June 2004 - Posts

• The Tablet PC price premium - it's not all about price differences

  Speaking of the low prices, here's a nice piece about how the often talked about price premium that tablets command over "normal" notebooks is slowly coming down. No real numbers, but those change often, and the phenomenon is really true: tablets are beginning to cost close to what a similar notebook would or does. So everything is fine and cheap Tablet PCs abound, right? (That sounds suspiciously close to Microsoft marketing). Well, not really. There are two factors to take into consideration: Tablets may now cost close to what a similar notebook would fetch, but those "similar" notebooks are usually pretty high or at least medium-level ones. These days, you can get a new cheapo laptop for, say $600-700. So where is the corresponding similar tablet, that costs about $800? There are none. And the much hoped for Averatec now seems a little pricier than expected. So while we could say that tablet features are costing buyers less, it doesn't mean that you can buy a cheap Tablet PC. That low-end category isn't quite there yet, and probably won't be until somebody like Dell commoditizes the space. There is also another angle. Right now, there are a number of OEMs pushing many models across several generations into sales channels. So we have tablets that cost, say $1,300 - because they are a first-gen unit, and ones that cost $2,500 or more, because they a fully loaded current unit. That provides a decent variety of price ranges. Well, at least some variety, anyway. There's a catch though: many buyers don't know about half (most?) these models. Your typical consumer these days probably equates "Tablet PC" to "Toshiba M205", because that's what's on many store shelves. As a result, they also equate "Tablet PC" to "$2,400 or so", which isn't really true, but they aren't being given a chance to correct that misconception. As a result, even though there are "affordable" tablets, the perception is that they Tablet PCs as a whole are expensive. Even dealers don't always have access to the full lineup to offer to their customers. In the end, the OEM/VAR complexities, lack of marketing, and poor retail availability lead to yet another misconception about tablets. And it's probably another one that is costing it sales. For a very sobering and realistic perspective on this "decreasing price delta", take a look at this story from a Tablet PC MVP shopping around for mobile computers for two of his kids. And next time, when you hear the often repeated mantra about how tablets cost the same as ordinary notebooks these days, just remember that it's a little relative, depending on where you are on the price curve, and how educated you are about the Tablet PC market. Posted Jun 28 2004, 08:17 PM by peter with 6 comment(s) Filed under: Tablet PC

• The Averatec C3500 is about a month from release - but at a price

  Layne from TabletPCQuestions found it first and he's now lucky enough to be in touch with the Averatec folks. The new C3500 convertible should ship around the end of July, possibly around the time, or in conjunction with the launch of SP2 and Lonestar. Of course, those two events could end up widely diverging. And, as had been assumed before, the C3500 will have an integrated DVD/CD-RW drive, making it only the third such Tablet PC (after the Acer C300 and Gateway M275 lines). Averatec has also revamped its website with new categories and models (including the official C3500 pages), although a lot of the details and product tours are still "coming soon". That's the good news. Here's the bad: "Starting as low as $1,349.99". Yikes! This was supposed to be the model that would cost around $1,100, which some rebates could bring down to around the magical one thousand mark. But now it's "starting" much higher, and who knows what configuration that entails. Does that include the optical drive? Wi-Fi? How much memory and hard drive? That sort of price can get you some of the first generation units these days, possibly even with some extras. And the Gateway M275 with its larger screen, 1.5 MHz Centrino, and multimedia card reader starts at $1,800. The big retail chains better price this one aggressively. And here's some more food for thought. The Averatec 3200 series, which will probably end up being a close cousin of the C3500, starts at $999.99, but you can buy it for around $800 after some rebates. So there looks to be a premium of about $300 for the tablet features, and that's on a low-budget model. (And yes, I realize that these numbers can and will change, and thus my math won't hold for long.) At any rate, it's great to have another new entry, especially one providing more choice to those looking for a model with an integrated optical drive. However, the model better be at least pretty decent and sold with some discounts, otherwise it may find itself in sort of a pricing limbo. Posted Jun 28 2004, 07:58 PM by peter with 3 comment(s) Filed under: Tablet PC

