Did anyone get their hands on the HP TM2 to see how the inking experience was? I can’t seem to find any reports ANYWHERE online. I’m worried that glassy screen will make for a crappy pen feel.
It should be quite different than TX2 since it’s now Wacom instead of nTrig. One of the great things about using Wacom tech, there are variety of pens available.
Is the Wacom a “dual digitizer”. One problem I have with the Acer Tablet they gave out at PDC is that it is a single digitizer for both touch and ink – and so when you try to write your hand cause touch events (expecially for us lefties!) Works great for touch, but writing is impossible.
Inking on the capacitive screen was just fine – smooth, fluid, responsive; I use a 2730p and have tried every tablet ever produced (lucky me!) and I was very impressed.
I’ve resurrected my TC1100 and put W7 on it, OneNote, instead of eBaying it like I was planning to do. I couldn’t be happier, and am so glad I didn’t get rid of it (wondering WTH I was thinking). As old as that thing is – the design is still unparalleled IMO. Tablets rock!
I had a Fujitsu for testing at about the same time. It was nice and Tablet Planner was very cool in its first incarnation, but off to Ebay it did go. As a Mac user, I need a Mac Tablet…
@Nicholas – I struggled with the same as a hard core Mac user myself. A Macbook is my primary machine. However, the tablet has becomes an awesome, and very complimentary cross-platform device. I centralize everything in Evernote (yet I also use OneNote on the tablet, then import notes over to Evernote). So, the tablet becomes a handwriting input device for all of my notes, a bedside and family room ereader (Kindle, B&N, Google Reader, etc), browser (Chrome is awesome here), etc. I also use Dropbox across all devices so I can call up a doc on the Tablet if I need to. Everything is pretty web centric and in sync – so I dont really store much of anything on the Tablet, and there are no compatibility issues since we are talking web services. So, I’ve found a very happy mixed platform existence across my HP TC1100 W7 Tablet PC slate, iMac, Macbook and iPhone.
The first of the “new” slates, the Archos 9, can’t handwrite either. I thought I could upgrade it from starter and ink away as I did on my p1610, but it is not to be. No one seems to think handwriting is important anymore. Sigh.
i suspect the archos 9 is some kind of experiment in merging the pmp with atom, and a larger screen.
that is, archos have aimed it at the pmp market, not the productivity market. Its a product that can do media, web and maybe the odd facebook flash game, not take notes during a meeting or anything like that.
Can do *what*, exactly? Allow you to scribble on the screen? I think I saw video demos of both the Notion Ink Adam and the Entourage eDGe in which users were writing on the screen (the former with a finger, to be sure, but definitely writing). Or did you mean “accept and interpret handwriting input in text fields”? That may be true, but I think it’s also an open question whether the target audience for these devices *wants* that feature – they seem to be aimed at users who are not traditional tablet users, who are accustomed to the smartphone virtual-keyboard experience, and who are viewing the slate primarily as a means for consuming multimedia content rather than as a tool for productivity. In that context, leaving the handwriting recognition out might make sense.
+1 on this. About the only product that seemed aimed at productivity was the edge, as they clearly stated they started out looking at the education market, then found that similar products where wanted in medical and other areas.
the screens are there to tap the odd facebook link, not to pen a letter, note or novel…
Depending on whether you consider the eDGe to be a slate, I have proof to the contrary. Unless you’re referring to the ability to make James Kendrick’s legendary handwriting legible. Who wrote this ink post for you?
It may be accurate that none of the slates at CES accept handwriting input as text, but I’m curious why the post is titled “When is a slate not a tablet?” Who decided that handwriting recognition is intrinsically part of the definition of a tablet computer?
@Fred: Does that mean that the iPhone, the HTC Hero/Droid Eris, and every other smartphone that has no physical keyboard are not *really* “smartphones” because Palm and Blackberry included keyboards on their original models? I think you’d have a hard time defending that proposition.
This whole thing seems to me a fallacy of the “real Scotsman” persuasion: thing X isn’t a REAL thing X because it lacks some arbitrary property Y. I can understand that a fair proportion of users here wouldn’t want to use a tablet that doesn’t have inking capabilities, but I don’t see any logical basis for excluding non-inking slates (or convertible tablets) from the “tablet” category based solely on that lack.
In reality, however, I do believe that in order for a tablet (slate or otherwise) to be useful in a business context, it needs to have some level of stylus input. There must be some way to capture textual input, and an on screen keyboard is inadequate for entries more than 140 characters.
On the other hand, if the device is intended as a consumer device, a stylus and ink input may not be necessary.
@Fred: duly noted; my bad. I still think it was a point worth making in context of the overall discussion, though. BTW, read your post on the topic, and thought it was a very thoughtful and well-reasoned commentary on the issue. I was under the impression, though, that the relative cost difference btwn Apple and Windows hardware played a significant role in keeping Windows predominant in the business world. Or am I misinformed?
Nitpick: the original Palm smartphone (Kyocera/Motorola Q phone) did NOT have a keyboard. It had a numberpad, but that’s it. It basically folded down, out of the way (like the old flip phones) so you could access the full palm pilot screen, and use grafiti input.
@Fred:
I agree that it will need some form of text input that is more than just hunt&peck virtual keyboard. But, I don’t think a pen/stylus is the only answer for that. There’s convertible-tablets, there’s swype, there’s bluetooth and usb keyboards (which might be used in a case, to make a detachable type tablet; Samsung’s Q1 series had a case like that, there’s the Always Innovating Touchbook, and now there’s the Lenovo tablet doing something similar). There’s lots of options besides simply requiring pen input.
