HP, Palm Have the Experience to Create a Superior Tablet
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So what would an HP tablet look like? The Windows
device will probably look like just what it is - an upgrade to the
current HP tablet. It'll likely consist of a body containing a keyboard
and some of the communications gear, like a wired Ethernet connector.
The screen, as is the case in current devices will be large enough to
be useful, will be fully touch sensitive, and will handle handwriting.
Mass storage will be in the screen portion, as will wireless
networking. No surprises here. You can expect improved battery life in
some models; again, no surprise.
As for the webOS tablet, look to the current
Palm devices for some clues. Palm has had touch-screen technology long
before the iPhone has existed. It had a form of handwriting recognition
that worked well (once you learned Graffiti) and an on-screen keyboard
that could be oriented in either landscape or portrait mode. WiFi has
been standard for years, and so have on-screen icons and an app store.
With the latest Palm devices you got something
new in terms of a much more capable OS, slide-out keyboards and a
variety in your choice of carriers. While I found the new keyboards a
little hard to use because they were small and my hands are pretty
large, at least they were there if you'd rather use them instead of a
touch screen.
There's no question that Palm has the know-how
to produce a tablet that's superior to the iPad. It's also likely that
it'll offer features that the iPad doesn't. Perhaps those features will
include a slide-out keyboard. Perhaps handwriting recognition will
appear in these devices. It's very likely that you'll have more than
one choice for your 3G carrier. It may even include a phone function.
And of course, all of those functions carried over from Palms of yore
will certainly reappear, like a music player, video and photo viewer
and a document viewer-editor. It will almost certainly sync with
Outlook and other corporate e-mail systems.
And that's just Palm. We already know an
Android tablet is on the way, and there's no reason not to expect most
of the existing Android applications to work on it, except maybe for
the phone-related apps (unless the Android tablet also contains a
phone) and there are rumors, as well, of a RIM tablet.
The good news is there will be a lot of
competition, and the better news is that this competition will mean
that all of the tablets will get better. We won't be left to the whims
of Apple to define what's cool and what sort of tablet we're allowed to
have.
Wayne Rash is a Senior Analyst for eWEEK Labs and runs the magazineÃÃÃs Washington Bureau. Prior to joining eWEEK as a Senior Writer on wireless technology, he was a Senior Contributing Editor and previously a Senior Analyst in the InfoWorld Test Center. He was also a reviewer for Federal Computer Week and Information Security Magazine. Previously, he ran the reviews and events departments at CMP's InternetWeek.He is a retired naval officer, a former principal at American Management Systems and a long-time columnist for Byte Magazine. He is a regular contributor to Plane & Pilot Magazine and The Washington Post.