• The sound of two hands clapping

  That's right, I'm dropping everything else for a standing ovation (and no, I'm not being sarcastic either). Robert Williams from the Tablet (Mobile) PC team is blogging. Major kudos and thumbs up! You know what's great? This is a guy, who can confidently begin a post by providing three Channel 9 videos as his credentials. Not too many people can claim that yet, so it's nice to see somebody from the tablet team with such a portfolio right up front. Robert totally made my day, because he pretty much provides exactly the sort of communication that I have been asking for. His first post gives you some product history, some teasers for the future (the ones not covered by NDAs), some directions for digitizer improvements - all the usual stuff you'd expect to hear from a tablet team member (but which we never actually do get to read anywhere). And then he adds two little things that made me positively beam. First, he's honest: "Third, “explain why tablet is cool.“ That's a really tough one for me. I'm a father with 3 teenagers. Is that cool? I don't think so. That's the antithesis of cool. Using words like antithesis is not cool. Please accept my apologies. It's just not happening for me." You know, as funny as that may sound, that's a real issue. How do you explain why the tablet is cool to some people. You know me, I try to evangelize the thing whenever I can. Except to one person. I have a good friend, who is a geeky computer guy. A gamer. Willingly or not, a solid and consistent user of Microsoft products. I briefly tried selling him on the whole tablet concept some time ago, when he was looking for a mobile PC. Not anymore - I won't be trying that for a while. He's the stereotype of an anti-tablet user right now. He has absolutely no need for handwriting or drawing on his notebook. And he won't consider anything underpowered, without an optical drive, and without a 14"+ high resolution screen with a decent video card. There goes that sale. And he's not the only one. There are a number of people who make me think really hard about why I should recommend a Tablet PC to them. And that's to be expected. Tablets still aren't for everyone, and sometimes it's difficult to explain why it's cool. But that just makes you think all the more about how to make the tablet cool for that one particular person. More software? Better software? Different hardware designs? And so forth. If there is one such person, the probably many more. The second wonderful thing that Robert did? He made it personal: "My sons designed several of the game boards for the inkball game that shipped with V1. The challenge for me was dragging them off of that tool and back to their homework." You know, that's great. I didn't know something like that, and it immediately made me like the game - and the tablet as a whole - just a tad better. This is one of the few rare times that the humanity behind the tablet project shines through, and I love it. Please keep it coming. Little stories about this one time, at tablet camp, when you all stayed at the office late deciding on the ink features in Journal, and then got yelled at by your families. That sort of stuff. You're all people just like the rest of us, so make it personal, personable, and human. Honest stories like that make for great reading and provide interesting insights into the history of a project. In short, Robert, you did a great job with your first post. Please don't stop - we'll all love to read what you have to say. P.S.: These darn kids designing games today. No wonder I - along with other "adults" - suck at InkBall. Posted Jun 25 2004, 11:43 PM by peter with 2 comment(s) Filed under: Tablet PC

• Here we go again - I am the naysayer who foretells doom, so here's some constructive criticism instead

