are not making it easy for roll your own users. If you have local OTA or analog cable signals, it should be a no-brainer to set up the channels and the inputs, but if you use set top boxes (STB) you introduce some complexity that goes way beyond Joe Sixpack's capabilities. You need a way to control the STB's, so you either need to use IR blasters or serial/USB control which varies from STB to STB.
If you want a completely compatible DVR, then you really need to go with one supplied from your Cable or Satellite provider. Of course, that goes against your "no subscription" requirements. You typically have to pay a subscription, and you cannot typically "do anything" with the recordings other than watching them (like transcoding to an iPod, burning to DVD, etc.) But you do get 100% compatibility. And if you want to record HD content, be prepared for disappointment. Unless you use a cable or satellite provided DVR, you WILL NOT be able to record most Cable or Satellite HD content without their proprietary DVR's. There really is no exception to this (in the consumer-level price range.) If you have local broadcast HD content or unencrypted HD content over cable (satellite encrypts it all) you will NOT be able to (inexpensively or easily) roll your own HD DVR for recording. The excellent HDHomeRun box does a fantastic job of providing recordable content to such PC-based DVR's but it requires "clear" signals--no premiums, unless your cable company inadvertently leaves them unencrypted. And though HDHomeRun is an excellent product, it's certainly not Joe Sixpack-friendly.
I have an amazing SageTV setup that the wife just LOVES, but I dread the day when I have to switch from cable to DirecTV (which may be sooner than later) because of the technical tweaking and changes I'll need to make to accommodate multiple DirecTV receivers. And, of course, we will NOT be able to record HD. That will have to be done with a DirecTV HD DVR.
For me, it was all about features, so we weer willing to incur extra cost, but if it's about the cost, then you really need to assess which is more economical. So, calculate how much it will cost you to build a subscription-free setup, and then amortize that cost over say, two or three years, and see which is cheaper, the home-built subscription-free DVR, or a subscription.
So, it's just the "free" service they are discontinuing, so it apparently does not affect applications that use a paid-for service, only those applications that rely on the free service (which obviously, affects quite a few.)
I ran into a similar problem where my employer was paying for apartment for me while I found a house. Part of the agreement was that my employer, whose name was on the lease, would also pay for cable TV. I called the cable company and asked if I could have Internet service installed, but to have it billed to me, and have only the TV service billed to my employer. They agreed, and I actually received a separate bill for the Internet service. I paid my Internet bills, and my employer received the TV bills.
When I moved out, all of my Internet bills were paid in full, but my employer unfortunately had been late on paying the TV bills, so the cable company tried to stick me with the TV bills, tying the TV portion it to my name and my separate account. As I contested it, they sent it to collections. My employer eventually paid the bills, but the cable company continued to tie my name to the TV portion. It took almost five months to get it resolved, and eventually, my name cleared. The services that they offer have always been excellent, but their customer service has been consistently way below par.
Moving forward, this may be a great idea, but what about the countless patents already issued? Will such a group be tasked to review existing patents?
Joost is a cool concept, but unfortunately, it never worked well on my wireless laptop because Joost pumped out the video at way too high a bitrate causing jerky, choppy video. I requested of Joost support that they let the user specify the bitratebut I received no response. Interestingly, my SageTV's PlaceShifter app plays full-screen video without issue--because I can specify the bitrate....
Just typical of a lawyer pointing out the problem and not offering to help. Maybe the lawyer could take on the case pro bono? Maybe the EFF should get involved with this one?
Our habits were similar until we built a SageTV system. Now, it goes something like this:
1. After a show completes recording, ShowAnalyzer auto-scans the recording for commercial breaks and flags them. This process completes within about 2-3 minutes of the completion of the recording.
2. We watch the show with SageTV's ComSkip plugin enabled, and when a commercial break begins, playback just jumps forward to the marked end of the commercial break, resuming the show content. It's slicker than snot.
3. Should we want to watch commercials, we either temporarily disable the ComSkip plugin, or we just FF or REW into the marked commercial section.
And the auto-marking is 's amazingly accurate--probably 98% accurate. The combination of SageTV + ShowStopper + ComSkip plugin gives us very successful commercial marking. No, it's not perfect, and sometimes shows get mis-marked, but it's very rare.
Other home-brew DVR's like MythTV and BeyondTV have similar capabilities.
And when we want to do something else (food, bathroom, phone, etc.) it's just a simple press of the Pause or Stop buttons
Commercials are not evil. Forcing us to watch them is.
SageTVTips.com
I don't know exactly how SlingBox works, but having lots of experience with ReplayTV, MOXI, and now SageTV DVR's, nothing is actually "live". Everything you watch, live or recorded, is technically a recording. The video is never streamed live to the viewer, but it is first captured to a hard disk then played back, so you are never actually watching "live" TV, only recordings. Sure, the delay may be minimal, but technically, it's not a "live" viewing.
Now, if the SlingBox is doing a record/playback process, then it should be a non-issue. But if it is simply doing a "pass through" then there may be some legal issue here. And if it is re-encoding or transcoding the content, then an argument could be made that the resulting content is actually a copy, not the original (which could open up a different can of worms.)
For example, (and I know it's not the MLB) we used to want to go to Chicago Blackhawks NHL hockey games, but at $50-$75 or more for seats, it simply wasn't worth it. And because the games weren't locally broadcast, we simply didn't watch them meaning the team did not have our otherwise eager support.
So we ended up looking to other ways to get our hockey fix like going to minor league or college games. The tickets were much cheaper, the fans were more dedicated, and the players seemed to play harder because the HNL was their ultimate goal.
The Folio looks like an excellent idea, but it certainly diverges from all previous Palm offerings. It does retain a number of the "Zen of Palm" elements: It does have instant on, and instant off. It does have full-screen, saved-state, instantly switchable apps. It does have hard buttons to launch frequently-used apps quickly. But I believe that the Folio's audience is very different. Just look at what's not included: Gone is the touch screen--no drawing or hand-written note taking capabilities. Gone is handwriting recognition/navigation. (OK, so the keyboard obviously replaces that, but I and many others always had huge successes with Graffiti.) Gone is the long battery life. Gone is the tablet design. Gone is a pocketable device. (Pocketable doesn't necessarily mean shirt-pocket--cargo pants have nice big pockets to accommodate a decent sized device.)
The Folio targets email and web-browsing users that do lots of keyboard input. Again, this diverges from Palm's original PDA's that, though they could handle text and graphic input, were more suited as "viewing" devices. Yet, previous Palm PDA's could handle user input in many ways very well, as long as the user took the time to understand the requirements.
The Folio looks like it will fill a need, but I'll take a pass for now. After well over a decade of using Palm PDA's, I'm still waiting for my "dream PDA" to come out. I think the Palm V styling was the best ever designed, and has yet to be surpassed. I'd like to see that design revived, but larger, say 4"x6" or 5"x7", making it easily pocketable in the front pocket of cargo pants. A touch screen with a flip-over cover is essential for graphic input. It COULD be a clamshell design with a keyboard, but the screen would need to be the "twist and flip" design found on the old Sony NX70V and some newer TabletPC's. I find the tablet form factor so useful, so for me, it's an essential. It would include Wi-fi and Bluetooth and an SD expansion slot. It would have the nice 5-way nav-pad and a few extra hard buttons. Oh, and the battery life needs to be measured in days, not hours. And how about adding some basic "smart" Newton-like drawing capabilities? You know, draw a rough circle, and the OS cleans it up into a perfect circle or elipse; draw a rough line, and the OS "corrects" it. Why has this never caught on?
There are so many days when I wish I still had one!