@Scott: Thanks. I think hardware cost has been more of a problem in the consumer market than in the business world. Most business have been too tied to the MS stack to be able to move easily. This is reflected that business for whom their core applications are deemed better on the Mac (graphic design, audio, etc.) have no problem going with Macs.
@johnkzin: Yes, there are a number of different ways to get text into a tablet. Over the last 7 years, I have spent ALOT of time using a tablet (most of the day, every day). When the first tablets came out, I had the good fortune to have one of the original Compaq TC1100. I also had the luxury of doing an experiment – I got rid of all of my other computers for 6 months to force myself to learn how to get things done on a tablet. Here is what I learned:
1) Using the tablet at my desk, handwriting is a terrible way to create long documents. I am a terrible typist, but I can still type faster than I write;
2) A keyboard is the best way to enter long documents; voice dictation is better, when it works;
3) The only useful way to use handwriting is to LEAVE IT AS HANDWRITING. Use a tool like OneNote to take notes, leave it as handwriting, but it is searchable as though it were text;
4) The tablet is a fantstic tool for note-taking in meetings (in ink), red-lining documents (in ink) and brainstorming with a tool like MindJet Mind Manager (in ink);
Most of my primary uses for using a tablet as a mobile device (as opposed to at my desk with a bluetooth keyboard) use ink as the primary mode. I have multi-touch tablets now, and while touch is great, it does not REPLACE ink.
I guess we have to hope the Apple Slate will have a stylus. If it does, everyone else will rush to have a stylus on their tablet/slates. If not, we’ll never see another tablet/slate with a stylus in our lifetimes.
My favourite tablet (slate or otherwise) is still my Motion Computing LE1600 (superceded by the LE1700) – nice size stylus, pressure sensitivity, dual battery design.
Too bad Motion COmputing discontinued it a couple of weeks ago.
What is being called a “slate” is actually just a media player with a big screen. I would love to have the most power possible in a windows 7 (or full mac os for those who are interested in that) slate.
I don’t think it’s so much that none of the devices unveiled at CES can accept handwriting as text, so much as almost none of them have any form of palm rejection whatsoever. This leads to an almost complete inability to ink with any sort of comfort at all I think.
I just bought a used Sahara i440D for $750 and am really enjoying the experience. The dual switch from capacitive stylus to resistive touch is seamless and being used alternately far more frequently than I imagined. No issues like with N-Trig. Beautiful screen, nice speed and sensible design (thick enough for cooling fan to actually work well).
It’s a real shame that they’re $2,500 new. It’s a truly great slate experience (I have 3 HP1100′s also).
Bruce, good to hear that you are a user of Sahara tablet. Unfortunately, it’s a device that does not seem to get a lot of coverage. On a merrier note, as product placement, it is ‘the’ laptop of choice in CSI New York since the latter is quite heavy on digital equipment used in the series followed by CSI Miami but i must say i haven’t seen the Sahara tablet used in CSI Miami.
I think the biggest difference between a slate and a tablet (as far as I can tell from what’s being released) is that slates seem to be designed for consuming content, like surfing the web, listening to music, reading ebooks etc, while tablets are designed for creating content, note taking etc.
Perhaps that’s why tablets have a bigger emphasis on handwriting while slates don’t, since text input won’t be the most common thing to do on a slate.
In fact, that’s why I think the iSlate won’t have a stylus because I don’t think Apple will be marketing it as something for people to take notes on, but to consume content like magazines in a way not possible with physical paper.
“I think the biggest difference between a slate and a tablet (as far as I can tell from what’s being released) is that slates seem to be designed for consuming content, like surfing the web, listening to music, reading ebooks etc, while tablets are designed for creating content, note taking etc.”
This is absolutely wrong. I have been using SLATE tablets for 7 years, and handwriting input is fundamental. Keep in mind that the SLATE form-factor is NOT new, and Apple is not inventing it. Apple may choose to “dumb down” the platform for the consumer market, but that does not mean that IS all a slate is.
There seems to be this misunderstanding that a slate and a tablet are two different things – they are not. A slate is merely one form-factor of a tablet – but a slate IS a tablet.
This is my biggest fear from the Apple tablet announcement – that Apple will redefine the slate as a glorified iPhone that can read eBooks, making it all but useless to non-trivial users.
The one glimmer of hope I have seen that the Apple slate will have a stylus is that they have been rumoured to be pitching the platform in a medical context, and without a stylus I cannot see that working.
I certainly hope not, because this “redefinition” of the term “slate” (Apple pirating the term, in essence) represents a significant dumbing-down of the platform – making it useless to most serious users (but great for kids)
That’s not entirely true. You don’t have to see this as a dumbing down of the TabletPC, because they’re still around, and their purpose is very different from these “slates” we’re seeing today.
This “slate” (which, by the way, wasn’t coined by Apple since they have yet to mention anything about this at all, so it’s not very fair to blame them) is more like the enhancing/upgrade of the ebook reader and the MID. I don’t think it’s at all useless, since it might change the way people read books and magazines. TabletPCs are still full-scale notebooks, and have a lot of power that wouldn’t be necessary for just consuming content, so these slates could cover that gap of being more mobile than tabletPCs (not just size and weight but also battery life), but provide significantly richer content than ebook readers and smartphones. IMO.
I disagree – compared to a true slate (like the Motion Computing LE1600 I have been using for years) it is useless – it is useless for 90% of what I use a slate tablet for.
It is unfortunate the MS did not copyright or trademark the “tablet” and “slate” nomenclature to prevent someone (Apple or anyone else) from pirating it and redefining it to suit their marketing needs.
