MobileTechRoundup 115: where did all the slates go?

Comments (2)

• Very interesting discussion on the death of the slate and general disinterest in inking. My experience is only with passive touchscreens not active digitizers so maybe my thoughts are colored. Also I don’t touch type.

  With those provisos, here are my thoughts:

  Why would I want to ink? Its slower than typing. It gives me a cramp. I often can’t read my own scratching. But inking has more of a relaxed feel. And I can do impromptu diagrams. If my PC could convert my writing into text reliably, I might ink more often. But recognition accuracy seems like its only 90% and that’s not good enough.

  So, I end up using the touch screen mainly for gui manipulation and I use inking using RitePen (I think this is the best addon for the Q1.) I have a BT keyboard that I use about 25% of the time but most of the time I get by with my finger, dialkeys and ritepen and tip.

  What would bring the pure slate back from the dead? Reliable voice recognition. For that we need UMPCs with 2Ghz DualCore type processing power, 2GB RAM, and smoking HDs (SSD sounds like the way to go here). If we can get voice recognition reliable for note taking and dictation then the no-keyboard slate rises from the grave. Otherwise I agree with JK.

  Regards,
  Alan Pozner

  Alan Pozner — 3:45 PM on November 3, 2007 Reply

• I listened to this Podcast with keen interest. And I am sad to hear James pronounce the death of the slate. However, I am forced to agree.

  I have used a Samsung Q1 for more than a year now, and a Motion LE1600 for nearly a year. Both units have Windows XP 2005 Tablet Edition installed. The Q1 has a passive touch screen, while the LE1600 has an activie digitizer.

  I like the slate models, and would like to be a more enthusiastic evangelilzer about them. But I have found the way they operate to be quite annoying at times. I don’t think this is an issue of the hardware at all. It is the software.

  The first issue I have is that far too often, the OS wants to make a letter a captial one, even when I have clearly written the lower case version. Normally, such as when you are writing in a text field on a web page, or in notepad or Word, this will get checked by a spellchecker, and is of minor concern. However, this is an issue when you are typing in a username or password. It is also annoying when the oS doesn’t recognize that I am typing in a URL, username, or password field, and as I write the letters down, it puts spaces in, or tries to fix what I type. (Usernames are often our first name followed by a period and our last name, no spaces, no caps.)

  I think that Kevin had a part of the reason slates have not hit it off with the public is because the run-of-the-mill user is spending as little as he can to get a PC, and so a passive screen, with not the best drivers in the world is what he pays for, and this impacts the inking experience. But I also think that the OS not knowing, or at least not taking into account what it is you are inking for, also hurts. How many times will you fail logging in before you’ll give up?

  Is it possible that sloppy coding is what causes the unit to not know what the field type is that you are inking in? I’ll allow for the possibility. But in the end, it isn’t about what is causing the experience to suck. It’s about the fact that the experience sucks.

  In the end, I could use a slate as an extension of my workstation or laptop and avoid the more annoying factors the OS brings to the table. But at the current cost for either model that I own, that’s a steep price to pay. A PDA is almost as good for a quarter or more of the cost.

  Woadan
  Professional Curmudgeon

  Woadan — 9:25 AM on November 4, 2007 Reply