Asus Insider Claims Apple Tablet Is Real 358
CaptainCrunchyApple writes "According to cnet.co.uk the oft-rumoured Apple Tablet PC is actually very real, and on its way soon. CNET claims to have spoken to an anonymous tipster at Asus who claims to be working with Apple to produce the tablet. 'We're guessing it'll be based on Intel Core architecture, a tweaked version of Leopard, and have all the multi-touch, CoverFlow goodness we've seen in the iPhone and iPod touch. All this begs the question: Can Apple turn the Tablet PC into a success when previous attempts have failed? The short answer is 'yes'. Any company that can make a mobile phone with no buttons, no picture messaging, slow Web access and no video capture into the most desirable phone on the planet can easily make tablets popular.'"
Nifty. (Score:3, Insightful)
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But, that isn't a crowd much larger than the graphic artists...
Re:Nifty. (Score:4, Interesting)
Anyway, I occasionally run into them at Starbucks, because where there's wifi, there's an office. The interesting thing about this group of guys is that they all use tablet PCs (IBMs I think -- they're black and don't look cheap like a Dell) to track their finances (which they constantly do).
I don't know if there's something about tablet PCs that is useful to the financial+mobile set, but until it was mentioned above, I never considered tablets would be useful to artists and designers.
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I'm not trolling, I swear. It was (is?) lacking a native SDK, GPS, the ability to be unlocked. It most definitely is not lacking a price :)
Maybe you're not trolling, but you're pretty much completely wrong. There has been a third party SDK out for months, and ditto for unlocking them. Go to eBay and enter "unlocked iPhone" if you need confirmation on that. I've got 4 screens of icons on mine, so I'm thinking the third party apps either exist, or I'm hallucinating. GPS, yeah, not the satellite type, but there's one which triangulates where you are from cellphone towers and WIFI hotspots around you (kind of how LORAN works) and is pretty mu
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As for GPS, cell triangulation is NOT GPS. Considering there are phones out there with actual bona fide GPS in them, having to use a rough technology like cell triangulation seems a bit
Re:Nifty. (Score:5, Insightful)
As for GPS, cell triangulation is NOT GPS. Considering there are phones out there with actual bona fide GPS in them, having to use a rough technology like cell triangulation seems a bit cheap.
Re:Nifty. (Score:5, Informative)
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Or, at least it *was*... (Score:2, Offtopic)
Mac user? Who cares? (Score:4, Informative)
Elgan's research on U.S. Census data drives home a point that the Mac vanguard has been wrestling with for a while: The hedonistic, transgressive, radical ethos (and stereotype) that once characterized the Mac community doesn't represent reality anymore. The decline of urban coastal Mac user groups, the increase in the Mac-using population in the interior U.S. and the overall diversification of the Mac community are facts. What's more, Elgan argues, these trends are a function of the growing acceptance of Macs among the American public.
Acceptance? Really? Has Elgan forgotten about the majority of offices that have policies in effect barring Mac use at work, or the Justice Department's recent decision to relax court-ordered restrictions on Microsoft's business practices in the face of continuing opposition from the White House?
Not at all. There is, he says, a vocal, virulent -- and sometimes violent -- anti-Mac movement, but it doesn't negate years of opinion surveys that show a marked increase in tolerance in most Americans' attitudes toward Macs and Mac users. In 1998, for example, a Gallup poll found that only 33% of Americans thought that Macs could perform standard pencil-pushing tasks like running Microsoft Office. By 2007, that figure had risen to 59%.
Growing acceptance means a decline in social stigma associated with using Macs, and a consequent shift in the politics of declaring oneself a Mac user. The more Mac users come out, the more accepting people are around them, and the more accepting the public becomes, the more people switch to Macs.
Elgan's study shows that the number of self-described Mac users in the U.S. has quadrupled since 1998, and the biggest increases are in the country's more socially conservative areas.
