What tablet PC information did I miss? [Week of October 4th]

I’m constantly trolling the internet for information on tablet PCs. What can I say, I’m addicted. And believe me, there’s was no shortage of stuff to read this week. Reports of the death of the tablet PC have been greatly exaggerated. I was going to add these thoughts to the “What’d I miss” post from yesterday, but it was just too much information. Anyway, here’s some tablet PC stuff I found interesting this week.

– Gateway is jumping in to the tablet PC game with the EC18T tablet along with Acer and the Aspire Timeline 1810T. With the addition of Gateway, I think every major Windows based computer manufacturer now has a tablet.

– Motion Computing is reportedly upgrading the screens in their C5 and F5 tablets with gorilla glass. Manufactured by Corning, Gorilla Glass is an alkali-aluminosilicate thin sheet glass designed specifically for portable display devices.

– There was an article in The New York Times questioning whether or not the tablet will actually find mainstream acceptance. There’s no question in my mind that they will. This is especially true with new designs like the Microsoft Courier booklet and the mythical Apple tablet. The most recent Apple tablet rumor has it shipping sometime in the first quarter of 2010.

– GottaBeMobile.com has an article titled “Why Tablets Flopped (and How They Can Unflop)” that talks about why tablet PC’s haven’t taken off yet and how they still can’t. It’s quite simple, really. The technology has always appealed to niche markets, mainly the business world. As the devices continue to develop, the market will grow. This is especially true with the emergence of multi-touch and Surface technologies.

– Speaking of touch technology, TechCrunch has a great article on new touch technology and what it means for the future of computing.

– If you want to try something really unique on your tablet pc desktop, then I recommend you take a look at BumpTop. BumpTop is an interactive 3D desktop that has some really incredible features. Check out the video below.

– TabletKiosk is offering multi-touch NetSlate tablets. This is interesting because TabletKiosk was the only real competitor for Motion Computing for slate tablets in the healthcare industry. Now it looks like they may have a slight advantage.

– John Biggs at CrunchGear wrote about “The coming tablet wars”. Besides using some great graphics, John does a nice job of presenting a condensed version of where tablet PCs have been and where they’re headed. Take a look at the Apple Newton photo in the post. The Newton came out in the early 90’s and was one of the most advanced devices of its time. It had a very loyal cult following. Apple made a huge mistake by not continuing to develop the Newton.

Blogging with ink looks interesting. I’ve thought about trying it many times, but I don’t know if I really want people looking at my handwriting. I also think I type faster than I write. Who knows, it may be in my future.

I am still not sure why tablet PCs haven not become more popular. Consider this; would you rather have a laptop that could never be used as a tablet PC, or a tablet PC that could be used as a laptop as well as “pen and paper”? That is what I thought.

My other tablet PC posts can be found here and my thoughts on the application of tablet PCs in pharmacy are summed up in this PDF document.

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