With the first Origami devices out the door, Microsoft is setting its sights on the next generation of tiny tablet PCs – products known within the company as “Vistagami” devices. The new minitablets are likely to resemble the first of the ultramobile PCs, though they will run Windows Vista, rather than XP.
Microsoft Lays Plans for ‘Vistagami’ Tablets
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Adam Scheinberg
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Honestly, the industry has looked at the tablet pc market and the consumers shy away from them. Microsoft is a very smart company but it baffles me why they continue to push into this market. It’s like they are trying to create a market where one doesn’t exist.
Microsoft introduced the orgami which although looking cool and being small, isn’t that useful to a majority of the it / mobile computing users. Perhaps they MS as an organization is at the critical “too many eggs in too many baskets” point of their life where they try to do everything. This is great news on the open source front as it allows Linux and other open source projects to creep into small niches where they excel.
Being great at mediocrity is not being great. Microsoft is not being great anytime soon with all of the hoopla about Vista and failed promises. Way to help Linux…
Honestly, the industry has looked at the tablet pc market and the consumers shy away from them. Microsoft is a very smart company but it baffles me why they continue to push into this market. It’s like they are trying to create a market where one doesn’t exist.
Yer. You just wonder when Microsoft is going to accept that this device, although cool looking for some things, just isn’t practical and isn’t going to fly. The market and buyers have spoke. It is actually quite revealing of how Microsoft views thing – Microsoft knows what’s best for you, but you just don’t know it yet.
The only way tablet PCs would be useful are in a home, or in an office building, perhaps embedded into walls and tables as a means for accessing things conveniently. However, these kinds of devices really are going to have to be absolutely dirt cheap and the interface is going to have to be radically different from the Windows desktop one sees. No Windows license there either. As a mobile device, the input is just far too unwieldy for anyone to make any practical use of. It has some niche uses, but that’s all they are – niche uses.
The same thing could have been said so long about about regular PCs. It’s called trying to penetrate a market. It doesn’t have to exist yet to do that.
Saying that though, I don’t think it will catch on much.
The same thing could have been said so long about about regular PCs. It’s called trying to penetrate a market. It doesn’t have to exist yet to do that.
It’s a question of the devices having a practical purpose. They don’t have one. You’re expected to use one of these things as you would a normal PC, painting over the input, interface and practical problems of carrying the thing around and getting anything useful done.
The concept is wonderful; it’s the existing implementations for which few people have yet found a practical use.
sad sad sad. This really isn’t a troll post
no, it is a troll post
the tpic is about a hardware device, and you have nothing better to do than to rant how vista failed to linux
and there is a big market for tablet-pcs, the only problem is the price of the curent generation
or are you willed to pay an extra 500$ just for a 12″ touchpad? I’m not. and as long as tablets cost significantly more than regular laptops this won’t change
and there is a big market for tablet-pcs
Is there? Where is it then?
and there is a big market for tablet-pcs
Is there? Where is it then?
The way I see it, there would be a market for them if they did the hardware right. They didn’t. People are not interested in tablets as heavy as laptops with the same hardware as laptops with the same operating systems as laptops and with a 2-3 hour battery time.
A tablet is not supposed to be a laptop without a keyboard. It’s supposed to be a large PDA.
Produce a tablet with a dead simple GUI, very light weight specialized OS and cheap low-power hardware. It doesn’t matter if it’s slow, because I don’t think most people want to watch movies or play Doom 3 on those things. They want access to docs, good ways to write notes. It has to be instant on/off. It should hold battery power of a week at least. It should hold enough memory to contain many books.
You should be able to hold it horizontally by the edge with your hand without straining your wrist, like a plastic tray. It has to be very light.
They want to keep books, news, notes, drawings, sketches, comics, pictures on them. Imagine it keeping the equivalent of 10 kg 20 cm thick stack of schoolbooks right in your school bag, updated with the latest editions of the books.
