I recently acquired one of the vp201m's at work and I am quite impressed. Not only is it nice and bright, but it has a wide viewing angle as well. However, the price is absolutely obscene. The 18" viewsonic costs about $2000 (not sure about the 20" vp201m). The 10% margin is a *long* way off. I'd be happy if the bigger models only cost twice as much as the equivalent CRTs.
Although they might not stagnate, the competition will tend to push innovation farther faster, or at the very least, force them to use more competitive pricing. Look at the whole Intel vs AMD scenario. Sure Intel would still innovate without the competition, but the current competitive market forces both companies to stay on their toes technically and price things competitively. Although the battle might not be necessary to keep things moving, serious competition will certainly yield better results.
It probably is not meaningful to compare numbers with things that aren't scheduled for release for another 7-8 years. By the time they plan on releasing these things, they are bound to have found ways to improve on it. 7 years is such a huge wait by computer standards, this particular process is likely to be vapor, but I am sure that there are good things on the way.
As much as I hate to admit it, it appears that there was at least a little bit of "oops" involved. According to pdabuzz.com, one of the locked out browsers was the pocket pc version of IE. I can't see any reason why they would deliberately block that.
Even if it is true that the 24 can be used for 99.5% of English text, won't there still be annoyances for many users. Programming (particularly C) frequently requires the use of characters other than letters. Thus, many of the characters that a programmer would use are less convenient to access with this keyboard. Optimiziing just the letters is probably fine for secrectaries, but who is more likely to try some new gadget?
Slashdot Mirror
I recently acquired one of the vp201m's at work and I am quite impressed. Not only is it nice and bright, but it has a wide viewing angle as well. However, the price is absolutely obscene. The 18" viewsonic costs about $2000 (not sure about the 20" vp201m). The 10% margin is a *long* way off. I'd be happy if the bigger models only cost twice as much as the equivalent CRTs.
Two words - Shock Resistant
Although they might not stagnate, the competition will tend to push innovation farther faster, or at the very least, force them to use more competitive pricing. Look at the whole Intel vs AMD scenario. Sure Intel would still innovate without the competition, but the current competitive market forces both companies to stay on their toes technically and price things competitively. Although the battle might not be necessary to keep things moving, serious competition will certainly yield better results.
It probably is not meaningful to compare numbers with things that aren't scheduled for release for another 7-8 years. By the time they plan on releasing these things, they are bound to have found ways to improve on it. 7 years is such a huge wait by computer standards, this particular process is likely to be vapor, but I am sure that there are good things on the way.
As much as I hate to admit it, it appears that there was at least a little bit of "oops" involved. According to pdabuzz.com, one of the locked out browsers was the pocket pc version of IE. I can't see any reason why they would deliberately block that.
Even if it is true that the 24 can be used for 99.5% of English text, won't there still be annoyances for many users. Programming (particularly C) frequently requires the use of characters other than letters. Thus, many of the characters that a programmer would use are less convenient to access with this keyboard. Optimiziing just the letters is probably fine for secrectaries, but who is more likely to try some new gadget?