  So I'm in trouble again. For saying what I think. And I never even considered it that bad, either. Ironically, I think some people are more upset than when I wrote my post where I said that Tablet PCs should die as a separate offering. Go figure. Here's the thing: as usual, people are overreacting. Yet again. For example, Michael Gartenberg picked up Robert Scoble's post about it, and now it all looks like I am an evangelist, who has lost his faith. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, Loren and Lora were kidding that I must really be in love with the tablet, because despite all the problems I bring up, I still stick with it. You know what? They are exactly right. I was at the Philly launch, got hooked right then and there, still relish my two launch T-shirts, got my first tablet in March of 2003, and I have never looked back. And that was despite some very horrific problems HP was having with the first-generation TC1000 models back then. USB issues, leaky pens, slow performance - you name it, and it was happening. If all those problems couldn't make you walk away, I don't know what could. Oh, and let's not forget - the atrocities of the first-generation TIP. But never once did I think of going back to my ThinkPad or any sort of non-Tablet notebook. The tablet had me at November 7, 2002, and it still does. But this isn't blind love that doesn't let me see what's wrong with the tablet either. Let's be honest: no product is perfect, and no product management is ideal either. To say otherwise would be to disrespect the tablet with mindless fanboy brainwashing, and I'm not about to do that. With the explanation of which side I am taking in this skirmish (and make no mistake - a battle is being waged here, and unfortunately, the Tablet PC is struggling), let's take a look at some key points I'd like to discuss: The Tablet PC, or more specifically, pen and ink technologies aren't going away. Although it's still an infant, it's comfortably settled in the hands of too many to just be killed off. The OEMs are starting to blossom, software is being developed, and the miniscule critical mass that was needed has been reached. The one million mark doesn't matter. One way or another - whatever the final name and incarnation will be - the tablet is here to stay. So let's not freak out about it dying, being cancelled, being renamed, or something else. Come on, all together, let's breathe a sigh of relief - the Tablet PC team has made it. Maybe barely, but they've made it. There is a massive problem in the tablet marketplace - people's expectations. Evan Feldman (all you Tablet PC folks owe him big time for his public evangelism and communication, by the way) had a great comment about who the originally intended users for the tablet were. Consumers expect one thing, businesses something else, influencers, reviewers, others - something else still. Nobody clearly communicates what the target customers are supposed to be and why. Or if there even should be specific target groups. Why not show how tablet technologies benefit pretty much every segment of the market? Show specific scenarios. Explain what you intended the tablet to be. Right now you get all these negative review articles, where the person thought the tablet was one thing, the product didn't seem like it was, and they dropped it after a day or two, slamming it in the process, without giving it a chance. As long as there is confusion in the marketplace, there will be this disconnect in expectations and thus all those misguided reviews. So talk to the press. Have a dedicated community outreach person, whose sole job is to explain what the tablet is, why it does what it does, and why it doesn't do what some people expect. Speaking of the negative reviews, come on - why do you let that go on?! You have a great product. Most of these "negative articles" could easily be deconstructed on a blog, point by point. Why they are wrong. Why the reviewer is misinformed. Why the person may have some valid points about so-and-so. So please, please provide a dialogue. If only somebody could reasonably