Ans the fact is, we are in a market now where ANYTHING Apple releases will be hailed as the best thing in the universe, no matter how it compares in functionality. And due to the hype which will no doubt surround it, many manufacturers or REAL slate tablets will either be driven out of business or abandon the product – thus harming both the market and innovation in general.
That’s the thing, you see. You just said it yourself. You will never buy a slate because your needs require a tabletpc. I am a TabletPC lover, to the point that every time I meet people from Microsoft I’m always asking them what have they done for the TabletPC so far.
However, the target audience for this new category of products is not you and me. We need to realise that for the people it’s designed for and marketed towards, it’s going to be extremely useful. These people don’t do the things we do on our TabletPCs. We must stop looking at this as a TabletPC, because it’s not. This is going to be an entire new product category.
I did not say that. I have been using a slate for 7 years. What they are rumoured to be producing is NOT a slate, they are just rumoured to be stealng the name.
Then they should name it something different – and I know iSlate is only a rumour – but it shoudl not purport to be a slate, or tablet or anything like that – it is a big iPhone
And if it is dumbed-down, it will be harmful to the rest of the market.
You seem to have a very definite concept of what makes a slate a slate, and not just any other form of tablet. But, while you keep saying “yes that is” and “no that isn’t”, you haven’t shared this definition with us. So, in your mind, “what is a slate?”, compared to “what is a tablet?”
To me, a Tablet is by definition a mobile device that supports interaction primarily via a digital ink-based “pen on paper” paradigm layered over GUI interaction (and now also including touch and multitouch). The keyboard is a secondary mode of interaction.
There are two sub-categories of Tablet – the convertable and the slate. I think we all understand and accept what a convertable tablet is. A slate is a tablet without a built in keyboard and usually other components like an optical drive, allowing it to be lighter, better on battery life, etc.
There have been many Convertible Tablets, and also a number of Slate Tablets – but they are all Tablets first.
Thus my oft-repeated statement – a slate IS a tablet, and a fundamental feature of a tablet is ink support.
Sorry if I get a little heated over this – I am concerned that a platform I find very useful is going to be displaced by a less-functional but sexier (and better marketed) device.
I started to post my confusion of the terms, about Tablet OS, handwriting recognition, etc, but gave up, not being able to think of something like your words “layered over GUI interaction”.
I think the term “slate” has been hijacked at this CES, beyond anything we can do to correct the terminology. I think that is all Daniel was saying. Somewhat like the day they came out with the 3.5″ (rather rigid) floppy disk, and the confusion with truly bendable 5 1/4″ floppy disks. (Gosh, that was an annoying period when we had to respond “Do you mean a big one you can bend, or the hard, smaller one?”) The new slates should have been called something else. Accuracy in terms loses yet another battle.
Just as netbook defined a new separate category from laptop (however blurred), the prior existence and history for slate should be reserved and respected for a keyboard-less FULL operating system device. Let media-consumption slabs and dumb devices that can’t even cut and paste or hook up peripherals find another new name and leave “slate” alone for what it has represented quite distinctly and well proven since 2001.
Tablet PC is a great idea but suffer from the lack of software to make it usable for me in the past. They don’t work straight out of box like iPhone. Its overall interface and software intuitiveness were what really counts. I am a windows mobile user and love install many free apps to make it better than iPhone. But I hated the initial time spent on setup and fine tune every apps to work with specific phone.
Windows 7 had made my life simple again with my trusty HP TC1100.
I now use one-note, open office and sync toy all the time.
Give me a pencil and paper any day. I can scribble an illegible but profound note on a blank sheet, fold it into a streamlined delta wing and launch it at unsuspecting folk. What tablet or slate can do that?
Hello all, This is not a response but more of a question, I have been looking for a slate form factor device that allows pen input, for my daily work, taking notes, writing orders down, writing up my agenda etc.. I am not a very well organized person, as i run a business i need a tool that centralizes all my information and lets me update notes when at home. I almost went for the viliv x70 then decided to wait for CES to go by, following this site everyday (great reports!) and now i wakeup to see this article and am SOOO dissapointed. So you guys seem to be the ones who do inking, can we put together a list of what is recommended for inking? I am at a loss of what to get. For example so often i hear a resistif screen wont handle it BUT is this purists saying this, or can we still write with it, its just not as much fun on paper? I just need a 7 inch screen, one note and windows for my other tools (wifi too). If i have to get used to writing without palm recognition thats fine too.. Never have i found dedicated articles on inking as a whole, and not from a purisits point of view who will say inking is crap on a non didigitalized screen..
(speaking of which i can go for a stylus only screen, don’t care about touch/multitouch even though it is handy)
The “slate” that both Microsoft and Intel showed at their keynotes at CES is an HP built device running Windows 7. In that regard it is a “full” Tablet PC yet both Ballmer and Intel called it a new “slate device”. It seems the battle for the term slate has already been decided by the ones who started the Tablet PC product.
When I first entered the market for digital ink, I asked a question at tabletpcbuzz something like this, “which tablet pc is best for me?”
The responses were very helpful, but I remember learning right there that the word ‘slate’ meant something special. It’s something like this.
1) Tablet pc’s allow a user to input digital ink through a pen of some sort and a digitizer on the screen
2) Tablet pc’s come in two varieties
a) convertible–hinged notebook design
b) slate–no attached keyboard
That said, it appears that the term SLATE applies to any computing device that does not have an attached keyboard, and the term TABLET PC applies to digital inking on a computing device. Sadly, and I mean sadly, the new touch/media devices without keyboards are slates, in my opinion. I do wish they had utilized a new word, though, and kept slates attached to tablet pc computing.
