Quite what the point of the tablet is, however, remains unclear, as users will be asked to forgo a physical keyboard …

I thought the pulse smartpen had already convinced you that a physical keyboard wasn't necessary for an amazing compting experience ;)

Surely the point of the tablet / slate is to take smartphones / PDAs and make them usable? I love my HTC Magic, and I loved my SPV M600, but I've tried using them for e.g. note-taking in meetings, and it's simply not practical. That leaves me the choice of lugging a heavier netbook / laptop around and typing everything in, or taking rough notes using pen / paper and then finding time to type them up before I lose them or spill coffee on them. A tablet with decent handwriting recognition would be the ideal solution - it'd be as quick for taking notes as pen & paper, but would then automatically digitise them. Ideally, of course, the tablet would then slide into a dock when I get back to the office for use as a conventional PC…

Anyway, yeah, I've been waiting for something slate / tablet like to become mainstream for a couple of years now, and I'm really looking forward to see what comes out.

blackberry's keyboard is as good as a laptop's if not better jim :)

So for you, scaryjim, the point of a tablet is handwriting recognition. Do you think that's a sufficient unique selling point to give it mass appeal?

To me it seems like a step backwards really as typing is so much faster than writing (at least for me +-100wpm, but I've been doing it since I was about 3)

Can you type on a blackberry as quick as on a netbook?

Scott B;1858838
So for you, scaryjim, the point of a tablet is handwriting recognition. Do you think that's a sufficient unique selling point to give it mass appeal?

Probably not, no. But i think it'll give it a sufficient niche market to prosper as a form factor - it will appeal to a wide range of business users. I'm sure there are other areas where a slate / tablet will be desirable too - for instance, the Archos 9 was originally billed as a media player but I see they've now rebranded it as the 9 pctablet. Media playback is another area in which I can see the lack of a physical keyboard not being an issue.

The thing is a tablet is quite a flexible form factor, so I suspect we'll see it spread over several different niche markets…

when i see many people with portable devices or even laptops i've noticed that they rarely type anything much, thus a tablet can get rid of extra bulk and weight. i can't imagine what i would want to do with a table when i already have an iphone, netbook and large laptop, but the obvious thing would be to allow the use of an external keyboard and mouse via bluetooth for example, so you can prop up the screen and type and use the mouse to send emails etc

for most internet use, people just need to click on links and read something, so a touch screen is fine, likewise for playing media files. someone isn't really going to use a table for spreadsheets or databases are they?

it does sound like the table is something loads of people will want, but really don't need. but skip 20 years in the future and that comment will sound like bill gates one about 640k ram being more than enough for anyone

scaryjim
for instance, the Archos 9 was originally billed as a media player but I see they've now rebranded it as the 9 pctablet. Media playback is another area in which I can see the lack of a physical keyboard not being an issue.

I had an mp3 player before anyone else had them, when barely anyone knew what an mp3 was, no ipods - Archos used to rule, 20GB hard disk (not flash so it could skip sometimes if moved it around a lot) Jukebox FM recorder! (radio that can record, and built in microphone). One time at school I set it to record and put it in a bag in the governor's board room. :)

Perfectionist
I had an mp3 player before anyone else had them, when barely anyone knew what an mp3 was, no ipods - Archos used to rule, 20GB hard disk (not flash so it could skip sometimes if moved it around a lot) Jukebox FM recorder! (radio that can record, and built in microphone). One time at school I set it to record and put it in a bag in the governor's board room. :)

i had one long before the archo's HD mp3 players that was a cd player that played mp3s. the first one i got was useless as it skipped like crazy, the second had a better buffer and also played VCDs. i later got a £200 sony that was pretty damn good but rarely used. i got a 1.8" HD archos 20gig for about £150 when ipods were vastly overpriced for a similar model

i think the first portable mp3 player was flash based with something like 64mb space. barely enough for an album, and cost a fortune. i think it was recently something like 10 years since the first one