Posted on 01/26/2011 6:36:27 PM PST by Swordmaker
Yes, like a PDA. But a tablet has all the same disadvantages. Less power, less storage, smaller screen, no keyboard (unless you want to carry an add-on). It’s all about the tradeoffs. I’m not down on tablets—there’s a definite market for them now—I just think they’ve been hyped through the roof and I think phones will be able to do anything a tablet can do, except play a DVD sized media or anything that would require the physical size of a tablet’s case. If I want portable, I want phone-size, otherwise give me a real keyboard and a nice big screen. Why drag a tablet around when you can slip a phone in your pocket? Yes they fit in a case, but they still have to be hand carried in that case or put into another bag/case just like a laptop. I really think the future is that tablets will fade in the face of all the touch phones out there increasing in power, just like they pretty much killed off standalone PDAs. Different strokes. Either way, us knuckledraggers will be happy with our hinged behemoths for years to come.
NOT. Read the article you linked to. Thank you.
The IPAD has the same OS as the IPHONE. They just tweaked a few things because of the larger display.
Amiga 4Ever!!!!1!
(Sorry. I just had a flashback to the Usenet OS wars of the early '90s.)
Thanks. Assuming that your deck of cards size device is plenty fast and feature rich, would you find the screen size or anything else about that small device presents a barrier to being a desktop replacement? You’d be able to hook up a keyboard and a 1080p screen and most anything else you’d need.
Or would you still want a desktop or a laptop for home use? I’m not saying that deck of cards devices are fast enough to replace desktops at this point, but if and when they are fast enough.
Smartphones will never become as powerful as desktops. Nor will tablets or, for that matter, laptops. Desktops simply don’t have the restrictions on size, temperature and power usage.
The current state of things is that laptop processors lag a generation behind the desktop, and smartphone/tablet processors behind that. Even if that were to change, even if the most powerful processor on Earth were one that’s suitable for mobile devices, then desktops would just use a dozen of them.
The question is whether a smartphone could be a “good enough” desktop replacement, with a docking station to give it the form factor of a desktop. Probably, but why? By the time you build that docking station, you’re getting pretty close to the cost of a desktop that’s a lot faster. Cloud synching will do more to keep the user experience seamless than docking a phone and glomming on a desktop user interface.
Desktops are not all that easy to find these days. Best Buy has a ton of laptops in stock, on sale, etc, not too many desktops. I was planning on getting a desktop from best buy. I just assumed that there would be a ton of desktops in the $200 - $400 range, and really, there aren’t. Lots of Laptops in that range.
Will we need the additional desktop power? I’d argue most would not. Why not just have one computer? If it’s a smartphone, a pack of cards sized device, it might need a docking station, while a 7 or 10 inch tablet might have both connectors and a docking station.
A generic touchscreen handheld device would likely do the trick.
10 years ago I was editing video using Premiere on a 466 celeron. Generic tablets have 1 gig ARM 8 processors. I don’t know for a fact, but I’m guessing that the today’s ARM is faster than the 466 Celeron.
I don’t think a docking station, a bunch of connectors in a plastic box, is really going to cost that much. Less than $100.
And the point isn’t that desktops are cheap and tablets and smart phones are expensive. Maybe so. But people are buying smart phones and tablets, and that’ll increase when a smart phone / tablet / handheld touchscreen device can do everything a desktop can do, but not quite as fast. Most people do not need the fastest computer, they aren’t doing video editing or much of anything really that requires speed.
Desktops will be specialty items purchased by not many private individuals, touchscreen devices the basic home computer.
I’m not saying we’re there yet.
Why wouldn’t a smartphone be able to play a DVD. If the smart phone is your main computer, and you really wanted to play a DVD, just get a external dvd player and hook it up to your smart phone.
Not exactly, it's the other way around... Apple was developing the tablet and realized the OS would work as a phone OS... and tweaked it for a smaller screen. That's why it's so easily scalable.
I finally threw my Amiga3000 away last year... it was painful... I still have not found as nice a program for my Macs for generating, exploring and displaying the Mandlebrot set as Mand2000 as on the Amiga. The blitter chip on the Amiga allowed you to cycle the colors through the Mandlebrot set and it was truly beautiful to behold. There was a strange optical illusion we discovered with that ... Watch the color cycle long enough then stop the cycling and the colors would literally appear to crawl backwards for several minutes... it was truly strange.
It's not the same. Keyboard and mousing have known problems with repetitive motion and ergonomic position issues. But they have been written about and desk and placement on laptops and desks have been handled over decades of development.
Try holding your arms extended at the screen level, not at the mouse and keyboard height. Apple did extensive testing on touch screen desk and lap top computers and found that it was not a viable user interface. The users' shoulders, wrists and back began aching after a very short time of usage... and recovery time from this pain was excessive. Long term usage resulted in repetitive motion injuries to shoulder and upper arm muscles and nerves and head and neck strains.
