“Put an absolute beginner in front of a computer and he’ll try to touch the screen to make things happen. The revolutionary thing about Microsoft’s new tablet PC is that it transforms this wishful-thinking behavior into reality: You can write on its screen and the thing will respond! This is the stuff of science fiction, and it makes the tablet PC an unusually ambitious venture for Microsoft. It’s just not a successful one.” Rob Pegoraro tells it like it is for WashingtonPost.
Tablet PCs Mix Science Fiction and Real-World Friction
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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i dont see this happening without a major hype…
look at the companies that failed…
sub-notebooks are still selling, look at psions 5mx .. still a hardhitter, and it aint even with color…
This is more of a geek toy and what does geeks like, sci-fi..
i like it
Cheers
R
Well, it’s just one review, but I’ve wondered how these Tablet PC’s would work. It sounds like the handwriting recognition is about the same as the original Newton’s, for which it was ridiculed roundly and never really recovered from, despite the fact that it improved dramatically.
I’ve had trouble trying to visulize using one – it seems very awkward and you can’t see if what you’re writing is being rendered corectly as text in real time. I don’t know, maybe some more reviews will come in with further impressions.
Read: Mr Clippy for Tablet.
That’s innovation!(tm)
I like it too. I’m sorry the GRiDPad, Newton, and others failed. I’ve seen a review (ZDNet, I think) praising the fact that the tablet prefers to not convert your handwriting, but keeps it in its original form. This review was more critical, and I think rightly so, considering the size of the document files. All that said, it is a big challenge, and Microsoft has the resources and persistence to make it work right, possibly many years from now. They’re always talking about how much innovation they do. I hope they stick with this.
>>Read: Mr Clippy for Tablet.
LOL! That’s a good one!
ciao
yc
I have a proto-Tablet PC, a IBM Transnote. – 10inch 800×600,P3 500Mhz, Win2000SP3, that has a writing pad attached, Opens like a Pad.
IBM stopped making and selling them about a year or so ago. The notes and handwriting were saved as graphic files. No handwriting recognition.
Not been computer savvy (I brought this) would I be able to install the WinXP Tablet OS.
A bit off topic I know.
The sooner computer companies acknowlege that, the sooner we can move towards having *good* tools. Problem is that MS along with hordes of other try to dumb it down too much. Every tool has to be learned to use. Take a car jack for example. You need to read he instructions in order to use it properly – other wise you’re gonna end up with a hole in the bottom of your car. Trying to combine a car jack with a TV remote control is what all those companies are trying to do. It’s imposible. There is no way you can make the computer (a very sophisticated device) a tool that will be usable by every yokel who cant tie his own shoes and refuses to read the instructions.
The Tablet PC (Microsoft or not) will relpace the clipboard bcause it eliminates redundancy and input errors and connect with wireless networks for instant updates for information. It is a niche product.
The article is good in that it shaow just how limited the 1.0 Tablet XP is right now for daily use outside of a “clipboard environment.”
Ship one of these with a barcode reader and they WILL come.
Vic
I saw something alike the other day here in Brazil (I think it was showing wine bottle photos in the supermarket)… It seemed to run some kind of Windows (ME?).
I saw one _today_ running linux (I know it because I read a magazine article on it, there was no way to tell it was linux from the lcd display).
Science fiction? Hardly.
Handwriting recognition also doesn’t impress me. If it uses that electronic ink that someone has been researching (and looks *exactly* like paper… then, ok, it’s pretty).
I guess some people just don’t have any imagination…
Once we get some of these in our hot little hands, people will really start to like them. They are real PC’s, just with a few easily replaced components removed -optic drives, keyboard, mouse, all easily replaced.
They should all run Linux out of the box–the screens will take a little while though.
This is a clasic case of MS control mania. The market is so tight that no one will risk anything unless MS says so. They purposely made the market this way and I think they will soon begin to regret it. MS is going to have to start footing the bill for the flops and they won’t like it.
I’ve come to the point where I think Microsoft is trying to do too much. They simply are incapable of staying out of every niche of computing. I don’t see how the Tablet PC will take off. Maybe if they stick with it for years, which they are capable of doing, but right now, it is hard to see how they would be capable of helping niche markets. They’ve got this digital hub or multimedia version of XP. I don’t understand. If you want that, get a Mac or, if you want to stick with a PC, get a Sony VAIO – Sony has apps they’ve developed for years for those. And, of course, there’s .Net, Palladium, etc. Sometimes they don’t even seem sure about what they’re doing exactly. All of a sudden, Microsoft seems to be in slight disarray, uncertain about even its biggest plans. And, at the same time, they feel they *must* enter every niche market too. And, they absolutely do not understand OSS. They simply cannot comprehend it. This is not meant as an anti-Microsoft post at all. I just am beginning to think that they are the ones who are out of touch and don’t understand what’s happening. A great deal of this stuff they’re betting everything on, I think it may turn out that people may end up saying – we don’t want this, we don’t need this. More and more I think they are vulnerable. They’re letting the door open. I don’t think they understand that or see it coming. Well, time will tell.
Puff !
I wish we could move beyond this hype to see that M$ are pushing tablet PCs with any review rag they can.
I still have a Clio tablet WinCE system sitting on my desk. It does everything the tablet PCs do sans not running XP.
This is not a revolution. Get over it.
I used the TabletPC (Acer) quit a lot and it is an amazing device! TabletPC software is also brilliant.. None of you commenting here has ever touched one personally… please do not judge until that time…
(Jerry Pournelle like it a lot!http://www.byte.com/documents/s=7571/byt1031873609511/0916_pournell…)
With all the angst over ink vs recognition to ASCII, we’ve not heard about drawing. Can we draw using vector graphics in PowerPoint? Or is there a simple sketch program that comes with these things?
