Why buy a tablet?

[Heraclitus]

A good friend of mine just purchased the Compaq Tablet and was showing it off to me last night. I confess that I felt a little underwhelmed. These things cost as much as a jumped-up laptop and I'm not sure what the payout is.

What's the attraction of these things? What do they have that ultra-light laptops (e.g. the Latitude X200) don't?

 

[ivwshane]

I have no idea why anyone would buy a tablet, unless you really need to be able to write on the screen.



I wish they would come out with a tablet pc that was thin, light, and had low power consumption and was only good for;

A) surfing the web
B) editing/reading word/excel docs and handled pdf's well
C) played mpeg based video well (divx, mpeg2, avi, xvid)
D) came with built in wifi (preferrably 802.11b/g/a)
E) came with built in bluetooth
F) and it had at most a 20GB hard drive
G) had a USB port (1.1 or 2.0)
H) and only costs about $500-$600


Then I would buy one.

 

[Lorax]

i believe they are big with artists.

 

[ivwshane]

Originally posted by: Lorax
i believe they are big with artists.

Wacom tablets are better suited for their needs.

 

[Heraclitus]

Originally posted by: Lorax
i believe they are big with artists.

Microsoft Paint artists?

 

[Paperlantern]

hahaha, no, high ends restaurants use them on wireless networks to take orderes, thats the ONLY logical use i can see for them, but you can do the same basic thing with a pocket pc...

 

[RedRonin]

Originally posted by: ivwshane
A) surfing the web
B) editing/reading word/excel docs and handled pdf's well
C) played mpeg based video well (divx, mpeg2, avi, xvid)
D) came with built in wifi (preferrably 802.11b/g/a)
E) came with built in bluetooth
F) and it had at most a 20GB hard drive
G) had a USB port (1.1 or 2.0)
H) and only costs about $500-$600

Hmmm... Make that a 60GB Hard Drive with IEEE 1394 and price it at $199 for a 9" X 12" screen, $349 for a 12" X 18" and make it run 32 hours on a 30 minute charge - then you've got a deal! Still quite a bit of money to replace fingerpaints, pastels and watercolors though.

I do think that Tablet PCs or some other form of lightweight GUI touchscreen device is a good idea. Yes, I am an artist, have been my entire life. The problem though is that the time has not come for these just yet.

They can be interesting little toys, but as mentioned above, most of their potential functionality can be had with a PDA. Today's technology, for displays, battery recharging, touchscreen interface, applications and oh yes - operating system, simply have not advanced to the point where these will work. Even if it had, then economies of scale would still push prices far beyond more practical devices.

HUN-YA!

Red Ronin

 

[Paperlantern]

there is a tablet PC out with a battery life of i believe 18 hours now... so its getting there