Why?
What is it that’s so great about a tablet pc? What shifts the response from the "cool!" factor to need and finally to devotion? A few of our favourite things:
- Lying in bed reading the NYRB and NYT on the tablet (ooops, minus the NYT select!!)
- Choice, choice, choice
- All these years I never knew I was a visual/spatial thinker forced to live in a linear tree-structured computer world
- Easily bringing the tablet to and from work without feeling that you carry a brick slab around (3 lbs w/o keyboard)
- Handing the tablet to someone else to read or write something
- Taking handwritten notes reduces the need for carrying around and organizing scraps of paper
- Access to email and web anywhere there is a friendly router
- Having the computer at hand in a meeting — but not as a wall between me and others
Some of these features can only be realized most fully with a hybrid, and with our fave hybrid: the HP TC 1100. The ability to leave the keyboard behind makes it super-portable, and the beautiful quality of the screen brings the true end to the paper era finally in sight. What will happen to the hybrid model with the premature death of the TC1100? We shall investigate.
Write to Mark Hurd, HP CEO and tell him how HP is doing itself a disservice by discontinuing the TC1100 form factor.
Also see our attempt at taking the discontinuation case of the TC1100 form factor to the court of appeals.
In the meantime we will have opinions on a variety of things related to Tablet PC’s.
