underdone

I have one, I've paid 500€ for it (used, with hardware specs any owner of a current normal laptop would only laugh about) - and I love it. Almost like owners of any Apple product love their overpriced gadgets.

But there's a difference: Apple fans love their stuff for the design as much as for the functionality. My tablet, on the other hand, doesn't look cool. In fact, it looks like any other toshiba laptop on the market - until you flip the screen over!

For those of you - probably most my non-geek readers - who haven't gotten their hands or even eyes on one of them yet, let me explain what a tablet pc is first.

A tablet pc - as the name suggests - is a combination of a pc - a latop to be exact - and a graphics tablet. That means that it has a "touch" screen. Although it doesn't really react to touch at all. Unlike touchscreens on devices like PDAs or the iPhone which you can touch with whatever you like, the tablet pc's screen only works with the associated touch pen. The "click" actually isn't registered by the screen but by the pen's tip itself, and the screen registers the pen's position relative to it even while it's stile above the screen. This allows for hovering, which is more important for GUIs like X.org or Windows than at least I had realized before using a tablet pc. You need it for highlighting menu entries before they're clicked or expanding sub-menus, for tooltips and much more. And the pen can be equipped with extra mouse buttons. Mine has the right mouse button on it's side whereas the middle button is placed at the back end. The latter allows for some a quite intuitive eraser-function, just like your good ol' pencil. All those things allow using your standard operating system with touch input quite comfortably - something that can't be done with a regular touch screen that recognizes only one thing - touch. The only thing that won't work are keyboard-mouse-combinations souch as "ctr-click" or "shift-drag". Depending on the application you're using this might bother you a lot or not at all.

Most models also provide some buttons on the edge of the screen with functions like scrolling. Quite handy if you don't want to always have your pen in hand while you're reading large documents.

Most tablet pcs also offer the ability to rotate the screen to read documents in portrait orientation.

There are two different kinds of tablet pcs: Slates and Convertibles. Slates have no built-in keyboard at all, which means all text entry has to be done either via on-screen-keyboard or handwriting recognition.Their advantage is their often very small size and low weight. Convertibles are a combination of a full-fledged laptop and a tablet. You can flip and rotate the screen to either use the built-in keyboard or cover it with the touchscreen to use it like a slate. Those are mostly heavier and thicker but you don't have to do entirely without your keyboard. I habe a convertible, mainly because getting logon or password-entry for sudo on linux done without a keyboard is rather complicated. Writing longer texts also still works much better with a keyboard then with a pen.

Only when using the touchscreen does a tablet pc show the beaty that lies in it's functionality. It's functionality which is the closest one can currently get to the dream I had for years: Fully functional electronic paper. It's not quite there yet, though.

• It's heavier - no one would use a paper note pad weighing 1.5 kg!
• It can't be used in bright sunlight - no matter what the manufacturer is trying to tell you.
• It requires power. Mine's battery lasts almost three hours, but you can write way longer than three hours till your 100-sheet-pad will run out of pape
• It doesn'f offer nearly the contrast paper does

But it also offers numerous advantages over paper:

• You can send what you've written via email without having to scan it first
• You can carry all you've ever written around with you all the time
• You save space on you shelf
• There is no "find file"-command for your paper-based records ;)
• You save on printing cost
• Ne trees have to die for you to read things

And of course it offers many advantages over normal laptop computers:

• You can read in a natural reading position (It's a lot more comfortable, I can tell you that!)
• You actually can use it while standing or walking (those sales people aren't lying about that at least)
• Annotating a PDF using a pen is almost like having it printed
• It's like having a computer and some "almost-paper" with you at the same time
• And - probably most importantly for us UX folks:The interaction is such a lot more natural then with a mouse! You just don't notice how detached mouse interaction actually feels unless you've interacted with the very programs you've always used your mouse for with a stylus! It's not always 100% precise, but most of the time it just feels so natural one just has to love it

If you want maximum computing power for your money, go get a normal laptop - or, for that matter, a desktop. Getting a state-of-the-art tablet will cost you at least 2000€ (a little less in the US, but still a lot compared to other computers). But if mobility is really what you seek, a tablet pc just does the job so much better than a laptop. I mean, come on! You sure can get used to touchpads or "IBM nipples", but you can't tell me they can replace your good old mouse. A touchpen can. And you don't need your lap as a base anymore, your forearm will do just fine. That makes you a lot more productive on public transportation or if you don't have a seat reservation on a train.

This concludes my plea for the tablet pc.  Now, people, buy more of those things so they may finally get cheaper (it can't just be the touchscreen, that technology has been on the market for years now). An, to all of you Linux-fans out there: Let's build a tablet edition of one of the big distros which has wacom enabled by default and offers presets for all the major models' extra buttons and a rotate-script out of the box! It would make tablet owner's lives so much easier!

Cheers,

Thomas