Geekfoolery

Sometimes I find myself very excited about some gift that I want to give my kids for Christmas or their birthday or something. Either it’s something I think will be cool or educational or something I wish I could have had when I was a kid, and so I buy them and give them out. And the thing is, when the gifts are opened, I get the “Oh wow!” reaction I was shooting for. But what has happened on occasion is that the first day “Oh wow!” quickly fades and the toy gets stowed on the shelf and never touched again.

I am wondering if the tablet computer is the same kind of thing. Tablet PCs have been on the market in one form or another for at least a decade, maybe more, and while they are great at getting magazine covers (even their own magazine ), I don’t think they have ever racked up a lot of sales. There are a handful of niche applications, but apart from the magazine covers, you rarely see them, whether in use by someone or in stores as demos. What is deal with the tablet PC? An idea ahead of its time? Or just a bad idea?

First, let’s take a look at the problem that the tablet PC is supposed to be solving. I guess the idea is that you can’t use a desktop PC or even a laptop PC in places where you can use a clipboard or an actual notebook, probably in a situation where you might be standing, or walking around, or perhaps for some reason can’t sit down at a desk. Doctors making their rounds are often cited as an example. I am guessing the idea is that once the early adopter doctors and such work out the kinks and the price drops then we’ll ALL want one.

Umm… yeah. The problem I think is this. The geek community is fascinated with tablets. Before Macworld in January, quite a few pundits were convinced that the mystery Jobs announcement was going to be a Mac tablet, not the iPhone. But few people are willing to the premium that a tablet will cost, even with a premium, the uses of a tablet are too limited.

Interestingly, a Mac tablet computer was announced, just not by Apple. A third party company, Axiotron, buys stock Macbooks and rebuilds them as tablet computers. The process effectively doubles the cost of the machine, with prices starting at $2,279. This machine, called the Modbook, I think serves as an excellent example as to why we’re not going to see tablet PCs in wide use.

First, let’s take a look at the intended use of a tablet PC. You’re holding it like a clipboard, and making notes or running some kind of apps with taps of a stylus, or you’re sitting, but not at a desk, maybe on a couch or a recliner or something. In the business world, most other situations I can imagine, most people are sitting at a table or a desk with their laptop open, and they’re either taking notes or updating documents, or more likely, they’re anwering emails and chatting on Yahoo! Messenger during the presentation. The laptop in the meeting and during the conference call is standard business procedure almost everywhere I have been. Some people double up with the laptop and the legal pad for notes. Why can’t the tablet PC fit in here?

The problem is the conference table or the desk. Whereas a tablet works fine when there is no table, it’s in the wrong position laying down on the table. The screen is flat on the table, which you have to hunch over to read and there may be glare, and possibly even worse, the guy across the table can see your screen.

The second problem is input. In the clipboard position, with one hand, pen input is better. But on the table, most people can type at least three to four times as fast as they can write by hand, and that’s ignoring for the moment the question of handwriting recognition.

The final issue is price and durability. The design constraints of tablet design mean you are paying more for a laptop to gain the extra function of tablet/stylus input. The device you get ends up being a full-price machine or higher with compromised capability.

If the tablet is going to take off as a consumer device, the price has to drop A LOT. We’re talking about a device that we basically serve as a satellite tool of your main computer. I leave my desktop or laptop plugged in at my desk and grab the tablet for portability.

And by portable, I mean light, but tough. I would expect a tablet to be abused more than even a laptop. The screen would have to be scratch resistant and the device would have to be  droppable. And failing that, it would have to be cheap enough that replacement after a year or two of hard use wouldn’t be huge burden.

Getting the parameters of cost, size, weight, durability and function to meet up at some consumer sweet spot that would make tablet PCs take off seems to be unlikely for the foreseeable future. In the meantime, there is a fine alternative that can be had in nonvolatile Write-Once Read Many stylus-based storage media.

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