I am hoping Apple’s slate has some inking, but I don’t expect it. Too bad. To me, they’ve missed the education market completely in thinking that it’s about PRESENTING the lecture/information on a device rather than INTERACTING with the material and DEVELOPING your own understanding. Par for the course in the education world theses :-(
In my experience, “tablet” has no such “ink” requirement. Many tablets are pen/stylus/ink based but many are not. We’ve got Nokia Internet Tablets (going back to 2005), where pen/stylus is optional and the screen is touch friendly. There’s the Archos tablets (which are not “new”), none of which have required a pen. And even among “Tablet PC’s”, I’m willing to bet that early requirements for a stylus/pen were more a matter of early technological necessity (what was affordable and accurate) than intended definition of the platform.
But, it seems that that’s the only sticking point between current market definitions of “Tablet” and people’s objections here: the requirement for a stylus/pen. Modern “Tablets” (going back several years, not just since rumors of Apple’s re-entry into the market) don’t require a pen, but can be touchscreen based, instead (or can use both).
From there, definitions of tablets and slates seem co-equal. Tablets may or may not have a keyboard, and their primary form of interaction is through the screen. Slates are the subset of Tablets that don’t have keyboards.
(I would quibble that there’s a third subset of tablets — “Convertible Tablets” (swivel screen hybrids between laptops/netbooks and tablets), “Slates” (no keyboard at all), and a third set that has a keyboard, but not in a swivel screen format; examples of this third set are: side-slide qwerty phones (a design that goes all the way up through UMPC designs, like the OQO and early Gigabyte UMPC), tablets with fixed thumb keyboards (Everun’s first tablet was like this … like a Kindle or Kindle DX, only with a color LCD and running Windows XP) … the side-slide could be considered a variation of the convertible, but the fixed keyboard definitely isn’t “convertible” in any way)
Someone mentioned “has to run a full OS”. I think that’s a reasonable description of a “TabletPC”, but I wouldn’t say it’s a reasonable requirement for a “Tablet”. After all, the (original) Palm Pilot was classified as a “Tablet”, and it ran nothing like a full PC OS.
While I completely agree that there is a new class of tablet pc (not slate and not convertible, like the x400), I still maintain that ink is necessary to earn the moniker.
MS created the tablet pc idea, and the definition they used included the only technology at the time…digitizer and pen. So, that defines the tablet pc.
Sure, as new technology is created, you add classifiers (“internet tablet” or “touch screen”), but the original definition is the standard to which everyone should identify the term, IMO.
I have no objection to the tablet PC form factor being extended by new interaction modes (such as multi-touch. I just disagree that the new approaches eliminate the need for an ink capability.
I just wish they’d bring handwriting back for Windows Mobile. Pre-6.1 (and pre-Office 2007), I used the native Notes program to take handwritten notes on my PDA and/or phone, which synced fine with Outlook. I’ve always wished they’d expanded that and incorporated it into OneNote Mobile, rather than dumping it.
My tx2000 works fine for notetaking, but I find it’s too heavy (in comparison to a netbook) and the battery life too short to drag with me. At home, using it in tablet mode just isn’t too convenient.
My Motion Le1600 has been my main computer for the past 3+ years. # years is an eternity in computer years, but I have seen no compelling replacement (with the exception of the incremental improvement of the le1700)
to me the perfect device would be the le1600/1700 with longer battery life and (here is the kicker) instant on. I use the tablet as my day runner on steroids. I need a device that, like my smart phone, is ready to go when i need it.
I was just looking around the Motion Computing web site, and revisiting the J3400 tablet they have. I am actually considering replacing my LE1600 (will probably wait until the flurry of releases subsides to see if there is something I want more), but this is worth looking at to see what a slate tablet can be. The fact that it is semi-rugged with a titanium case and drop protection seems a little overkill, but the ink support in the moction Computing tablets has always been exceptional, and I love the dual, hot-swappable batteries!
Truth
Proud tablet pc owner
Bingo!
I notice that even God gave Moses two tablets not slates.
lol!!!
Did anyone get their hands on the HP TM2 to see how the inking experience was? I can’t seem to find any reports ANYWHERE online. I’m worried that glassy screen will make for a crappy pen feel.
HP didn’t have a booth. I tried them at their meeting room but they wouldn’t take me.
It felt fine for me:
Thanks so much for this. I’m sold on it.
Is it much different from the TX2? Only real complaint I have with the TX2 is the stylus – it is too small.
It should be quite different than TX2 since it’s now Wacom instead of nTrig. One of the great things about using Wacom tech, there are variety of pens available.
Is the Wacom a “dual digitizer”. One problem I have with the Acer Tablet they gave out at PDC is that it is a single digitizer for both touch and ink – and so when you try to write your hand cause touch events (expecially for us lefties!) Works great for touch, but writing is impossible.
Inking experience is good on the tm2. It is a “real” tablet pc.
But he TX2 is a tad too heavy to carry around (not that “portable”), don’t you think?
It is heavy, so some will find it too heavy.
Inking on the capacitive screen was just fine – smooth, fluid, responsive; I use a 2730p and have tried every tablet ever produced (lucky me!) and I was very impressed.
are all us (few?) handwriting folks weird, mad or what. How come the lack of attention to good handwriting all about?
I’ve resurrected my TC1100 and put W7 on it, OneNote, instead of eBaying it like I was planning to do. I couldn’t be happier, and am so glad I didn’t get rid of it (wondering WTH I was thinking). As old as that thing is – the design is still unparalleled IMO. Tablets rock!