respond to all the attacks, the credibility of the product and the team behind it would skyrocket. But no marketing talk. Admit mistakes. Don't argue with "record sales figures". Counter with features, benefits, real life stories of how a tablet helped somebody. Be honest. The negative press could fall apart at the seams, if only you tried to have a reasonable conversation about it and tried to make some basic points. Lonestar. Tablet PC Edition 2005. Whatever it's called. The name, and even renaming really aren't an issue, because most people won't care. Two points here. First: Lonestar is a phenomenal upgrade over the less-than-ideal original version of the operating system. The SDK adds a ton of capabilities, and developers can create apps they probably can't even envision yet. Very cool stuff. Tablet team developers, pat yourselves on the back. And to all those, who have recently asked me whether Lonestar is a good enough reason to buy a Tablet PC, here's the answer: a resounding YES!! (There, so don't say I am negative about your work. You "done good" and come Fall, assuming Lonestar doesn't get lost in the rest of the SP2 hoopla, you'll see some happy smiles from tablet users.) But there is also the dark side of Lonestar. Bugs that haven't been fixed since the November alpha build. Bugs that are publicly known to anybody who has used Lonestar regularly. Now, I understand that debugging a piece of software is not as easy as it sounds. Chris Pratley had some great commentary on shipping "quality" software. It's quite possible that those bugs wouldn't affect too many people (although some will), and would be difficult to fix. I don't know, but it could be so, which is fair enough. What was needed was a nice honest admission of the problem, and why it's not getting fixed. Just like Chris Pratley's examples. It's human, people will understand, and we all move on. Fix it in a future service pack or something, no big deal. However, the situation now is that people grumble that such a major update to the tablet OS has six-month-old bugs, and it just looks like the developers didn't care enough. Maybe they did, but we don't know that. It still looks like they didn't. So there's another communication breakdown, and another (again, possibly unfairly interpreted) sour note. The hardware bit. The whole lack of creativity, innovation, and pretty designs is probably just my personal gripe. However, even with all the relatively decent hardware out there, there are some serious issues. The usual target - retail - is one. Right now, for the "off the street" consumer, the Tablet PC is synonymous with the Toshiba M205. It's like that particular model is called the "Tablet PC" and that's it. Nothing else is available at retail, and you should consider yourself lucky to see even the Toshiba. That's bad. There is no point in having all these high-tech tablets that nobody will ever see or try out. It also confuses the customers. I constantly get asked about who makes tablets, and where people can see one. Tough questions, and they really shouldn't be. Worse yet, due to limited availability and strange reselling restrictions, many dealers, VARs, and store representatives aren't familiar with many of the available hardware models either. So not only does the consumer not know, but even their friendly neighborhood computer store owner might not know. That doesn't bode very well for brand awareness. Unfortunately, this isn't something that can be fixed easily. Microsoft has only a limited amount of leverage in the retail sector, many OEMs don't sell through retail, and place restrictions on VARs, so the whole thing is a mess. But explain that to a user who wants to be able to go out and play around with a few models, and pick one up in a local store. So the hardware may be great, but potential buyers don't even know it exists. At least some marketing is obviously necessary here. Maybe pick one or two featured hardware vendors a month, who will then be featured in print, TV, and online ads? Spread out the love across the board? Speaking of the awareness issues, I would love