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Sci Tech
Get set for the tablet, tomorrow's digital slate
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Is this the next signpost on the roadmap of personal computing or just a hurried hybrid of a laptop and a hand-held computer? Anand Parthasarathy reports on the formal unveiling of the ``Tablet PC'' a machine that you can buy only in mid-2002.
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IT COMBINES the simplicity of a piece of paper, with the power of a PC....the rich features of a notebook with the convenience of a pen... it is the laptop of tomorrow!''
As pre-launch hype goes, this was above par. And earlier this month on the inaugural day of the Comdex computer show in Las Vegas, Microsoft's Chairman, Bill Gates added his own 'take': he called it the device to launch the ``Digital Decade''.
``Tablet PC'', he said, ``will be revolutionary and we have not scratched the surface of what we can do!''
When the wraps were off, what the world got to see was a device that looked like an ultra-thin notebook, with a high resolution colour liquid crystal screen, the size of an A-4 sized sheet of paper. It weighed about 1.5 kg _ and in its portable configuration, it didn't have a keyboard. You wrote on it, freehand _ with an ``e-pen'' or electronic stylus _ and some clever hand writing recognition software figured out what you had written and processed it into text or instructions.
Unlike the current generation of ``palm'' type hand held computers, this was a full function Windows machine _ and the prototypes were roughly similar in specification to the better notebook PCs: a processor ( currently the power-efficient, ``Crusoe'' from Transmeta; though the mobile version of Intel's Pentiums and Celerons would work as well) that clocked around 500 - 700 MHZ; 10 GB of storage and 1238 MB of RAM memory. Microsoft'specification to its hardware developer, Flextronics was that the Tablet PC should be energy-efficient, so that, ``it should be less hot than a cat on your lap''! The touch screen is good enough to read e-books with comfort.
The machine _ like last year's Pocket PC _ was conceived and prototyped by Microsoft, but the first models, due by mid 2002, would come from Compaq, Toshiba, Acer, Fujitsu and Sony, who might be expected to fiddle with the bare specifications to add some competitive edge:
Fujitsu has already announced that its version of the Tablet, to be called the ``Stylistic LT P 600'', would have a Pentium 600 MHz chip under the hood, 15 GB of hard drive, up to 256 MB of RAM and would come with a built-in smart card reader, ethernet port and a 56K modem. Early reactions to the November 12 unveiling of the Microsoft prototype, included the comment that lack of a keyboard, will spell ``finis'' to the Tablet, because customers found writing on flat screens too irksome. Fujitsu has anticipated this and provides an optional wireless keyboard and docking station. ``Hedging your bets'' they call it, in the industry!
The Tablet promises the portability of a hand held computer _ with the power of a full fledged PC ( a Windows XP environment is promised).
This is a statement that may not appeal to everybody. A Palm- type computer or Pocket PC after all, does go in one's pocket. The Tablet is more like a slate that children used to lug to school 50 years ago. One can see applications in some special environments _ like medicare: it could be used by doctors to scribble their bedside notes and prescriptions _ which the wireless link ( the Tablet is likely to come from some suppliers, with a type-802.11 wireless LAN interface) would relay to the nurses' station or hospital computer.
But is it too little too late _ at a time when other devices allow doctors to speak their instructions which can always be sent to cheap medical transcription services in places like India?
Finally the precise slot the Tablet may or may not fill, depends on the price points: The hand helds cost around 150 - 300 dollars (Rs 7500 - Rs 15,000).
The notebooks start at roughly double the cost of a PC of comparable power 1000 - 3000 dollars abroad and Rs 50,000 - Rs 1.5 lakhs in India.
The Tablet is expected to be sold for $ 1500 - 2000, which puts it in the middle-to-high notebook category, price-wise.
Would you pay this kind of money for something that allows you to doodle, take hand written notes and draw funny pictures _ which being very clever, it would understand and transcribe? Maybe, maybe not.
There have been very similar machines and technologies _ ``Pen computing'', ``Go computing'', which fell by the wayside of the Information Highway. It remains to be seen if the Tablet PC is an inspired device that came at the right time _ or just another lousy idea that customers will find both fussy and pricey. Right now the odds, either way, are even.
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