TS - The issue as I see it is pretty simple…Price, battery life, portability.
The Newton failed because it was too big, too expensive, and not enough battery.
The Pilot (The original Palm PDA) was the exact opposite…sort of cheap, light weight, and amazing battery life on 2 AAAs.
It was something that you could see almost anyone from CompSCI majors to Soccer Moms using.
To me, this device is a very very very niche market and is way too expensive for the ‘Well, if I don’t like it, I didn’t waste too much money on it’ crowd.
I do not see this device doing well on the market in any way…that being said, I will buy a 1-2 year old one on Ebay when they get there…
[quote author=“TruthSeeker”]Give it time…as the form factor catches on, the price will drop. 10-15 years from now, everyone will carry a handheld gadget that is instant on, Win XP or better OS, a cell phone, GPS, full contact management features, an MP3 / video player, and be wireless at OC3 speeds. Over 20 years from now, as these gadgets get smaller and smaller, we will all have wireless earbuds, use our voice in place of a keyboard, and have wirless contact lenses which would enable us to forego monitors altogether.
Harsh is my middle name… or as my brother once explained to an exasperated T-Mobile saleswoman, I’m just “extremely optinionated”. I survived the late 90’s and semingly hundreds of books declaring that old economies and old ways of making money were gone and telecom companies spending billions of dollars to make sure that we had exactly what you describe in the palms of our hands by, oh, 2004. The OQO has made Wired’s vaporware list two (three?) years running now and shows all signs of making it this year, even though the hardware is now totally obsolete. I’ve also seen a line of products supported marketing-wise by one of the most cash-rich companies in the world fall flat on its face in the consumer space… and you can’t deny the striking similarity between the U50/70 and the Tablet PC. You’ll find a lot of press right now about how tablets are a total disappointment in the consumer market. I think I have good reason to be skeptical.
Don’t get me wrong, if the thing was less expensive and had Bluetooth I’d be very interested in the product. Then again, I’m a guy with an Athlon FX CPU and dual 20” LCDs. I thrive on technology. If I’m wrong, like I was with the iPod mini, I’ll happily admit it. I just don’t see the target market for this thing existing in the US.
I don’t think Tablets are going to fail…but they aren’t going to succeed in their current form. The whole “convertible” type tablets are the most prone to fail. First of all, they’re all bulky and unwieldly and they try to do too much without doing anything very good. I want a tablet that’s very thin like slightly larger than a regular sized pad (or even reporter’s sized pad).
The next problem is the recognition. Let’s assume most of us want to write on these things to take notes. The handwriting recognition will have to get a lot better before these things are truly useful. Ideally, you want to be able to hand scribble notes (which might take a little training if you have really bad handwriting) and then have it converted to editable text immediately. Right now, the process is slow and not always correct. It’s getting better but it’s slow.
The battery life is also going to have to be pretty good too…i’m thinking at least 6 hours of battery life if not more. I know that’s already being worked on.
The bottom line is that I think Tablets have a future but there’s a lot of work to be done on that platform and the prices will have to drop down dramatically for them to be better accepted.
I agree…tablet suck right now, and if they dont drop the keyboard they wont get any better. They can’t be the ‘jack of all trades’ they just need to focus on being a good tablet.
At the same time, there’s a reason they don’t drop the keyboard. Handwriting recognition problems won’t end when someone writes a bulletproof recognition algorithm. Handwriting just sucks for text-heavy tasks. Pressing a key on a keyboards is much faster and easier than making one or more complex motions with a pen.
[quote author=“guest”]Glad the traffic picked up here. Yes, I had started the Yahoo group and on June 15 I referred everyone here. I then announced the site was closing. I closed it a couple of days later. Even though the Yahoo group had more members, it was hardly getting used and it was hard to find info on the site due to the crummy Yahoo Groups setup. I’m gald this site is going strong. Survival of the fittest and all that Howard
welcome aboard howard! i remember. i used to go there last year till i found this site. i think all yahoo groups are doomed with the advent of php sites like this one. i just wish Mario over at IMATCH would get this message. great software, crudy forum program…
[quote author=“guest”]Glad the traffic picked up here. Yes, I had started the Yahoo group and on June 15 I referred everyone here. I then announced the site was closing. I closed it a couple of days later. Even though the Yahoo group had more members, it was hardly getting used and it was hard to find info on the site due to the crummy Yahoo Groups setup. I’m gald this site is going strong. Survival of the fittest and all that Howard
Thanks for the site. I used it initially, but I really hate Yahoo Groups so I stopped going.