to read some sort of "we messed up" blog post about what went on with all those local events. School dates were wrong, which at first confused people. Then, given all those locations, no students ever commented about it. Few developers ever mentioned the Leszynski sessions, even though there were at least moderate attendance levels. And the Demo Days campaign got massively bad buzz from all the reported no-shows. What happened there?! That event campaign as a whole should have been a great way to virally spread positive vibes about the tablet. Instead it was a series of stumbles, fumbles, and a pretty rough ride for all. Come on, you have to admit that one was shaky. What should have happened was a big community site that aggregated all those events, with a team of 2-3 people going around the country, visiting the events, taking tons of pictures, interviewing people, and making a big deal of the whole thing. That was clearly a missed opportunity. So please be more careful to put together a more solid - and documented - public event series in the future. Of course, while on the subject of educational settings, I will say that the Campus Tour was a good beginning, assuming it actually happened. I hear that something is planned for the Fall also. But more still needs to be done. More hardware demos. Joint tours with the likes of Agilix, xThink, Ambient Design, and other ISVs. Show off OneNote. Pass out some sort of subsidized tablet purchase coupons. Support student and teacher blogs that will discuss how they are using tablets. Sponsor ink application development in schools, contests, usability groups. Education is one of THE markets for the tablet, verticals be damned. No matter how much you do in that space, there is something more you could do. The sign that not enough is being done now? All the stories from students who have to market the tablet to peers themselves, without the benefit of a visit from a Tablet PC demo team. Developer support. This area is actually getting better. Slowly, but it's happening. Training events are becoming more common, more developers are talking, the MSDN developer center finally went live. Of course, the 1.7 SDK is still too complicated to obtain, and small developers still do get ignored more than they should. But it's not all bad. Just don't stop and rest on your laurels - right now, developers are almost more important to the Tablet PC platform than customers, so make sure to take good care of them. One more thing. Please carefully think about what you consider to be the Tablet PC community. Upon closer inspection, you may find that it's a lot wider than what you are looking at now. Just a free tip. There is a ton more that can be done, but frankly, it's getting late, and you can just use your imagination from now on. Ultimately - and I know this has been beaten to death - it all boils down to one thing: communication. Please talk to people. Customers. Potential buyers. Users. OEMs. VARs. Students. Teachers. Doctors and nurses. The public. Bloggers. Journalists. Reviewers. Please just have a conversation with us. You know, we'll say something, you'll say something back, and we'll all take it from there. Clarify our misconceptions. Calm our doubts. Fuel our excitement. Right now, the Channel 9 team is single handedly providing more communication and more marketing for the Tablet PC than the tablet's own teams. On one hand we have to be lucky that we have even that much. On the other, it shows a precarious lack of, yes, communication from tablet HQ. So here's the summary of my guidelines: Talk to everybody. Really talk. Two-way stuff, with respect on both sides. Don't get all touchy and defensive. You have a great product, so be proud and have some self-confidence. Your knee-jerk reactions send the wrong message. Make sure that the whole world knows what the tablet is and why it's so cool. Repeat step one. Follow these steps, and let's all just be friends. After all, the tablet is watching, and we shouldn't be arguing in front of it. Posted Jun 25 2004, 12:15 AM by peter with 12 comment(s) Filed under: Tablet PC