To me the clincher for me to buy a tablet PC would be a facility for transparently switching from sketching to note taking, with the notes converted to legible ASCII, and the sketching to take advantage of vector drawing tools or freehand work that becomes a graphic object. If these simple sketches could be imported into a more capable drawing program after notetaking, we’d really have a useful “digital paper napkin”, which is or should be what this is all about.
Then we need direct upload to web page format, so that one could use this tool in a web conference mode. Pages of notes, complete with sketches, would appear on a web site that is being shared during the conference. This would give us a “web whiteboard” which would be even more useful than a digital paper napkin. This could already be done with a drawing tablet on a normal desktop computer, but I don’t know that it has been done in a generic way that would also be useful on a tablet.
Alias have Sketchpad Pro in the wings. A free limited version is out now – can be used on XP/2000 computer with writing device. Corel Grafigo is another. Maybe Autodesk will bring across Architectural Studio. a MS Paint version is avail.
Alias have Sketchpad Pro in the wings. … for the Tablet PC.
For the price of the TabletPC you will do better by buying a “WACOM” cordless TFT “display” to draw (very precise and expensive but superb).
Of course you can’t use it on the road as a computer but you will get the real thing …
All tablet-PCs except the compaq are using digitizers made by WACOM. So you get “the real thing” plus a subnotebook with excellent handwriting recognition.
it’s another great marketing scam a la microsoft, the other nice one is the xp media center thing. crap crap [useless]crap.
who has time to sit down and sketch an email anyway, kinda like all the extra software nokia put on my new phone, yes its a nice extra, but as soon as the novelty wears out (24 hours) it’s just useless. so now on top of being supposed to have a desktop machine with large lcd panel at home, a fast&furious laptop whenever i’m on a plane, a pda that acts like a glorified addressbook and an addressbook that acts like a pda whenever i’m on the street, i should also have a tablet pc to fill those couple of minutes with more microsoft crap? does this one give a blue screen of death when you scribble ‘f*ck off’?
Good article. Well written and hard enough on the product to reflect reality. I am happy to see a reviewer who is playing the realism game.
Handwriting recognition is just the other side of the coin (speech recognition being the first) that still has yet to be fully mastered in any really usuable fashion (as in, everyone can use it, any time, easilly). It will happen some day. Hopefully while I live.
Anyone here who used Newtons? The Newton 2100 is an impressive accomplishment. The handwriting recognition really does work. Quite well. As long as you’re not sloppy. How do you take notes during a meeting? Fast and not very carefully. So, there’s the problem.
I found myself installing Grafitti (the input method Palms use) on my Newton after a few weeks of trying to become used to the handwriting system; I found that the handwriting recognition process on the Newton slowed down my writing too much and took up too much screen space (I kept having to move across the surface far too much, and this was while trying to write somewhat small, which is bad for the recognition engine anyway). I have yet to try the new form of this software (Mac OS X’s Ink), so maybe they’ve brought it further ahead over the last bunch of years. I don’t expect it to be useful to me, though. We’re still only playing with technogeek toys, no matter how they market any of it.
I think the keyboard is still the most effective input device, with a “pen and Grafitti” device in second place.
As for “The Tool for Regular People,” yes, I think this is possible and actually inevitable. A computer-like device in the hands of all people, being able to use it relatively easilly (okay as long as they are able to handle a MiniDisc or CD player). The problem is that no company has made one of these things yet. Palm is the closest. 🙂 Again, I hope I live long enough to own one of these inevitable devices…
So, it appears to me that this author may be the type who intentionally goads product makers just because he likes getting people riled up. A good indicator of this is his comment at the bottom of the page:
Living with technology, or trying to? E-mail Rob Pegoraro at [email protected].
“or trying to?” This guy clearly likes to bash the technological accomplishments of others.
This article was very negative. You notice that the author complains about not being able to use his finger in lieu of the pen, but never considers what the palm of his hand might be causing to happen while he’s inking. Also, I’m curious. What does “…Acer TravelMate C100 I’ve been testing..” mean? Is this a piece of beta hardware he’s testing? If so, then I for one am not at all suprised it crashed. Any of you who have had experience with beta hardware will understand what I mean.
serpico: it’s another great marketing scam a la microsoft, the other nice one is the xp media center thing. crap crap [useless]crap.
Have you used Media Center? How do you know it is crap? Do you own a TiVo? Media Center provides TiVo like functionality in addition to being a full computer. This seems to me like a fine type of device for running my household media interests. If you don’t like having tech toys, then fine. Perhaps you should consider that just because you don’t think you need the functionality does not mean that others won’t find it useful.
so now on top of being supposed to have a desktop machine with large lcd panel at home, a fast&furious laptop whenever i’m on a plane, a pda that acts like a glorified addressbook and an addressbook that acts like a pda whenever i’m on the street, i should also have a tablet pc to fill those couple of minutes with more microsoft crap?
I think you’re missing the point. The right TabletPC makes a good laptop replacement.
In a nutshell, this author seems to have highlighted every single bad experience he has had with is Tablet, whether or not the TabletPC platform was the root of his problem. He did not mention anything good about the platform. I have a very hard time giving credibility to someone who doesn’t provide both pros and cons for a given scenario, as I see it as unlikely that there are not both.
I read the article at Byte.com Ewoud Jansen recommended above, and I think it was a great article. I’m not just saying that because the flavor of the article was largely pro-tablet. What I really believe is that the author of this article took a more scientific approach, considering both the positives and negatives, and drew a conclusion based on fact and extended usage. He even points out that at least one of the nagging issues he’s experienced with the Tablet is a Beta bug and will be fixed in the released version.
the URL again: http://www.byte.com/documents/s=7571/byt1031873609511/0916_pournell…