[quote author=“tifosiv122”]TS - The issue as I see it is pretty simple…Price, battery life, portability.
Erik
But….......if they could cram the U70 into the body of a P900, increase battery life, and get the price to say 1700…........don’t you see where this is headed?
Actually the real bottom line is to make a PDA form factor run Windows XP, get battery life to about 5-6 hrs, and keep price competitive.
[quote author=“TruthSeeker”][quote author=“tifosiv122”]TS - The issue as I see it is pretty simple…Price, battery life, portability.
Erik
But….......if they could cram the U70 into the body of a P900, increase battery life, and get the price to say 1700…........don’t you see where this is headed?
Actually the real bottom line is to make a PDA form factor run Windows XP, get battery life to about 5-6 hrs, and keep price competitive.
I will never buy a PDA that runs XP. Its not an OS designed to be that portable. A PDA requires instant on. 5-6 hour battery is still not enough for me as well…
[quote author=“TruthSeeker”]But….......if they could cram the U70 into the body of a P900, increase battery life, and get the price to say 1700…........don’t you see where this is headed?
Actually the real bottom line is to make a PDA form factor run Windows XP, get battery life to about 5-6 hrs, and keep price competitive.
From a usability, power-consumption and resource-utilization standpoint, you’re high. The P900 has a 208x320 resolution, which is just short of quarter VGA, on a screen that measures about 2” x 2 1/2”. That’s not at the limit of human tolerence, but just raising it to VGA would be pushing it. Just for fun try and run XP at 640x480. It’s quite cramped for modern programs. That means that they would have to be rewritten to some extent to fit on the smaller screens. XP (Home and Pro - you’re not talking about Embedded) is not designed to run on a system with a small amount of memory or a small amount of mass storage. Look at the processes and memory Windows is consuming in Task Manager even when you don’t have any windows open. Conceptually, Windows assumes that it has infinite memory. When it runs out of physical memory, it just swaps to disk. On the disk side, it makes a copy of EVERY IMPORTANT DLL ON YOUR SYSTEM. That won’t work without lots of disk activity using up battery life. Why not rewrite Windows a little to address these problems? That’s basically the concept behind Windows CE. It’s a small, portable-friendly version of XP (technically NT) that is meant for devices with small screens and resource-conservation needs.
The other thing that the phone companies like Nokia and Sony Ericsson are starting to find out to their horror is that americans really don’t need much in terms of phones. The smartphone will decimate the PDA market at some point, (not that PDAs will ever really go away) but most just use their phones as addressbooks and sometimes as day planners. People that I know with Nokia 3650s don’t ever use the PDA features. They just got them because they were free. Modern garden-variety cell phones with decent address books are all the PDA most people need.
Here’s the kicker: I think the U70 is a total design failure for the american market, but if they sold it for a decent price here with Bluetooth, I might look at picking one up. It’s actually quite suited to what I use my TR for: a portable web viewer connected to my GPRS-enabled cell phone while I’m commuting on the train. The U is light and highly portable, MyIE2 doesnt require a lot of desktop space (tabs brother, tabs) and there’s little text entry to worry about. If I used the TR as my main computer, there’d be no way in hell I’d replace it with a U70.
Perhaps the next generations of Windows will pioneer paths to ultra portable devices such as the U70. Of course features like BT and a lower price are nice perks if it is to succeed here in the States. Nevertheless, I may be one of few to pick it up if they bring it here. As much as I like this “toy” as you call it, I will not import it.
Ya gotta love how technology has a way of teasing us. :D
[quote author=“TruthSeeker”]Perhaps the next generations of Windows will pioneer paths to ultra portable devices such as the U70. Of course features like BT and a lower price are nice perks if it is to succeed here in the States. Nevertheless, I may be one of few to pick it up if they bring it here. As much as I like this “toy” as you call it, I will not import it.
Ya gotta love how technology has a way of teasing us. :D
Bah. Low price. Come on, we’re the guys who frequent dynamism.com and others waiting for the latest sweet imports. Even if it never hits the big US market, we can still get it imported for only about 4K… haha. And failing that, who’s up for a Road Trip to Tokyo? (along with Japanese 1-4)
I’d be very interested in the product. Then again, I’m a guy with an Athlon FX CPU and dual 20” LCDs. I thrive on technology. If I’m wrong, like I was with the iPod mini, I’ll happily admit it. I just don’t see the target market for this thing existing in the US.
Howard