• I still like the tablet. But I am all out of love.

  It's getting pretty bad. People are now yelling at me for being a slacker, not blogging, boycotting the tablet, and not providing my usual one and a half daily referrals to other sites. Fair enough. There a couple of the usual "lame excuse" reasons: lots of work, reading, video gaming, a general disgust with available blogging tools that make writing unpleasant - that sort of stuff. But ultimately, there is a deeper issue: I am not in love with the Tablet PC right now. Don't get me wrong now - I don't think it's failing, should die, is about to die, isn't useful, or anything like that. I am just not not in love with it. Why? A couple of reasons: Hardware. I frequently consider going into a long rant about all the little things I don't like about my Toshiba M200. Sure, it's a decent machine, but that's it. It's average, with a lot of corners cut, and dubious usability aspects. It really doesn't inspire me. My usual champ HP is dragging its feet in bringing something new to the market. The rest of the companies are just tired rehashes of one or another basic designs. Screen resolutions are low. Almost all machines have a number of software or hardware glitches. Screens are hard to read at angles, outside, or both. Speeds and graphics are weak. USB ports aren't aplenty. Battery life is crappy. I mean, come on - if Electrovaya can have a 9-hour battery, why doesn't my tablet have it? Licensing and politics aside, if the Electrovaya geeks could invent it, why can't somebody else? Weights and sizes are bloated, without merit. My M200 weighs the same as Monica's PowerBook, with the same size screen, and yet she has a built-in optical drive. What's wrong with that picture? If you think about it, over the last two years, nothing much has changed apart from companies sticking in better Intel processors. Color me excited. Where are some innovative - or just even solid and more reliable - designs? Shapes, sizes, colors, materials, docks, pens, buttons, controls - is the market so vertical that nobody cares about innovation and design anymore? At this point, the only thing that I can see getting me a little excited is the always just-around-the-corner cheapo Averatec tablet - because it will be cheap and AMD-based to boot. Both of those are at least some change from the boring norm. Software. Not the ISVs - they are actually doing a pretty decent job. Agilix, xThink, Ambient Design, Corel, MindJet, others, and a host of tiny developers - they all churn out pretty neat ink-enabled applications. Thumbs up! Even Microsoft's Office-related OneNote and InfoPath teams. Good stuff. When I said "software", I meant the operating system itself. Sure, Redmond is trying to tell everybody who will listen that Tablet PC Edition 2005 is the greatest thing since sliced bread. And it is - for users who have never seen it before. But I've been using the same tired software since last November, when I first installed it during Comdex. And it hasn't changed since! Some not quite so visible bugs have been worked out, but we're talking about software that still has the same glaring issues that it did six months ago! SP2 is getting delayed until who knows when (but still summer-ish, apparently), and yet the Lonestar bits have been "finalized" for a while. Why?! If you have the gift of extra free time, so fix the bugs. Or even add some features. It's a new 2005 release, and all it really updates is the TIP! How about Journal, more handedness options, better hit targets on controls, and so forth? Look at Media Center - each new release is considerably better, with some major new features being added. Features, plural. Microsoft has at least one year to bring out a 2006 release, and I sincerely hope that it will actually introduce some new functionality, instead of just fixing what was sub-par in version 1.0. And let's not hear just about how all these cool features will be introduced in Longhorn. Work on them now. And the current RC2 code isn't even appreciably faster than the November alpha build. Can't say I am overly impressed here. Microsoft. The owners. The parents. It's their baby. It's also a baby whose image is constantly being tarnished by frequently unfair press, misconceptions, disinformation, rumors, and more. And what does Microsoft do to counter this tidal wave of bad mojo? Issue canned, sterile statements along the lines of "Tablets are selling better then ever. Million soon. Million! Six zeroes. Several hundred ISVs. Exciting hardware soon [which is always]. Lonestar. Lonestar! Everything is peachy keen. Stop asking. Briefing over." Apart from not providing any really relevant information, this marketing drivel is cold, faceless, and puts on an air of indifference. Why don't you actually tackle the issues that are being pointed out? Explain to reviewers why the Tablet PC is cool. What it can do. Stop just spewing out numbers. So many people are excited about that one-million mark, but why? How many of those are shadowy vertical deployments we'll never hear about? 80%? When one million school kids are using a tablet in school, then tell me. When one million soccer moms use it to send handwritten messages to grandma, who can write back. But not when 800,000 utility workers get a Tablet PC to replace some older pen-based device and just use it to check two boxes on a form. Same thing with those hundreds of ISVs - I have, what, maybe 10 of them on my tablet? Do the others actually produce something that's usable in more than one industry? Are you counting the cat in my yard who is thinking about learning C# and writing a kibble diary? See, no matter what the real situation may be, it looks like Microsoft really doesn't care about the tablet. Why do individual kids in high school do more to promote the product than Microsoft itself? Worse yet, there are people in the community (not necessarily including myself), who are literally banging their heads against a wall trying to evangelize the thing, bring people together, ramp up the excitement, and a lot of the time they can't even get a simple e-mail reply from Redmond. So why should we all be all so excited about the Tablet PC? Microsoft certainly isn't. There are people in the tablet community that Microsoft is very lucky to have. Sometimes I really wonder where the Tablet PC would be right now, if it weren't for them. Redmond needs to stop taking this support for granted. So there you have it. Trust me, I still like the tablet. But lately I wonder exactly why more and more, while being inspired by it all less and less. And I don't think that's good. Update: I had a little more to say on the whole subject later on, so keep reading for a more constructive and granular argument. Posted Jun 23 2004, 10:43 PM by peter with 27 comment(s) Filed under: Tablet PC