Touch screen input is just is not a viable modality for a seated user. It was found to have limited usability for a standing worker. Apple moved to a larger, modified touch pad approach instead.
You might be surprised... Windows98 is truly "Security by Obscurity" with less than 1% of the computers on the internet running Windows98... very few malware out there targets '98 specifically anymore... and little of the legacy stuff is still around. Someone put a bare '98 on and was surprised at how long it lasted before it was compromised. I don't recall the details but it wasn't as much of a sitting duck as it used to be. Just run a good AV and you should be good to go. No body is expecting to find an antique on the Internet... They're hunting elephants and haven't brought their cork guns along...
There are many who feel as you do.
I'll go so far as to grant that it would have been a different world... I didn't work with OS/2 enough to have an informed opinion about whether it would be better.
Laptops are definitely more mainstream than they were just a few years ago. It's a case of being close enough for most purposes. Best Buy is a consumer electronics store that carries computers, not a full-fledged computer store, so their inventory reflects a relatively thin slice of the most popular devices.
I don’t think a docking station, a bunch of connectors in a plastic box, is really going to cost that much. Less than $100.
Plus a monitor, keyboard, mouse and hard drive. Probably some form of external video card, because you don't need to carry that circuitry around. External optical drive optional. Basically, to use a smartphone as a desktop, you need a desktop computer minus the main logic board and processor.
Desktops will be specialty items purchased by not many private individuals, touchscreen devices the basic home computer.
I think we're going to see a wider variety of setups. In a typical household of 4-5 people, I think you'll eventually see one family computer -- laptop or desktop -- and an array of other devices, mainly tablets and smartphones, for most day-to-day use.
I don't think we'll see tablets or smartphones as many people's only computer until there are better cloud backup options. One insurmountable weakness of portable devices is that they're more easily lost, stolen or damaged.
Now imagine that, but instead of resting your hand on a mouse, you're holding it up in front of you for long periods. Try that, put your hand up to your monitor and wave it around for a couple minutes. You can see that it would get old really fast.
Laptops have already hit the “good enough” point for most people. That’s why desktop sales are down and laptop sales are up, having already passed the point of being the majority of PC sales. Why get a big clunker when a laptop does everything you need?
Tablets, and then later phones, will hit this point too. Already I know several people who really don’t need anything more than an iPad. But when you’re talking about plugging in KVM to use a phone or tablet like a normal computer, you run into the problem of the use metaphor. The iPad works because it was designed for the fingers, and so does its copy Android. They would not work well with KVM. You would need an OS, and applications, that could switch metaphor on the fly for this idea to work. Until such an OS exists, with the apps supporting it, this idea will succeed just as well as all the failed Windows tablets.
I agree.
Not sure about KVM switches. Those are necessary when people want to transition from the old computer to a new computer, standard desktop / laptop with mouse to new tablet style, yes?
I think tablet as mouse, optional full keyboard, optional full monitor would do the trick. But you also have printer and a whole bunch of other things that would get hooked up to both an old and a new computer. similar to a usb hub.
external hard drives are cheap these days. 2TB external for about $100. smartphone / tablet users could back up to that.
these smartphones do have good graphics, so graphics wouldn’t need to be in a switcher / breakout box. Basically a usb hub.
If they want a printer and a monitor they can use their old one, or buy a new one. Keyboards are cheap. I don’t see how the smartphone / tablet differs much from a desktop w. mouse.
I didn't say KVM switches, I just said KVM. I had a dock at work for my laptop, it gave me KVM. The same concept works for a tablet or a phone, but the problem is that the tablets and phones have operating systems honed for touch, not for KVM.
I think tablet as mouse, optional full keyboard, optional full monitor would do the trick.
Now you appear to be thinking of running a system using a touch version of a Wacom tablet. The use metaphor is still desktop for that setup. You're again back to needing an OS that can switch metaphors.
Repeat after me: the metaphors are not compatible. Tablets failed by trying to put a desktop into the touch metaphor, and touch would fail just as badly in a desktop environment. The ergonomics and mental models change drastically between the two. A simple one is the pointer. Tablets use a metaphor of direct manipulation of objects, you touch it to affect it. The desktop metaphor uses some pointing device (mouse, trackpad, etc.) as a proxy and gives you visual feedback for your your pointer is, which you are expected to keep track of. You always know where your finger is in a touch UI, and have no need for a pointer. You can't just throw touch on a desktop UI or a mouse on a touch UI and expect it to work well. Microsoft found that out in the failed attempts at touch tablets.
Attaching a full-size keyboard to a touch device is about as far as I can see going. It already screws up the use metaphor a bit, but the huge advantage in typing speed likely overcomes any detriment it causes.
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