“Viewsonic, the monitor manufacturer has entered into the Tablet PC market and in a big way. The new ViewPad 1000 Tablet PC has a touch screen hi resolution monitor with built in camera, a celeron 800 Mhz Processor and it even has a built in WAN, LAN and Wi-Fi Wireless LAN abilities. This is great for people on the go or those that would like a casual PC at home without a million features. Maybe the Tablet PC market will take off where the Internet appliance market failed.” Get the story at DesignTechnica. We also hear that the TabletPC will run a custom version of WindowsXP in the near future.
Viewsonic Enters the TabletPC Market
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Check out the movie at: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/tabletpc/default.asp
Btw: there is no relation between the Internet Appliance concept and that of the TabletPC. The Internet Appliance is more or less a dumb terminal (aka the thin client) where the TabletPC is a full blown PC.
A (not “the”) tablet PC is the natrual next evolutionary step for a consumer PC. Basically a desktop PC (just smaller) and handwriting/speech recogniton picking up the lack of a real keyboard.
The Pocket PC Inititive from Microsoft is just Microsofts way of getting a cut of money for every “tablet PC” sold. They will/are binding in their OEM license tactics onto the obvious “next” iteration of what consumers call a PC.
Its obvious evolution with MS name on it though, they call it “revolutionary”.
I’m *still* waiting for a TabletPC (or whatever) that will allow me to draw cartoons using Fractal Painter or Adobe Illustrator at a decent resolution/processing speed. 800×600 just won’t cut it :/
I’m more than willing to be “tethered” to a power cord if that’s the price I’d have to pay in order to have a larger, higher-resolution screen with a more meaty processor, like an AMD Duron or Athlon.
I wonder if these manufacturers aren’t missing out on a good market by not targeting illustrators?
Check out Wacom’s LCD tablets. They’ve been around for a little while, but this might be what someone like Dave is looking for.
http://www.wacom.com/lcdtablets/index.cfm
Cool … I just took a look at that Wacom tablet. That’s pretty close to what I’m talking about; I had no idea they made anything like it. Thanks!
Now, take this concept just a step or so further… make the thing self-contained (except for the power supply cord) and throw in a couple of USB ports and maybe an infrared or wireless connection. Up the resolution to 1600×1200 (or whatever) and while I’m at it, how about a Type II slot for PCCard hard drives?
Hey, I can dream, can’t I???
I’ve been thinking about this for a while. What I’d like to see is something like the whole TabletPC thing, but with the ability to plug it into a base station and then use it with a mouse and keyboard. I think I’d buy something like that.
My dream is a PDA sized tablet style computer that runs a ‘pocket sized’ OS. When I plug this into the base station it becomes a ‘full blown’ PC (additional storage provided by the base station) and runs the ‘desktop’ OS. Whether this be PalmOS and ‘BeOS’ or WinCE and WinXP I really don’t care. So long as it has a free compiler (preferably not gcc, which is way too bulky) a CLI and a GUI I don’t care.
TadB:
Took the words outta my mouth.
The tablet PC has to double as a monitor for a full-blown desktop config, at the very least. That would at least make it cost-effective. (no need to buy two monitors)
My thoughts are that a PDA should have an advanced USB and/or Firewire system, allowing the unit to be addressed by a host computer as an attached device (maybe like an external hard drive), but for it to also be able to slide into a larger monitor like a sheath. Plug it in, and you have a larger screen, buy the size you want/need/afford.
Also, it should be able to be inserted like an eight-track into a car stereo system and absorb any features installed there that the unit lacks, like maybe GPS or radio…
Such a device should Be about 2lbs so that it can Be held in the Palm of your hands.
ciao
yc
Have you all checked out <A HREF=”http://www.paceblade.com“>www.paceblade.com? It’s currently vaporware, but it’s supposed to be right around the corner. Essentially it’s a tablet with a keyboard peripheral and the whole shebang comes with a cover/case that makes it laptop-ish until you want to break out the tablet.
Really… make it smaller… make it into a touch screen… what’s the point if the underlying hardware is still crappy PC junk with a crappy PC junk OS? It’s just another way to make more money from another batch of gadget buyers. I challenge the industry to actually make something new and better for a change. The Apple Newton and the Palm handhelds are the last new thing that happened and Newton failed at the hands of stupid managers and the Palm is in trouble at the hands of the industry dictator Microsoft. Computers suck.