• Off to New York

  Monica and I will shortly be headed off to the local Amtrak station, taking the overpriced train, and going to New York. If anybody's going to be at the geek dinner tonight, see you there. I'm in NYC until Friday afternoon, and - as usual - reachable by e-mail or SPOT watch. Posted Jun 16 2004, 12:36 PM by peter with 2 comment(s) Filed under: Tablet PC

• Microsoft products - putting it all together

  Michael Gartenberg hits the nail on the head - he wants Microsoft marketing to show the combined utility of their products and technologies put together. Why is OneNote and Office 2003 better on a tablet. How a tablet integrates with your Media Center system. How you connect it to a Smartphone to connect on the road. How you download pictures to it and edit them, and so forth. That all goes back to something I've talked about many times - Microsoft should establish Windows Experience stores, which provide exactly the sort of comprehensive demonstrations that Michael wants. Unfortunately, the Windows XP Reloaded marketing blitz of the fall will probably focus on individual features, and still not tie things together. Sigh. Posted Jun 14 2004, 08:46 PM by peter with no comments Filed under: Tablet PC

• In New York later this week

  Speaking of events, Monica and I will be in New York later this week, and we're dropping in on the Scoble/Gartenberg geek dinner. Anybody else from my 3-reader audience going? We'll both be packing our tablets, so if you want a demo or a tablet discussion in NYC from Wednesday night until about Friday noon-ish, let me know. Posted Jun 14 2004, 08:23 PM by peter with no comments Filed under: Tablet PC

• Tech Ed Europe 2004 on the horizon

  Tech Ed Europe 2004 is taking place in two weeks. There are definitely a few tablet-specific sessions and labs planned, and I am curious to see how the interest and attendance levels will be over in Europe. Neil Cowburn is attending and apparently even manning the Tablet PC booth. Neowin is also promising to cover tablet news, among other topics. Is anybody else going? Posted Jun 14 2004, 08:18 PM by peter with no comments Filed under: Tablet PC

• Tablet PC events - week of June 14

  Here we go again, same drill as usual. The Tablet PC Developer Tour has no "domestic" locations this week. However, the EMEA Tablet PC Tour 2004 visits the following cities: 6/15 - Hong Kong 6/15 - Munich, Germany 6/16 - Zurich, Switzerland Sessions for decision makers also hit only one international location this week (you can register from the Tablet PC Tour 2004 site): 6/15 - Hong Kong Tablet PC Campus Demo Tour dates and locations this week: 6/15 - Northeastern University 6/16 - Lake Washington Technical College 6/16 & 6/17 - Brigham Young University 6/17 - University of Connecticut As usual, if you attend any of these, please send in eyewitness accounts, pictures, opinions, or whatever else you may have handy. Posted Jun 14 2004, 08:00 PM by peter with 3 comment(s) Filed under: Tablet PC

• SP2 RC2 is available to beta testers

  Without much warning, Release Candidate 2 - aka build 2149 - has been made available to beta testers. I'm downloading it now, although I'll give other, braver testers a chance to hose their systems. Pending some major issues, I'll give it a shot tomorrow. This build is not yet available to the general public, although that's probably going to happen over the next few days. Although it's unknown whether there will be an RC3 build before final code, Microsoft is still said to be on track for delivery around the end of summer, possibly August-ish. See Neowin for more coverage. Posted Jun 14 2004, 07:26 PM by peter with no comments Filed under: Tablet PC

• What sort of people would go to these tablet conferences anyway?

  Evan also ponders the idea of a Tablet/Mobile PC conference and wonders what topics attendees would like to cover. I wonder about who these attendees would be in the first place. Even mentions tablet-oriented workshops, which is a great idea, and something that technically already exists. However, workshops are a great format - for developers. Tightly packed content, lots of focus, schedule, days of coding, learning, testing, get it all done in three days and possibly pay a thousand dollars to do so. Such events could handily cover ink and tablet technologies, and offer useful training, and socializing for developers. And that's totally different from a "user" conference. Those are usually a lot less structured, with more browsing, ogling, playing with hardware, talking to vendors, and having relaxed dinners. And they are either cheap or outright free. The two categories are almost mutually exclusive, and I really wonder if it's worth it to try to combine them and attempt to please everybody, yet really make everybody feel at least a little disappointed, because it's a compromise, and they weren't in the spotlight the whole time. Posted Jun 10 2004, 12:39 AM by peter with 4 comment(s) Filed under: Tablet PC

