Hybrid Touch Book from Always Innovating adds/ removes the keyboard
I have long lamented the demise of the hybrid Tablet PC. The old HP tc1100 was a real workhorse for me, and having a detachable slate screen made for the most flexible mobile computing solution yet. There is so much to be said for having a keyboard, yet being able to remove it when ultimate mobility is the order of the day. The only problem with the tc1100 was the high cost compared to today’s netbooks.
Always Innovating is set to launch a Linux-based netbook that has a detachable keyboard that looks fabulous. The Touch Book has a small screen (8.9-inch) that detaches from the keyboard for mobile slate use. This beauty is reported to run with a TI OMAP3 processor (600 MHz) based on ARM technology and is capable of running Windows CE and Android too. That screen has a 1024×768 resolution which is pretty decent for that size screen.
The screen alone weighs about a pound, which is nice and light, and the whole package only weighs 2 pounds with the keyboard attached. The real story is the price — $300 for the slate alone and $400 for the whole kit. That puts a lot of pressure on that mystical CrunchPad, doesn’t it?
What is innovative about the implementation, as if the hybrid design weren’t enough, is how Always Innovating is handling the OS. A traditional cursor-based UI is in use when the keyboard is attached, but when it is in slate-only mode, a UI customized to be run by touch is the standard fare. This is the best way to provide a dual-mode device with no compromises, and this thing is looking better and better. The Touch Book will be available for pre-order as soon as next week.
(Gizmodo)
Until I will see an actual offer, I’ll continue to smell a tenuous scent of vaporware.
I mean, the concept is just too good. A “big” battery in the keyboard, which also make the whole thing more stable over the lap, and almost perfect dimensions for its intended use. The CPU is quite anemic, but that is quite easy to change.
This beauty with a tegra inside and a GOOD price would be a killer device! Well, it would be difficult to enter in economy of scale, but there is nothing comparable in the market for sure. And… with the next interation of Android, more or less ironed out.
Frankly, I’m a li’l bit tired of dreaming about well-conceived devices
I suppose it will be too much to ask to have an “ink-able” screen at that price point
It’s a resistive screen so probably not. An inkable screen would almost certainly cost much more.
An equal (or bigger) challenge is the software I think. Although not optimal, you can ink with a low-cost resistive touchscreen, which this unit has. You can’t ink without the proper software support and the custom Linux build seems “finger friendly”. That says “not stylus or ink friendly” to me, although I’m sure we’ll see additional details unfold.
Yeah, if they had something like Fujitsu’s palm rejection…
By the way, it seems to be 1024×600, not 1024×768.
Then there’s the question of a good note-taking app for linux…
take it or leave it, guys, but inking is dead at all effects. I’m a tablet, e-ink, etc, fan and professional user since 2004 (toshiba portege m200 and now a lenovo x61, sluggish with that monster called vista ultimate ed.), and until some months I still believe that inking had some opportunities, but no more.
Blame microsoft. They had the vision (the same for origami), and they pay all the development cost. And then what? tablets were and are outrageus expensive, and if that what bad 3 years ago, go imagine what is going to happen in the beginning of the Crisis, when netbooks are changing all the game rules just because of their prices.
Besides, they offered an astounding functionality, e-ink. Good. They even developed smart e-ink functionalities for onenote and, guess what, onenote and tablet received one of the worst, less productive communication campaigns in all the existence of IT market.
I guess that there are a lot of what ifs about alternative futures in which inking don’t die. But in this world, and in this precise moment, inking is firmly in the way of the dodo. I’ll continue to use it because is VERY useful when I do deep interviews or focus group, but that is all. I don’t use e-ink for anything else, although this is nothing but my personal preferences.
Anyways, if inking is more or less dead in the main market (I’m not sure anymore if even there is going to be a tablet pc niche in 2012 or something, when touch interfaces matures), it is not reallistic to ask for inking functionalities on small, economic and certainly anemic devices like this little beauty we are talking about.
Do you need a note-taking app? If you use this device online most of the time, just go with any web solution, from evernote to simpler wikis. If you are going to use the thing more offline, then you can download a copy of tiddlywiki and start to write. Plain simple.
Dreaming is not going to rescue inking from the claws of oblivion, people.
btw excuse my sometimes imperfect English. A large day of work here in Spain
this is d@mn near my “perfect” computer
10+ hrs battery life, small and light, keyboard, touch screen….
heck i wouldn’t mind that it doesn’t have an x86 cpu
i will wait for the reviews before pulling the trigger, however