I had a Fujitsu for testing at about the same time. It was nice and Tablet Planner was very cool in its first incarnation, but off to Ebay it did go. As a Mac user, I need a Mac Tablet…
@Nicholas – I struggled with the same as a hard core Mac user myself. A Macbook is my primary machine. However, the tablet has becomes an awesome, and very complimentary cross-platform device. I centralize everything in Evernote (yet I also use OneNote on the tablet, then import notes over to Evernote). So, the tablet becomes a handwriting input device for all of my notes, a bedside and family room ereader (Kindle, B&N, Google Reader, etc), browser (Chrome is awesome here), etc. I also use Dropbox across all devices so I can call up a doc on the Tablet if I need to. Everything is pretty web centric and in sync – so I dont really store much of anything on the Tablet, and there are no compatibility issues since we are talking web services. So, I’ve found a very happy mixed platform existence across my HP TC1100 W7 Tablet PC slate, iMac, Macbook and iPhone.
CES 2010 Slate = UMPC hardware as Microsoft intended (I don’t think they “intended” UMPCs to not run Windows ;-)
The first of the “new” slates, the Archos 9, can’t handwrite either. I thought I could upgrade it from starter and ink away as I did on my p1610, but it is not to be. No one seems to think handwriting is important anymore. Sigh.
i suspect the archos 9 is some kind of experiment in merging the pmp with atom, and a larger screen.
that is, archos have aimed it at the pmp market, not the productivity market. Its a product that can do media, web and maybe the odd facebook flash game, not take notes during a meeting or anything like that.
Can do *what*, exactly? Allow you to scribble on the screen? I think I saw video demos of both the Notion Ink Adam and the Entourage eDGe in which users were writing on the screen (the former with a finger, to be sure, but definitely writing). Or did you mean “accept and interpret handwriting input in text fields”? That may be true, but I think it’s also an open question whether the target audience for these devices *wants* that feature – they seem to be aimed at users who are not traditional tablet users, who are accustomed to the smartphone virtual-keyboard experience, and who are viewing the slate primarily as a means for consuming multimedia content rather than as a tool for productivity. In that context, leaving the handwriting recognition out might make sense.
+1 on this. About the only product that seemed aimed at productivity was the edge, as they clearly stated they started out looking at the education market, then found that similar products where wanted in medical and other areas.
the screens are there to tap the odd facebook link, not to pen a letter, note or novel…
Depending on whether you consider the eDGe to be a slate, I have proof to the contrary. Unless you’re referring to the ability to make James Kendrick’s legendary handwriting legible. Who wrote this ink post for you?
The eDGe isn’t being called a slate. It’s being called a “Dual Book” tablet. I’m thinking that’s what he’s using:
A tablet, that is not a slate. And since it’s not a slate, his statement is accurate.
It may be accurate that none of the slates at CES accept handwriting input as text, but I’m curious why the post is titled “When is a slate not a tablet?” Who decided that handwriting recognition is intrinsically part of the definition of a tablet computer?
“Who decided that handwriting recognition is intrinsically part of the definition of a tablet computer?”
The company that invented BOTH slates AND tablets – Microsoft!
@Fred: Does that mean that the iPhone, the HTC Hero/Droid Eris, and every other smartphone that has no physical keyboard are not *really* “smartphones” because Palm and Blackberry included keyboards on their original models? I think you’d have a hard time defending that proposition.
This whole thing seems to me a fallacy of the “real Scotsman” persuasion: thing X isn’t a REAL thing X because it lacks some arbitrary property Y. I can understand that a fair proportion of users here wouldn’t want to use a tablet that doesn’t have inking capabilities, but I don’t see any logical basis for excluding non-inking slates (or convertible tablets) from the “tablet” category based solely on that lack.
That comment was intended to be sarcastic :-)
In reality, however, I do believe that in order for a tablet (slate or otherwise) to be useful in a business context, it needs to have some level of stylus input. There must be some way to capture textual input, and an on screen keyboard is inadequate for entries more than 140 characters.
On the other hand, if the device is intended as a consumer device, a stylus and ink input may not be necessary.
@Fred: duly noted; my bad. I still think it was a point worth making in context of the overall discussion, though. BTW, read your post on the topic, and thought it was a very thoughtful and well-reasoned commentary on the issue. I was under the impression, though, that the relative cost difference btwn Apple and Windows hardware played a significant role in keeping Windows predominant in the business world. Or am I misinformed?
@Scott
Nitpick: the original Palm smartphone (Kyocera/Motorola Q phone) did NOT have a keyboard. It had a numberpad, but that’s it. It basically folded down, out of the way (like the old flip phones) so you could access the full palm pilot screen, and use grafiti input.
@Fred:
I agree that it will need some form of text input that is more than just hunt&peck virtual keyboard. But, I don’t think a pen/stylus is the only answer for that. There’s convertible-tablets, there’s swype, there’s bluetooth and usb keyboards (which might be used in a case, to make a detachable type tablet; Samsung’s Q1 series had a case like that, there’s the Always Innovating Touchbook, and now there’s the Lenovo tablet doing something similar). There’s lots of options besides simply requiring pen input.
@Scott: Thanks. I think hardware cost has been more of a problem in the consumer market than in the business world. Most business have been too tied to the MS stack to be able to move easily. This is reflected that business for whom their core applications are deemed better on the Mac (graphic design, audio, etc.) have no problem going with Macs.
