Seven years ago I blogged about why I was unhappy with tablet computing.
Here’s the article: https://forums.joeuser.com/540
As i wrote back in 2003:
But the suckitude of Tablet PCs is a team effort. It's not just Microsoft fault. They all have worked very hard to create an inferior product that doesn't meet the needs of the market the claim to want to support.
First, they're too heavy. That kills them right away. This Tablet PC is over 3 pounds in weight. 3 pounds isn't a lot until you try lugging it around like a notebook (real notebook not a laptop) for an hour or two. Us geeklings have weak arms you know. The OEMs are to blame for that. Until they can get the weight down to 2 pounds or less, they should just not bother.
Secondly, they're tedious to write input into. Microsoft's hand writing recognition doesn't work. I mean that. It's not just bad, it basically just doesn't work. If you are one of the 47 adults on earth that still use cursvive to write, then it works fine. But the other 99.999% of us write our characters in print and for that it fails dismally. Microsoft can be blamed for that.
Thirdly, the voice recognition flat out doesn't work in any useful way. I even bought an expensive headset to train it. I went through the lessons and trained the thing. It's unworkable. I've used the products from Dragon and IBM and they work pretty well (at least on the PCs I've used them on). What's built into the Windows XP Tablet Edition is just junk.
What it basically boiled down into is that the early tablets were too heavy and too tedious to use. Weight. Means of Input.
Apple’s iPad seems to address all three issues – almost:
- At 1.5 pounds, it’s pretty light. Is it light enough? Too early to say. I’ll have to hold one. This could be a killer issue still.
- A great touch interface solves the need to use a special pen to do input.
- If you have the Google iPhone app, you already know how wonderful voice recognition is on search.
When I got a tablet PC back in 2003, I was hoping to use it as a great way to read the net while sitting in a comfy chair without having the bulk (or form factor) of a keyboard. Right now,I just use my ThinkPad T400 for that or, more commonly, my iPhone with its tiny screen. Assuming the 1.5 pounds doesn’t make using it tedious after hours, this is a useful thing.
That said, it also has some big big negatives:
- No Flash support. That really cripples modern web browsing.
- No camera. I mentioned this in my other blog, this is a pretty poor choice. I use Google Voice to send all my calls to my cell phone and my Skype #.
- No multitasking. Not that the above matters though since no multitasking means no Skype running in the background.
- The weight. Again, 1.5 pounds… we’ll see.
- No SD card support. I wasn’t expecting it necessarily but again, it really diminishes the utility if I can’t stick in new pictures easily.
Yea, I’m going to buy it. But bear in mind, I also bought the crappy tablet back in 2003.