• Tablets connect world leaders, but can't quite bring around world peace

  You have to admit it: this year's G8 Summit is actually somewhat interesting, because they are using tablets, thus giving the platform a much needed celebrity endorsement. Replacing the usual sneaker-net of years past, a trio of technologies - OneNote, Groove, and Motion's M1300 tablet - will be used by flunkeys, excuse me - sherpas - from each country to send around jokes about the French. Here are some burning questions: Is it OneNote SP1 or did Microsoft decide not to alienate the Groove folks by including a competing feature? The press release says the M1300 has biometric security. Is it an add-in card or do they actually mean the M1400? The picture certainly makes it look like an M1300 model. And why wouldn't it be the M1400 anyway? Motion couldn't pony up the latest and greatest? Or is the built-in gummi-bear scanner too dodgy to provide "real" security? Is an international political summit the only way for Groove to get any press these days? Since OneNote could (depending on version) share notes, and Groove definitely can share information, why do they also need another screen-sharing solution? I like this blurb about Groove: "Groove Workspace v2.5 virtual office software is being used to ensure secure two-way dialogue among sherpas, staffers and researchers. The software is used by various government agencies worldwide, including the U.S. Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security for ultra-secure, inter-agency collaboration, information sharing and decision-making." You know, that's pretty much my perception of that product these days - that right now, in some ultra secure room deep under some mountain, a super-secret organization that doesn't exist is holding a meeting, with people sitting around a table, shooting Groove messages to each other (and collaboratively browsing a garden supply online store), planning how to "accidentally" bomb the Chinese embassy in some democracy-deprived country. In other news, Dubya took one of them fancy Table Computers home to his ranch, where he fell off of it, and later complained that his crayon got stuck inside, and trying to clear it by shaking it like an Etch A Sketch didn't work. On that note, I have to run. I think I hear the black helicopters with the Groove logo. Posted Jun 09 2004, 11:43 PM by peter with no comments Filed under: Tablet PC

• Developers, developers, developers, developers - editing, editing, editing, editing!

  Loren talks about editing being one of the tablet's "mini killer apps". Always a tricky topic. While selecting with a pen is definitely fast and intuitive, the text editing experience on a tablet is still very lacking. And that's despite Lonestar's valiant attempt to make things smoother. And while it's not pretty, efficient keyboard users can fly through a document and edit things very quickly, using keyboard shortcuts. For them the tablet experience is comparatively even less efficient than for those of us without extensive Mavis Beacon Teaches Word background. What the tablet really needs is a concept that Loren has discussed on many occasions: gesture and markup-based text editing in common applications, like Word. And he's probably right in saying that only a Microsoft will ultimately bring a decent editing experience to the mass market. Ironically, a number of people, who have used a Tablet PC, have asked me whether something like that is available today. If the Word team in Redmond hired Loren, they'd have the feature ready in time for the next major revision. Otherwise who knows when we'll see it. Posted Jun 09 2004, 11:42 PM by peter with 1 comment(s) Filed under: Tablet PC

• The never-ending SP2 delays

  Speaking of SP2, I really think it's in trouble at this point. The builds keep coming, and coming, and coming (is that a dirty Energizer bunny joke?) - just see some of the recent posts here, here, here, here, and here. RC2 should have already been released, but then a bug with NX protection delayed it, and now it keeps being pushed back further and further. While RC2 could be released any day now, some of the latest builds aren't exactly super stable yet. A lot of people report no problems at all, and yet a good number of others have had their systems hosed. And the usual plethora of bugs between those two extreme cases is present as well. In fact, the post-RC1 builds sometimes seem like a regression, and it's at the point where I skip installing some of them, because I really like having a stable system (yes, my name name is Peter, and I am a bad beta tester). And that's a near-RC2 stage. How many bugs will the final SP2 code have? On one hand we all want to deploy this beast everywhere we can as quickly as possible to make systems more secure. On the other hand, it looks like we may end up dealing with a lot of support issues from friends and family members as applications and systems break. And, of course, all these RC2 delays - and at this point they are delays - are dragging Lonestar down right along with it. What are we looking at now - late August? That will really annoy me, because I have 150 lab computers to clone and set up for the fall, and our academic calendar begins in mid August. A stable SP2 better be out by the end of July. Otherwise get prepare your news readers for a lot of grumpy posts right around then. Posted Jun 09 2004, 10:40 PM by peter with 2 comment(s) Filed under: Tablet PC