@johnkzin: Yes, there are a number of different ways to get text into a tablet. Over the last 7 years, I have spent ALOT of time using a tablet (most of the day, every day). When the first tablets came out, I had the good fortune to have one of the original Compaq TC1100. I also had the luxury of doing an experiment – I got rid of all of my other computers for 6 months to force myself to learn how to get things done on a tablet. Here is what I learned:
1) Using the tablet at my desk, handwriting is a terrible way to create long documents. I am a terrible typist, but I can still type faster than I write;
2) A keyboard is the best way to enter long documents; voice dictation is better, when it works;
3) The only useful way to use handwriting is to LEAVE IT AS HANDWRITING. Use a tool like OneNote to take notes, leave it as handwriting, but it is searchable as though it were text;
4) The tablet is a fantstic tool for note-taking in meetings (in ink), red-lining documents (in ink) and brainstorming with a tool like MindJet Mind Manager (in ink);
Most of my primary uses for using a tablet as a mobile device (as opposed to at my desk with a bluetooth keyboard) use ink as the primary mode. I have multi-touch tablets now, and while touch is great, it does not REPLACE ink.
INK without pressure sensitivity = poop. ;)
I wrote it myself. Pretty handwriting. :)
I guess we have to hope the Apple Slate will have a stylus. If it does, everyone else will rush to have a stylus on their tablet/slates. If not, we’ll never see another tablet/slate with a stylus in our lifetimes.
Wacom boys said no Wacom part for isLate…
Absolutely – I have been arguing this with Apple fans all weekend, who believe there is no need for a stylus or ink (see my post on it if you want :-) http://fyeomans.wordpress.com/2010/01/09/so-what-is-the-key-to-success-for-the-apple-tablet-obviously-anything-apple-releases-will-have-a-certain-amount-of-success-within-the-apple-fan-base-but-is-that-enough-to-sustain-a-tablet-product-l/)
My favourite tablet (slate or otherwise) is still my Motion Computing LE1600 (superceded by the LE1700) – nice size stylus, pressure sensitivity, dual battery design.
Too bad Motion COmputing discontinued it a couple of weeks ago.
What is being called a “slate” is actually just a media player with a big screen. I would love to have the most power possible in a windows 7 (or full mac os for those who are interested in that) slate.
I don’t think it’s so much that none of the devices unveiled at CES can accept handwriting as text, so much as almost none of them have any form of palm rejection whatsoever. This leads to an almost complete inability to ink with any sort of comfort at all I think.
Except for the eDGe, which uses a Wacom digitizer on the e-paper screen. (their specs specifically say “Wacom® Penabled®”)
“That is because my boys from Cupertino weren’t there”
SPJ
@Gary – any trouble getting drivers for the TC1100 running Win 7?
this comment typed on my TC1100
@Regular re: TC1100 & drivers: It wasn’t too bad, after I found this: http://mobilepcwiki.com/mpc/index.php?title=HP/TC1100/Windows_7_Installation_Notes
I had 512MB, and took it up to 1.5GB (still need to dig in and find the other slot to take it up to 2GB)…what a difference. W7 runs awesome on it.
Has anybody considered the Sahara tablet from Tabletkiosk??
I just bought a used Sahara i440D for $750 and am really enjoying the experience. The dual switch from capacitive stylus to resistive touch is seamless and being used alternately far more frequently than I imagined. No issues like with N-Trig. Beautiful screen, nice speed and sensible design (thick enough for cooling fan to actually work well).
It’s a real shame that they’re $2,500 new. It’s a truly great slate experience (I have 3 HP1100′s also).
Bruce, good to hear that you are a user of Sahara tablet. Unfortunately, it’s a device that does not seem to get a lot of coverage. On a merrier note, as product placement, it is ‘the’ laptop of choice in CSI New York since the latter is quite heavy on digital equipment used in the series followed by CSI Miami but i must say i haven’t seen the Sahara tablet used in CSI Miami.
I think the biggest difference between a slate and a tablet (as far as I can tell from what’s being released) is that slates seem to be designed for consuming content, like surfing the web, listening to music, reading ebooks etc, while tablets are designed for creating content, note taking etc.
Perhaps that’s why tablets have a bigger emphasis on handwriting while slates don’t, since text input won’t be the most common thing to do on a slate.
In fact, that’s why I think the iSlate won’t have a stylus because I don’t think Apple will be marketing it as something for people to take notes on, but to consume content like magazines in a way not possible with physical paper.
“I think the biggest difference between a slate and a tablet (as far as I can tell from what’s being released) is that slates seem to be designed for consuming content, like surfing the web, listening to music, reading ebooks etc, while tablets are designed for creating content, note taking etc.”
This is absolutely wrong. I have been using SLATE tablets for 7 years, and handwriting input is fundamental. Keep in mind that the SLATE form-factor is NOT new, and Apple is not inventing it. Apple may choose to “dumb down” the platform for the consumer market, but that does not mean that IS all a slate is.
There seems to be this misunderstanding that a slate and a tablet are two different things – they are not. A slate is merely one form-factor of a tablet – but a slate IS a tablet.
This is my biggest fear from the Apple tablet announcement – that Apple will redefine the slate as a glorified iPhone that can read eBooks, making it all but useless to non-trivial users.
The one glimmer of hope I have seen that the Apple slate will have a stylus is that they have been rumoured to be pitching the platform in a medical context, and without a stylus I cannot see that working.
No, I totally understand that. I own the HP TC1100 and that’s a slate form-factor tablet. But today it seems that the term “slate” is changing…
Perhaps a better way to phrase this is that the “slate” today isn’t a “tablet pc” any more. Would that make more sense?
I certainly hope not, because this “redefinition” of the term “slate” (Apple pirating the term, in essence) represents a significant dumbing-down of the platform – making it useless to most serious users (but great for kids)
That’s not entirely true. You don’t have to see this as a dumbing down of the TabletPC, because they’re still around, and their purpose is very different from these “slates” we’re seeing today.
