What’s a tablet? It’s Microsoft’s ambitious effort to remake the PC landscape by kick-starting a category that’s been in the minds and business plans of visionaries for decades, but has never caught on with the public. The new Tablet PC is a pen-based computer that uses special software cooked up by the brainiacs in Redmond. (The actual machines will be built and marketed by the usual suspects in the PC business.) Due to arrive in October at prices between $2,000 and $3,000, the Tablet PC is meant not to supplement your current laptop, but supplant it. You’ll ramble down the hall with your tab, take it to your meetings and use it to take notes, surf the Web and maybe even doodle–all while maintaining eye contact with others in the room. (Try that while pounding on a keyboard.)
Previous efforts flopped because the machines were too bulky, too limited and too clueless when it came to interpreting people’s handwriting. (Call it the “Doonesbury effect” because of cartoonist Garry Trudeau’s hilarious evocation of the way Apple’s Newton device julienned the language like a digital Cuisinart.) While the Tablet PC does a somewhat better job at translating a user’s jottings into text, Microsoft’s wisest choice was innovating in the area of “digital ink.” When you write on a tablet’s display screen (using a special notepad program called Journal), your jottings are faithfully captured, as if you wrote them on paper. Twitch the pen in a scratching-out gesture and you delete a word or line. Another feature allows you to quickly move blocks of text around. (Bonus: special settings allow the tablet to more deftly interpret the motions of left-handers. Is it a coincidence that Gates is a southpaw?)
Digital ink is also a powerful tool when you use tablets on a network. It’s easy to send e-mail with handwritten text, and even easier to send an “ink instant message.” At the recent Microsoft CEO Summit, the bigwigs were outfitted with tablets, and most spent the sessions scribbling notes to each other like naughty fourth graders.
Speaking of connectivity, Microsoft is very lucky that the tablet’s release coincides with the boom in Wi-Fi, the cheap means of wirelessly hooking machines to the Internet. No accident that all the versions include built-in Wi-Fi–using a tablet with a wired connection would be like walking with a leash.
The nine computer makers who plan to release tablets this year, while following the overall vision of the Tablet handed down from Mount Redmond, will have different approaches. Some will be convertibles, full-fledged laptops that use a swiveling display to transform into tablets. The Acer TravelMate (pictured) is the prime example, as its screen elegantly pivots from the traditional laptop position facing the keyboard to the top of the unit in a closed-clamshell position. Then there are “slates,” which can take on a keyboard through a USB port or a docking station. Finally, and perhaps most intriguingly, are the more striking designs with wider, flatter displays, like the clipboard-size slab created by newcomer Motion Computing.
Now that you know about the tablet, should you change your plans about buying a laptop this summer? Only in certain circumstances. Since this year’s crop is only the first of several iterations, you can expect that future versions will be lighter, have longer battery life and sparkle with sharper screen resolution. (Not to mention fixes of the inevitable bugs that appear the first time.) The price will also come down. What’s more, for this the first wave, Microsoft has designed the tablet for business users, and even among those “corridor warriors,” the people who will get the most from it will have the benefit of specially written applications for their field (like doctors, claims adjusters and–are you listening, editors?–journalists).
For everyone else, wait and see before picking up the tab.
title: “Pc Prescription Tablet” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-28” author: “Margaret Hankins”
What’s a tablet? It’s Microsoft’s ambitious effort to remake the PC landscape by kick-starting a cate-gory that’s been in the minds and business plans of visionaries for decades but has never caught on with the public. The new Tablet PC is a pen-based computer that uses special software cooked up by the brainiacs in Redmond. (The actual machines will be built and marketed by the usual suspects in the PC business.) Due to arrive in October at prices between $2,000 and $3,000, the Tablet PC is meant not to supplement your current laptop, but supplant it. You’ll ramble down the hall with your tab, take it to your meetings and use it to take notes, surf the Web and maybe even doodle–all while maintaining eye contact with others in the room. (Try that while pounding on a keyboard.)
Previous efforts flopped because the machines were too bulky, too limited and too clueless when it came to interpreting people’s handwriting. (Call it the “Doonesbury effect” because of cartoonist Garry Trudeau’s hilarious evocation of the way Apple’s Newton device julienned the language like a digital Cuisinart.) While the Tablet PC does a somewhat better job at translating a user’s jottings into text, Microsoft’s wisest choice was innovating in the area of “digital ink.” When you write on a tablet’s display screen (using a special notepad program called Journal), your jottings are faithfully captured, as if you wrote them on paper. Twitch the pen in a scratching-out gesture and you delete a word or line. Another feature allows you to quickly move blocks of text around. (Bonus: special settings allow the tablet to more deftly interpret the motions of left-handers.)
Digital ink is also a powerful tool when you use tablets on a network. It’s easy to send e-mail with handwritten text, and even easier to send an “ink instant message.” At the recent Microsoft CEO Summit, the bigwigs were outfitted with tablets, and most spent the sessions scribbling notes to each other like naughty fourth graders.
Speaking of connectivity, Microsoft is very lucky that the tablet’s release coincides with the boom in Wi-Fi, the cheap means of wirelessly hooking machines to the Internet. No accident that all the versions include built-in Wi-Fi–using a tablet with a wired connection would be like walking with a leash.
The nine computer makers who plan to release tablets this year, while following the overall vision of the Tablet handed down from Mount Redmond, will have different approaches. Some will be convertibles, full-fledged laptops that use a swiveling display to transform into tablets. The Acer TravelMate is the prime example, as its screen elegantly pivots from the traditional laptop position facing the keyboard to the top of the unit in a closed-clamshell position. Then there are “slates,” which can take on a keyboard through a USB port or a docking station. Finally, and perhaps most intriguingly, are the more striking designs with wider, flatter displays, like the clipboard-size slab created by newcomer Motion Computing.
Now that you know about the tablet, should you change your plans about buying a laptop this summer? Only in certain circumstances. Since this year’s crop is only the first of several iterations, you can expect that future versions will be lighter, have longer battery life and sparkle with sharper screen resolution. (Not to mention fixes of the inevitable bugs that appear the first time.) The price will also come down. What’s more, for this first wave Microsoft has designed the tablet for business users and, even among those “corridor warriors,” the people who will get the most from it will have the benefit of specially written applications for their field (like doctors, claims adjusters and journalists).
For everyone else, wait and see before picking up the tab.
