The viliv would be a great form-factor for a portable tablet, but it sadly lacks the ability to ink well, at least according to what I read on this site. I hope they produce an updated version which takes this into account.

Handwriting-recognition is still not up to my handwriting, but I just store my notes as “ink”–just like I did for the paper notes the tablet replaces. No problem there.

bb

Not going to happen as long as the companies think they can but a premium on a hinge and a touch screen…

About a year ago I got a three year old Motion slate used, and I loved it. The 2005 update to the Tablet software was a big improvement. Now I am using Vista on an HP 2730, and it is an excellent laptop as well as tablet. On a Tablet Vista is a huge improvement. The active touch screen is multiple times better than the early generation screens. I want all my laptops to have tablet capabilites, and I would love a simple stripped down 10″ slate for reading, web browsing and playing casual games. I bought a used TC 1100 for that, but it is a bit heavy and a little buggy with Vista.

The tablet form factor and the laptop form factor really ought to merge.

-d

If 7 years ago, when processors were 90nm (?), tablets were full computers, so much more should they be now when processors have moved to 65nm, 45nm and now 32nm and similarly for other components. Everthing can become more compact and SSDs move in this direction too. And Windows 7 being an undemanding OS is another reason.

So tablets should definitely have the power of full computers; and why not give them a keyboard too?

And what precisely does “super-pda” mean, when the whole concept was coined by the Newton? The Newton was a computer, with a programming environment and everything.

All it really seems it that you don’t grant something the status of a “computer” unless you can also see that OS running on a traditional “computer” form, like a laptop or desktop. Thus MS scores. They wrenched Windows into a form-factor is was ill-suited for. The experience is poor, and the handwriting recognition is still so bad no one uses it in general practice, unlike the Newton. This is part of the reason the tablet has failed, I think. We only THINK we want something new. But we’re afraid of “new”. We want something old dressed up as something new. And then we get it, and we discover THAT kind of process involves losing more features than you gain… and the few people who’ve found a use for the devices bemoan it’s lack of traction in the market.

The main thing MS could have done to have helped its tablet would have been to improve the handwriting recognition to the point it was useful. I remember writing on drawing on the Newton 2100 (or was it 2000, it’s been so long I’ve forgotten). The recognition was outstanding, I could switch between cursive and print, and then I could draw a circle and –bang– I got a nice, clean circle. Bring me that experience on a tablet. Such an experience is, I think, necessary but not sufficient for the success of a tablet. There are more things that would have to come into line, but that’s one of them. Otherwise it’s like buying a PC with a mouse and no keyboard. There’s things you can still go, and you’ll like the extra desk space… but the novelty with go away, and you’ll start noticing all the things that are now harder, too.

I really want HP to do a new TC1100 with multi touch, edge to edge, high dpi screen and slightly thinner – perfect.

Over the last few years I’ve done a lot of transcribing of archive documents (letters, memos, scripts) held in libraries. I couldn’t photocopy them, but I need a transcript of them. Being only a slow typist, I thought a tablet would be my salvation. I thought I could write the material straight into the computer.

The problem with this was that the handwriting recognition wasn’t up to it, although certainly better in Vista. I spent so much time correcting the conversions that it would probably just have been just as quick (or slow) to type it. In the end the working pattern was to handwrite straight into Windows Journal, and defer the conversion to text until I was back home. This was not a bad way to work, but the recognition still needs to be better. (Windows Journal, incidentally, was much better for this than OneNote.)

The conclusion I came to was that the tablet was really designed for note taking in business meetings, rather than for heavy-duty writing. That would make sense because the market for business users must be huge, whereas the market for archival researchers and others who need to work in handwriting is negligible.

I’m looking forward to the improvements Windows 7 is supposed to bring.

Gordon

The current MSoft tablets may be fine for vertical markets but they don’t cut it in the consumer sector. The handwriting recognition has 3 modes, ranging from reading continuous script (least accurate), to entering one character at a time, slow, or pressing letters on a keyboard image, very slow. The net result, it was just easier to flip the thing open and use the keyboard. Thumb typing, with two hands, like on an ipod or RIM device, is impossible as you only get to use the special stylus. Entering a URL or entering an intelligent message via the stylus was near impossible or so slow as to be painful.

The screen has a touch sensitive layer on top of the lcd resulting in a slight dulling/blurring of the image. Not terrible, but certainly not crisp like a “normal” lcd.

I’m still hoping for a 11-13″ tablet that will be ergonomic for the consumer. The stylus is not a great of doing input, but the problem is that as the screen size gets too large, the sides of your hand end of resting on the screen. This makes the capacitive touch screens, like iphone, tough to use.

The