Utah is the poster state. Between 1990 and 2006, for example, it went from having the 38th-highest concentration of Mac users in the country to 14th highest. In that same time period, the percentage of Mac users who lived in large cities declined from 45% to 23%. Even more counterintuitive, from 2000 to 2006, the states with the fewest Apple stores had above-average increases in the number of Mac users. And places, like Utah, where a majority of people still believe Saddam Hussein had anything to do with 9/11 -- the reddest of red, the squarest of rectangle states -- saw even larger increases.
Some of the growth in the number of Mac users in conservative areas could be because of migration. And yes, some on-the-barricades members of the Mac community have gotten older and mellower and moved out to the heartland. But the larger trend is simply that as more latent Mac users switch to Macs, they don't need to change or assimilate to fit into the mainstream because they are already very much a part of it.
"The demographic characteristics of the Mac community are converging with those of the mainstream," Elgan says. If you're from a state like Utah or Nebraska, chances are you're going to share a lot with your neighbors whether you're a Mac user or a PC user: "They're rural," Elgan says, "they're religious, and they're Republican."
So what does this all mean for American culture at large?
"Society is beginning to say that being a Mac user is not such a big deal," Elgan says. "What that means for Mac users is that their platform choice won't have the centrality to their identity it once did. Being a Mac user then becomes one of a variety of an individual's competing identities."
In other words, as the challen
An incredibly brilliant troll, really. (Score:3, Informative)
Ripped from here:
The LA Times [latimes.com]
Re:Or, at least it *was*... (Score:4, Interesting)
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Would Someone Please Leak ATI Plans for Apple? (Score:2)
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Really? (Score:5, Funny)
Can someone comfirme that, since I really doubte it?
Re:Really? (Score:4, Funny)
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Illustrations (Score:2)
Previous Attempts?!?! (Score:5, Insightful)
The link they give goes to an article about the Newton. I don't mean to be pedantic, but comparing a PDA to a Tablet?
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Anyway, coming out with a multi-touch tablet would be huge. It should provide for a lot more utility than it does on the iphone, and (hopefully) be much cheaper than the $10k Microsoft Surface.
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Thanks to the March Of Technology Progress, an Apple Tablet in 2007 may very well have a similar weight and form factor to an Apple PDA in 1994. Could be quite a fair comparison.
Finally? (Score:2)
Of course, I may reinstall the OS (I have some issues with MacOS, I like the look and feel I can get out of KDE better), bu
OS (Score:2)
A 14" tablet would be a bit large, unless the screen goes to the edge like the iPhone. Having considered installing Linux on the tablet, I am curious what functionality you expect to get? I haven't looked in a while, but has an
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The functionality?
(1) The MacOS setup is... Challanging for anyone who is highly nearsighted. The moving your head to go between the top menu bar and your window, rather than having the menu bar on the window is a pain. Or trying to move around to find which item is in focus and hence what the menu controls... I'd much rather h
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Toshiba > Dell|Lenovo > Apple >> HP|Compaq|Gateway
I've not had much experience outside of that. I also take tech support into consideration.
Does it have motion sensing? (Score:3, Interesting)
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Considering that the Macbooks already come with a motion sensor, the odds are pretty good.
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I've always felt this was really Apple's strong suit... Not the trendy white plastic, or the nifty eye candy, or catchy commercials... The reason Apple's products are popular is because the interface is so well done. Features may be missing, it may
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I agree SE phones are leaps and bounds better than Motorola's offerings, but IMHO they still cannot hold a candle to Apple in terms of user interface quality. The software is solid, stable, and quick (everything Moto isn't), but they are still treading the same tired paradigms.
And by that I mean the olde standard interface: home screen, hit button to go to tiled menu, use a joystick to wag about in the menu, have two contextual buttons for each menu item, etc etc. It encourages a lot of menu-digging as so
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I just don't see it... (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm sure Apple will have solved the touch screen, keyboard and attractiveness issues, but I just don't see how they'll get around the weight.
No one wants to wear their wrists out holding up something to read it.