This “slate” (which, by the way, wasn’t coined by Apple since they have yet to mention anything about this at all, so it’s not very fair to blame them) is more like the enhancing/upgrade of the ebook reader and the MID. I don’t think it’s at all useless, since it might change the way people read books and magazines. TabletPCs are still full-scale notebooks, and have a lot of power that wouldn’t be necessary for just consuming content, so these slates could cover that gap of being more mobile than tabletPCs (not just size and weight but also battery life), but provide significantly richer content than ebook readers and smartphones. IMO.
I disagree – compared to a true slate (like the Motion Computing LE1600 I have been using for years) it is useless – it is useless for 90% of what I use a slate tablet for.
It is unfortunate the MS did not copyright or trademark the “tablet” and “slate” nomenclature to prevent someone (Apple or anyone else) from pirating it and redefining it to suit their marketing needs.
Ans the fact is, we are in a market now where ANYTHING Apple releases will be hailed as the best thing in the universe, no matter how it compares in functionality. And due to the hype which will no doubt surround it, many manufacturers or REAL slate tablets will either be driven out of business or abandon the product – thus harming both the market and innovation in general.
That’s the thing, you see. You just said it yourself. You will never buy a slate because your needs require a tabletpc. I am a TabletPC lover, to the point that every time I meet people from Microsoft I’m always asking them what have they done for the TabletPC so far.
However, the target audience for this new category of products is not you and me. We need to realise that for the people it’s designed for and marketed towards, it’s going to be extremely useful. These people don’t do the things we do on our TabletPCs. We must stop looking at this as a TabletPC, because it’s not. This is going to be an entire new product category.
I did not say that. I have been using a slate for 7 years. What they are rumoured to be producing is NOT a slate, they are just rumoured to be stealng the name.
Then they should name it something different – and I know iSlate is only a rumour – but it shoudl not purport to be a slate, or tablet or anything like that – it is a big iPhone
And if it is dumbed-down, it will be harmful to the rest of the market.
@Fred
You seem to have a very definite concept of what makes a slate a slate, and not just any other form of tablet. But, while you keep saying “yes that is” and “no that isn’t”, you haven’t shared this definition with us. So, in your mind, “what is a slate?”, compared to “what is a tablet?”
@johnkzin Fair enough…
To me, a Tablet is by definition a mobile device that supports interaction primarily via a digital ink-based “pen on paper” paradigm layered over GUI interaction (and now also including touch and multitouch). The keyboard is a secondary mode of interaction.
There are two sub-categories of Tablet – the convertable and the slate. I think we all understand and accept what a convertable tablet is. A slate is a tablet without a built in keyboard and usually other components like an optical drive, allowing it to be lighter, better on battery life, etc.
There have been many Convertible Tablets, and also a number of Slate Tablets – but they are all Tablets first.
Thus my oft-repeated statement – a slate IS a tablet, and a fundamental feature of a tablet is ink support.
Sorry if I get a little heated over this – I am concerned that a platform I find very useful is going to be displaced by a less-functional but sexier (and better marketed) device.
Fred,
I had the same trouble in an earlier JK post, linked below, where he has these sentences about a Freescale demo thing that docked like a TC100:
“…Freescale demonstrates the Sharp Netwalker handheld, and the reference design slate with the cool keyboard dock. Don’t miss the price point Freescale thinks should be possible with the hybrid tablet.”
( http://jkontherun.com/2010/01/08/freescale-reference-design-hybrid-tablet-on-video/ )
I started to post my confusion of the terms, about Tablet OS, handwriting recognition, etc, but gave up, not being able to think of something like your words “layered over GUI interaction”.
I think the term “slate” has been hijacked at this CES, beyond anything we can do to correct the terminology. I think that is all Daniel was saying. Somewhat like the day they came out with the 3.5″ (rather rigid) floppy disk, and the confusion with truly bendable 5 1/4″ floppy disks. (Gosh, that was an annoying period when we had to respond “Do you mean a big one you can bend, or the hard, smaller one?”) The new slates should have been called something else. Accuracy in terms loses yet another battle.
Just as netbook defined a new separate category from laptop (however blurred), the prior existence and history for slate should be reserved and respected for a keyboard-less FULL operating system device. Let media-consumption slabs and dumb devices that can’t even cut and paste or hook up peripherals find another new name and leave “slate” alone for what it has represented quite distinctly and well proven since 2001.
Tablet PC is a great idea but suffer from the lack of software to make it usable for me in the past. They don’t work straight out of box like iPhone. Its overall interface and software intuitiveness were what really counts. I am a windows mobile user and love install many free apps to make it better than iPhone. But I hated the initial time spent on setup and fine tune every apps to work with specific phone.
Windows 7 had made my life simple again with my trusty HP TC1100.
I now use one-note, open office and sync toy all the time.
Give me a pencil and paper any day. I can scribble an illegible but profound note on a blank sheet, fold it into a streamlined delta wing and launch it at unsuspecting folk. What tablet or slate can do that?
Hello all, This is not a response but more of a question, I have been looking for a slate form factor device that allows pen input, for my daily work, taking notes, writing orders down, writing up my agenda etc.. I am not a very well organized person, as i run a business i need a tool that centralizes all my information and lets me update notes when at home. I almost went for the viliv x70 then decided to wait for CES to go by, following this site everyday (great reports!) and now i wakeup to see this article and am SOOO dissapointed. So you guys seem to be the ones who do inking, can we put together a list of what is recommended for inking? I am at a loss of what to get. For example so often i hear a resistif screen wont handle it BUT is this purists saying this, or can we still write with it, its just not as much fun on paper? I just need a 7 inch screen, one note and windows for my other tools (wifi too). If i have to get used to writing without palm recognition thats fine too.. Never have i found dedicated articles on inking as a whole, and not from a purisits point of view who will say inking is crap on a non didigitalized screen..
