Wired has decided that 2010 will be the year of the tablet, and it's arguable that the multi-touch additions to upcoming Snow Leopard make a tablet an obvious step for Apple. Despite that, others are claiming that after seven years of torturous rumours and speculation the predicted tablet from Apple just doesn't exist. Whatever the truth of the thing we can confidently predict that over the next few months the rumour mill will be running at high speed.
Sitting on the sidelines, nobody tells me anything. But something is up. The rumours surrounding the Apple tablet have a curious firmness about them, much like the later part of the two years of rumours leading up to the original iPhone launch back at the start of 2007.
However having used a tablet to try and do actual work, I tend to agree that tablets aren't mainstream. But then netbooks aren't mainstream and they're selling rather well, even I bought one, or as it happens two of them.
Dell at least may be deliberately targeting their rumoured tablet at the niche e-book reader market, and may well even offer their tablet for free with a contract for "one or more digital media subscriptions", which would be interesting. The Kindle is selling well, so perhaps it's even a sustainable model. Although Amazon at least aren't giving away the hardware as a loss leader.
When it comes down to it I'd be less interested in the rumours of an Apple tablet if it wasn't for the iPhone. The iPhone was the first mobile device I've ever owned, and I've owned a fair few, where I could check my email comfortably. That's made a big difference, and it's because the iPhone is not a phone, it just happens to be able to make phone calls. So maybe what I really need is a well designed tablet?
Update: Of course there are some people that are just pulling figures out of the air when it comes to the rumoured Apple tablet...
Showing posts with label Tablet PC. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tablet PC. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 04, 2009
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
The Tablet PC Trial
I've had a tablet PC on loan from the Open University for the last six months or so and, as it's getting shipped back to them tomorrow, I thought I'd bounce a few ideas around about how I got on with it...
The OU lent me a Toshiba Tecra M7, which is about two years behind the cutting edge, and had fairly lackluster reviews even back then. However I know at least one person who, despite the relatively poor uptake of tablet PCs in general, swears by theirs and wouldn't have a normal laptop, so I was really interested to get my hands on one for an extended test.
However even after six months with the Toshiba, using it for all my OU teaching support and marking, I'm not a convert. In practice I found the tablet an ergonomic nightmare to use. While in the end I worked out a method of propping the tablet and my elbows up to different levels using stacks of books, so that I could use it for several hours at a stretch to mark scripts, it was hardly an elegant solution. Using the tablet on its own for any length of time severely exacerbated my RSI, making it almost entirely un-portable.
I don't really want to get into issues specific tablet model I was testing, for instance placing the power jack directly under where you'd normally want to put your elbow was an act of twisted genius, but suffice to say there were many.
However I can see why the OU lent it to me, in theory being able to write comments, draw freehand diagrams, and scribble equations onto student work allows a much more flexible approach to marking work submitted electronically by the students. In practice the tablet only partially lives up to what, in theory, it should be easily capable of...
It really didn't help that the software integration of the tablet into the OS is also pretty poor. Writing large chunks of text you intend to be read by the OCR software is a laborious process, and spinning the display around so I could use the keyboard to do so wasn't really practical, or particularly convenient. I'll draw a polite veil over the possible comments I could make about painstakingly spelling out words on the software keyboard.
Ergonomically therefore, the tablet PC was a total bust. I'd almost go as far as saying it was unusable. It was certainly almost entirely un-portable, it also counts as one of the heaviest laptops I've ever had the misfortune to have to carry around. If you've followed the blog for any length of time, you'll know that I subscribe to the notion that there are two main core demographics for laptop users. The road warriors, who would kill for another half hour of battery, or half a kilogram less of laptop, and the power users who desperately want another couple of inches of screen real estate, and another hundred gigabytes of hard drive.
I definitely fall into the road warrior category, the tablet PC I had on trial weighed three or four times as much as the Dell mini I recently picked up to use while traveling.
So it's not exactly with a heavy heart that I'm saying goodbye to my loaned PC. I can see the problem the tablet PC is trying to solve, but at least for me, it doesn't even come close to living up to the hype.
 |
| CREDIT: TabletPCReview.com |
| The Toshiba Tecra M7 |
The OU lent me a Toshiba Tecra M7, which is about two years behind the cutting edge, and had fairly lackluster reviews even back then. However I know at least one person who, despite the relatively poor uptake of tablet PCs in general, swears by theirs and wouldn't have a normal laptop, so I was really interested to get my hands on one for an extended test.
However even after six months with the Toshiba, using it for all my OU teaching support and marking, I'm not a convert. In practice I found the tablet an ergonomic nightmare to use. While in the end I worked out a method of propping the tablet and my elbows up to different levels using stacks of books, so that I could use it for several hours at a stretch to mark scripts, it was hardly an elegant solution. Using the tablet on its own for any length of time severely exacerbated my RSI, making it almost entirely un-portable.
I don't really want to get into issues specific tablet model I was testing, for instance placing the power jack directly under where you'd normally want to put your elbow was an act of twisted genius, but suffice to say there were many.
However I can see why the OU lent it to me, in theory being able to write comments, draw freehand diagrams, and scribble equations onto student work allows a much more flexible approach to marking work submitted electronically by the students. In practice the tablet only partially lives up to what, in theory, it should be easily capable of...
It really didn't help that the software integration of the tablet into the OS is also pretty poor. Writing large chunks of text you intend to be read by the OCR software is a laborious process, and spinning the display around so I could use the keyboard to do so wasn't really practical, or particularly convenient. I'll draw a polite veil over the possible comments I could make about painstakingly spelling out words on the software keyboard.
Ergonomically therefore, the tablet PC was a total bust. I'd almost go as far as saying it was unusable. It was certainly almost entirely un-portable, it also counts as one of the heaviest laptops I've ever had the misfortune to have to carry around. If you've followed the blog for any length of time, you'll know that I subscribe to the notion that there are two main core demographics for laptop users. The road warriors, who would kill for another half hour of battery, or half a kilogram less of laptop, and the power users who desperately want another couple of inches of screen real estate, and another hundred gigabytes of hard drive.
I definitely fall into the road warrior category, the tablet PC I had on trial weighed three or four times as much as the Dell mini I recently picked up to use while traveling.
So it's not exactly with a heavy heart that I'm saying goodbye to my loaned PC. I can see the problem the tablet PC is trying to solve, but at least for me, it doesn't even come close to living up to the hype.
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