Re:I just don't see it... (Score:4, Insightful)
Apple will probably focus on this aspect unlike other manufacturers, as Apple has a tendency to work on form and function. Other manufacturers don't go the extra mile to do both. After all, the first iPod was considerably smaller than the Nomad.
Re:I just don't see it... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:I just don't see it... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm going to guess you haven't actually used a modern tablet-PC with OneNote2007. HP's offering in particular uses a magnetic stylus so you can put your hand on the screen and write very reliably during into OneNote or any other application that requires lots of writing. If you accidentally mark it you just turn the stylus over and use it as an eraser automatically just like with a pencil. OneNote makes it easy to convert all your notes to text. You can even do it after the fact. Combined with Penflicks you have yourself a powerful interface that is surprisingly intuitive. My experience with it resulted in 100% accuracy when converting my crappy handwriting. That was of course after a half hour of training it.
Tablet-PCs aren't a failure by any means, specific implementations of them have, Microsoft sucks at producing hardware as I'm sure you already know. I doubt it's a surprise although I've never seen anything called a Microsoft Tablet-PC unless you're referring to the XP Tablet PC or Vista Tablet PC edition. Both are very high in quality with Vista being a rather large improvement in this regard.
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I was playing with a friend's tablet recently and tested out the handwriting, which was amazing, even using XP. I intentionally wrote worse and worse and it continued to translate perfectly. With no training to my handwriting style. It wasn't until even I couldn't read what I wrote that it started to make mistakes.
Re:I just don't see it... (Score:4, Insightful)
though i agree that weight is an issue. perhaps solid-state drives and ultracaps replacing the battery would help for that.
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I also type more reliably than I write. I'll screw up certain letters as I'm handwriting. With a keyboard the lettering is consistent. The tablet support on Windows does an excellent job of guessing what letter I'm trying to right so the vast vast majority of the time it gets it right especially if the mistake is towards the end of a word which from my experience is exactly where I tend to make mistakes. Probably only because I do so little handwriting in my day to day life.
HP's tablet is similarly light
Apple Tablet WAS real (Score:3, Insightful)
Thanks to this anonymous poster, we'll never see the rumored Apple Tablet. Thanks
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Jobs isn't stupid, he won't can a product because someone talked. Just expect the inevitable Apple Tablet to come without Asus parts inside ;) I believe this is also why all newer Apple machines run NVidia graphics chips, something about an ATI exec being indiscreet with information about their partnership. Wham, Jobs pulls the contract from under them.
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The mini and macbook use intel graphics. The macbook pros use nvidia. The imacs (which I belive were the most recently updated range) all use ATI. The mac pro offers the choice of nvidia or ati. The xserve uses ATI.
Seems like quite a mix to me.
Business 101 (Score:4, Insightful)
When the benefits are measured in billions of dollars, it makes perfect sense to implement the policy that Apple does. Sure it's an easy shot to blame it on Steve's ego, but it looks like a cold blooded business decision to me.
Simon
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ATI got slapped by Jobs a few months ago: http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/17800/139/ [tgdaily.com]
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Umm nope, that is just what people like you assumed based on rumors. If you actually look at the current ZFS support in Mac OS (read only), you would understand it wouldn't have been nearly ready for primetime on Leopard.
And Apple has never NIXED a product due to some spilling beans. They have, however, given contracts to other companies.
Re:Apple Tablet WAS real - repercussions (Score:2)
But they will get it even cheaper than ASUS planned to sell it to them for.
ASUS is in breach of confidentiality - the folks here at Slashdot seem to think that corporations play schoolyard games (ATI leak of Apple specs), but confidentiality is codified in contracts - if ASUS has cost Apple materially due to their employee's leak, Apple will probably reap some benefit in terms of product cost.
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Unfortunatly, ASUS will now suffer the Wrath of Jobs. [sic]
In other words, ASUS just lost their contract. Maybe not immediately, but certainly in the near future.