(speaking of which i can go for a stylus only screen, don’t care about touch/multitouch even though it is handy)
Ty all..
Regards,
Tim
The “slate” that both Microsoft and Intel showed at their keynotes at CES is an HP built device running Windows 7. In that regard it is a “full” Tablet PC yet both Ballmer and Intel called it a new “slate device”. It seems the battle for the term slate has already been decided by the ones who started the Tablet PC product.
I don’t think it supported ink though, did it? Doesn’t it have a capacitive touch screen?
They didn’t say so who knows? Probably not. Two steps forward, one step back.
When I first entered the market for digital ink, I asked a question at tabletpcbuzz something like this, “which tablet pc is best for me?”
The responses were very helpful, but I remember learning right there that the word ‘slate’ meant something special. It’s something like this.
1) Tablet pc’s allow a user to input digital ink through a pen of some sort and a digitizer on the screen
2) Tablet pc’s come in two varieties
a) convertible–hinged notebook design
b) slate–no attached keyboard
That said, it appears that the term SLATE applies to any computing device that does not have an attached keyboard, and the term TABLET PC applies to digital inking on a computing device. Sadly, and I mean sadly, the new touch/media devices without keyboards are slates, in my opinion. I do wish they had utilized a new word, though, and kept slates attached to tablet pc computing.
I am hoping Apple’s slate has some inking, but I don’t expect it. Too bad. To me, they’ve missed the education market completely in thinking that it’s about PRESENTING the lecture/information on a device rather than INTERACTING with the material and DEVELOPING your own understanding. Par for the course in the education world theses :-(
In my experience, “tablet” has no such “ink” requirement. Many tablets are pen/stylus/ink based but many are not. We’ve got Nokia Internet Tablets (going back to 2005), where pen/stylus is optional and the screen is touch friendly. There’s the Archos tablets (which are not “new”), none of which have required a pen. And even among “Tablet PC’s”, I’m willing to bet that early requirements for a stylus/pen were more a matter of early technological necessity (what was affordable and accurate) than intended definition of the platform.
But, it seems that that’s the only sticking point between current market definitions of “Tablet” and people’s objections here: the requirement for a stylus/pen. Modern “Tablets” (going back several years, not just since rumors of Apple’s re-entry into the market) don’t require a pen, but can be touchscreen based, instead (or can use both).
From there, definitions of tablets and slates seem co-equal. Tablets may or may not have a keyboard, and their primary form of interaction is through the screen. Slates are the subset of Tablets that don’t have keyboards.
(I would quibble that there’s a third subset of tablets — “Convertible Tablets” (swivel screen hybrids between laptops/netbooks and tablets), “Slates” (no keyboard at all), and a third set that has a keyboard, but not in a swivel screen format; examples of this third set are: side-slide qwerty phones (a design that goes all the way up through UMPC designs, like the OQO and early Gigabyte UMPC), tablets with fixed thumb keyboards (Everun’s first tablet was like this … like a Kindle or Kindle DX, only with a color LCD and running Windows XP) … the side-slide could be considered a variation of the convertible, but the fixed keyboard definitely isn’t “convertible” in any way)
Someone mentioned “has to run a full OS”. I think that’s a reasonable description of a “TabletPC”, but I wouldn’t say it’s a reasonable requirement for a “Tablet”. After all, the (original) Palm Pilot was classified as a “Tablet”, and it ran nothing like a full PC OS.
While I completely agree that there is a new class of tablet pc (not slate and not convertible, like the x400), I still maintain that ink is necessary to earn the moniker.
MS created the tablet pc idea, and the definition they used included the only technology at the time…digitizer and pen. So, that defines the tablet pc.
Sure, as new technology is created, you add classifiers (“internet tablet” or “touch screen”), but the original definition is the standard to which everyone should identify the term, IMO.
I have no objection to the tablet PC form factor being extended by new interaction modes (such as multi-touch. I just disagree that the new approaches eliminate the need for an ink capability.
I just wish they’d bring handwriting back for Windows Mobile. Pre-6.1 (and pre-Office 2007), I used the native Notes program to take handwritten notes on my PDA and/or phone, which synced fine with Outlook. I’ve always wished they’d expanded that and incorporated it into OneNote Mobile, rather than dumping it.
My tx2000 works fine for notetaking, but I find it’s too heavy (in comparison to a netbook) and the battery life too short to drag with me. At home, using it in tablet mode just isn’t too convenient.
My Motion Le1600 has been my main computer for the past 3+ years. # years is an eternity in computer years, but I have seen no compelling replacement (with the exception of the incremental improvement of the le1700)
to me the perfect device would be the le1600/1700 with longer battery life and (here is the kicker) instant on. I use the tablet as my day runner on steroids. I need a device that, like my smart phone, is ready to go when i need it.
My Newton could.
Do you know about iJot?
http://www.ubitouch-studio.com/ijot/index.html
I was just looking around the Motion Computing web site, and revisiting the J3400 tablet they have. I am actually considering replacing my LE1600 (will probably wait until the flurry of releases subsides to see if there is something I want more), but this is worth looking at to see what a slate tablet can be. The fact that it is semi-rugged with a titanium case and drop protection seems a little overkill, but the ink support in the moction Computing tablets has always been exceptional, and I love the dual, hot-swappable batteries!
http://www.motioncomputing.com/products/tablet_pc_J34.asp
sorry – magnesium alloy, not titanium :-)
So… if I want a tablet PC (call it whatever you want) suitable for handwriting (i would use it for work), what should I buy??
I’m really confused…