Remember the old cliché of the paperless society? It didn’t happen, because there was no actual replacement made to physically replace the paper. Laptops, small PDAs, phones and desktop PCs are a poor replacement for information that is best stored on paper, namely static information.
That could be solved with properly designed tablets. They should be designed to replace paper. They should handle similarly to paper and books.
That, I think, would make people buy tablets.
I think Nokia has come a lot closer to what the market wants with their 770 internet tablet. The size and weight of it seem just right. The one way they still fall short is price. At $350 the 770 still can’t compete price-wise with a low-end laptop, but it is getting close.
the 770 is more of a sideways pda then a tablet…
still, i think most of the problem with tables is the cost. its more expensive then a laptop when all it have on top of most laptops is the “write on screen” feature…
Replacement for books is a stupid idea. The reason I give is that books are *good* at being books. They are cheap and getting cheaper. They do all the things that books do well. No batteries, high resolution graphics, disposable, comfort. Todays technology cannot compete with that, and won’t for years.
The only thing close to reaching a goal of creating a book 2.0 is the $100 PC, becuase at least in the west its the first step towards internet(updated books), cheap power, and disposable, but its still not a book its an information resource.
I suspect strongly if and when the $100 PC happens a mini revolution in computing will happen in the west as cheap components like the the screen, and low power processer, are utilied as *single application* computers, in areas such as wharehousing, and retail.
The *all in one* device is dead, and the ultra powerful device, I cannot see it happening until something radical happpens with battery life. What I see of Ultra portable computing is the “pen drive” and that can only work for data, as Microsoft legacy model of licencing programs *per machine* is outdated, and only
works currently becuase Microsoft Formats are the standard, but you can see already how they are trying to change this model. Look at what they are trying to do on the XBOX at the moment.
Replacement for books is a stupid idea. The reason I give is that books are *good* at being books. They are cheap and getting cheaper. They do all the things that books do well. No batteries, high resolution graphics, disposable, comfort. Todays technology cannot compete with that, and won’t for years.
But the only thing that would come close to a book would be a tablet. In schools, there are real problems with old worn out books, books out of print, books that are not up to date. It can be hard to sell used books in areas of fast paced development, such as technology.
Schools could save millions by switching to tablets or tablets designed as electronic schoolbooks for the sole purpose of being just schoolbooks.
It’s much cheaper to just copy a PDF file onto a tablet, than it is to print a book. We know this already. We know all the benefits of storing things electronically instead of on paper. It’s just the form factor has not been deemed important with PDAs, PCs and laptops. They are not like paper and books, which is why people continue to use books.
It’s hard to fathom that the paper problem still exists and is even worse after it was first debated 30 years ago with the beginning of the personal computer.
The tablet just has to be done right. Really right. No one has taken existing technologies and done that so far.
I agree that the 100$ laptop is a step in the right direction: Mobility, practicality and battery power is priority instead of glitz and powerful hardware, but there should be a version without a keyboard and with a touchscreen. That would be a good starting point for a practical tablet.
I don’t know what your point about tablet is. If you look at this tablet:
http://www-131.ibm.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/CategoryDisplay?st…
This is one fokkin cool tablet man. However, for UMPC even i am a little bit skeptical because it is too small to be a laptop for typing and too big to replace smart phones or PDA phones.
I much rather prefer a PDA phone and a notebook than UMPC.
They’ve not even found a market for the current UMPCs. Arn’t they driving an agenda, with no basis in reality?
I’d rather wait for the UMPC to fail, then Apple to release one that actually works (sans the spyware, viruses, fragmentation and high price)
If MS is serious about their commitment, give it time…
I have a PDA and a work-issued tablet, so I have no use for UPMC, but get the price down and the resolution up and I think people will be into it. Maybe an eventual rival to the PSP?
I actually saw a guy with a tablet PC on the bus yesterday. First time I ever saw one in the wild…