Alternatively, this was planned by Apple. Everyone knows THEY won't leak anything, but maybe, just maybe, they need to leak this kind of announcement to shake up the industry a little. There is no timetable announced, so the rumors will be flying. By Christmas? Next summer? End of 2008? Or timed with the iPhone SDK, perhaps -- "Oh, and on
Why can't we have news without the comentary (Score:3, Insightful)
Gee that doesn't sound weighted.
The No buttons is actually its selling point, not a disadvantage.
Slow Web Access or less battery life? Ill choose Slow Web Access... Btw the reason for the WiFi support is to speed up web access, for most locations that people will be actually using the phone for web access... At Work, in Cafe, home... They would only use the Cell phone when they are on the road and normally they just need to do some rather low bandwidth things...
Video Capture. I guess that would be a nice feature, but being that I almost never even use the camera on my current phone video seems less likely. Video can take a lot of space really fast. Plus using a cell phone you are often in places with bad lighting anyways.
No the iPhone isn't perfect I looked at one at the apple store and I was mostly unimpressed with it. It felt slow and sluggish. It had a nice design I would wait for Gen 2 or 3 perhaps...
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The iPhone could have had a 3G radio in it, and be configured to only use it when the user specifies. If you want to get some data quickly, regardless of whether you (or anyone else) regularly wants to do it in your current location, you shouldn't be held up by someone else's idea of what you want. If I have an all-singing-all-dancing phone and I need to download a large email from the office, I should have the option of turning
Fine, but Apple's handwriting recognition sucks! (Score:5, Insightful)
As it stands today, "Ink", Apple's handwriting interface leaves a lot to be desired. In principle, it's nicely done. A good sort of floating scratch pad which you can write on, which will insert into the active doc. But, the quality of the handwriting recognition is pretty poor. God knows Apple has the resources to do this right. I'm sure there's a lot of left over experience from Newton ( if Jobs didn't fire all of those guys ), but as it stands, if Apple released a tablet with Ink it would be useless for anything but consuming media.
Frankly, I don't want to consume media. I want to use a computer, and a tablet is a nice form factor. I know I'd never write code on a tablet, but I'd like to think I *could*. I used to sketch out prototype algorithms using graffiti on a palm ( which I'd later edit/compile/etc on my desktop ), it was a nice thing to be able to do. What I don't want is a real computer which is so hobbled by bad input that it's only good for music, internet and video.
Seems to me Apple *could* do it... but who knows. Microsoft pulled it off, so, let's let competition bloom!
Re:Fine, but Apple's handwriting recognition sucks (Score:2)
I'm sure the technology will be present, but I suspect, given their recent experience with multi-touch, that a full sized multitouch keyboard will be present instead. Instead of fighting the "better tablet" game, Apple should move onto the next arena: better handheld computer game, which they have already demonstrated a strong opening move with the iPhone.
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I think the type of device we're most likely to see come out of rumors like this is a bigger iPod touch. Although it may support some kind of handwriting recognition, I would expect an on-screen keyboard to be the primary mode of input. I've had mixed feelings about the redesign of Apple's wireless keyboard, but it would go very nicely with a tablet.
I would be quite interested in a pro
Re:Fine, but Apple's handwriting recognition sucks (Score:3, Informative)
I will say flat out that Microsoft's handwriting input is years ahead of Apple's. Microsoft has thoroughly integrated it, with very impressive recognition and overall it *feels* right, like MS really put a lot of love into it.
We'll have to agree to disagree. I'm a Mac user, but I own a Compaq TC1000 with XP/SP2 which has been pulling travel duty with me for the past 3 years. After years of reading accolades from Scoble et al about the Tablet PC's handwriting recognition I've tried time and time again to use it as a primary input method. My assessment: it sucks. It works okay (but still not satisfactorily) if you write standard prose but I'm an engineer that uses a lot of industry-specific terms, and the auto-prediction inevit
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http://www.evernote.com/products/technology/ritepen/ [evernote.com]
It's the best HWR I've found yet --- I use it constantly on my Fujitsu Stylistic (which I've _finally_ gotten booting off an Extreme III 2GB card using a CF-IDE adapter --- for some reason it wouldn't boot from the 4GB card, so it's in the second slot).
William
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I'm thinking one of those dynamic on screen thumbkey systems, like MS displayed a couple years ago. But with Apple's slick touch like with the iPhone's keyboard which learns and predicts. Who knows. All that matters to me is that if such a
Lotsa "ifs" and "maybes" (Score:2, Informative)
According to cnet.co.uk the oft-rumoured Apple Tablet PC is actually very real, and on its way soon. CNET claims to have spoken to an anonymous tipster at Asus who claims to be working with Apple to produce the tablet.
On the off chance that it IS true...
I can't afford one running windows. Actually... I am yet to see one used IRL.
Don't see how exactly will an Apple's overpriced version bring the tech to the masses.
And... ummm.. Where exactly is the appeal in the TabletPC?
I mean... hand-held PDA devices - OK. I can use it and hold it with one hand, and put it in my pocket.
But a 14", or 15" or 17" big, clumsy, fragile thing I have to haul around and which I must always hold with one hand when I interact with it (no keyboar
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If this is true... (Score:5, Funny)
Woe betide the man who steals Steve Jobs' thunder.
...the most desirable phone on the planet .... ? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why have a tablet........ (Score:5, Funny)
Previous thoughts from Jobs about tablets (Score:5, Interesting)
The tablet situation
First, he said, tablet computers were not a big enough market for Apple to spend its limited resources chasing. And even if the market grew, it would not reach a size to be of interest. The form factor was all wrong. Apple was more interested in defining markets than trying to catch other companies that were busy trying to create a market for questionable products. Still, some of the NIH scientists pressed the issue. Steve's follow-up answer was the most impressive I had heard him give.
First, he said, the wireless bandwidth for huge images, plus the security needed to successfully do what NIH wanted, was just not on the horizon. (Apple staff had been notably fuzzy earlier in the briefing about wireless standards after 802.11b.) Plus, tablets' screen resolution was nowhere near that required for NIH's high-quality medical images. Finally, any product designed to work in the medical field would attract significant liability. The hint was that Apple wasn't interested in anything with that kind of potential liability. That pretty well shut down the issue.
So, no tablet. But NIH at the time had more than 2,000 BlackBerry users. The NIH CIO wanted Apple to push RIM for better compatibility. Tough: Steve basically said it was another niche product, and that while there would be convergence of computing and phones, the BlackBerry was not that product. He did not see that compatibility as an area where Apple should spend any effort. So what will the converged product - what is being called the "iPhone" (even though that's a Cisco trademark) - look like? He said the really converged, ubiquitous devices would have to fit in your shirt pocket, and be better than either a phone or a computer by itself.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/jan/04/newmedia.media [guardian.co.uk]
Since this article ran, Apple has demonstrated two technologies that might change that answer a bit. 802.11n networking approaches the speed needed to work with high-resolution images wirelessly. And Apple is now sourcing LCD screens with very high resolution--the iPod nano screen has about 200 pixels per inch, which is quite close to the resolution of printed photos.
However I'll believe it when I see it. The big question with tablets has always been data entry, and thus they are closely linked with handwriting recognition in the marketplace. Handwriting recognition has been an almost total market failure, so tablets have been an almost total failure. Perhaps Apple will try a full-size onscreen keyboard. Or perhaps they will leverage the new super-thin iMac keyboard technology and do a pull-out or flip-down physical keyboard. Or perhaps most likely is a slight modification of the MacBook product to include MultiTouch...either a touchscreen display or (as hinted in patents) a second, MultiTouch screen replacing the touchpad.
The big question is software. They just released a new OS that will need support. They are already committed to providing and supporting an SDK for the iPhone. And they are undoubtedly working quickly to update applications like the new iMovie, and produce new ones for the iPhone. Apple typically does not release new categories of product without new software to support/drive sales. I have no doubt people at Apple are experimenting with tablets. But I do not believe we will see one released anytime soon.
Re:Previous thoughts from Jobs about tablets (Score:5, Interesting)
- Voice recognition mostly sucks, and even if it worked fine, I don't want to be talking out loud to my computer most of time--not in the office, not in public.
- Voice recognition is also out for anything that must be character-perfect: web addresses, email addresses, even renaming a file--miss a period and you'll be renaming it again.
- Pen-based input is OK, accuracy- and speed-wise, but still nowhere near what you can do with a keyboard.
- A chord keyboard would be ideal--they can be faster than conventional keyboards--but you're not gonna see something that complicated on a mass-market consumer product from Apple.
- An iPhone-like virtual keyboard is obviously an option, but unlike the two-thumb operation of an iPhone, you'd be limited to poking with one index finger while you hold the tablet with your hand.
Which leads to the conclusion--as soon as you set the tablet down to use a conventional mouse and keyboard, it becomes equal to a regular laptop in all regards except it's slower, has a smaller screen, and is more expensive. Apple's last big flop was the Cube, which had the same specs (CPU, RAM, HD) as a PowerMac, was less expandable, and cost $200 more.What I really want Apple to make is what I would call the "MacBook Elite": 2 pounds, 10- or 11-inch screen, Core Duo, no HD or optical drive, 1 or 2 GB RAM, 16-32 GB solid-state storage, very thin, and 12-24 hours of battery life. (Yes, I know there are PCs that more or less match these specs, but I want OS X and the industrial design from Apple.) You could use it as a basic standalone computer or you could sync it up with your desktop just like an iPhone. Obviously it wouldn't be the center of your digital life (especially in terms of mass storage of media and media creation) but it would be so good at so many other things.
would rather have the ASUS one (Score:2)
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Fact: WiFi is not as widespread as 3G. Try finding a wireless signal when you're in a car driving down the freeway.
Fact: There are more-technically-advanced phones available from other companies, with decent battery life
iPhone users pay for a decent data package, but then are told to pay for WiFi to get really fast speeds? Even when there are no WiFi hotspots around? How does that make sense?
Pump and Dump (Score:2)
Sigh (Score:2, Informative)
AppleDisplayScaleFactor (Score:4, Interesting)
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See what I did there?
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Integrated design is what makes the mac pro such a nice machine. Through custom layout apple has tamed the heat output from intel server grade hardware without making sever like levels of noise.
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After about 2 minutes of playing with the iphone/ipod touch in the store, I decided I wasn't interested in it. But I knew right then and there, that they needed to make something about 8" by 6", and I would probably get it.
It is basically a PADD [wikipedia.org]. And I can see it being useful as such, with WIFI mobility. The apps that are building up on the web make this an excellent platform. Provided they price it as a utility, not a computer replacement.
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LOL LOL BWAAAAHAHAHAAAAAAA Yeah, right. I'm betting it'll cost over $1000.
Tablet PC are really cool devices. Why don't everyone have one? BECAUSE THEY COST AN ARM AND LEG to Normal People. Companies and such can buy them, but people? Forget it. Or they also buy audio cables at $7000 too.
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So, it's not just Intel.
Re:If it sells (Score:5, Insightful)
why care SO much that you HOPE people end up being unhappy? don't you worry there's something wrong with you?
plus your Apple tax thing is clear BS since you only pay Apple money if you buy Apple products. that's not a 'tax', it's a 'cost' or 'price'. the more you know!
Re:If it sells (Score:5, Funny)
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why care SO much that you HOPE people end up being unhappy? don't you worry there's something wrong with you?
Funny how everyone here hopes that the general public is unhappy with Vista so they will switch to something else, and nobody sees that as abnormal. But, if you have the gall to hate something that is en vogue, then all of the sudden there's something wrong with you.
I'm not a fan of Vista, I'm just saying you can't have it both ways and expect that it makes logical sense.
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Also the use of the word check:
check (verifying) = check
check (to pay with) = cheque
check (to indicate a preference) = tick
Americans!