Date: 2008-11-02 11:52:02 Created: null
Springtime. Blue skies with gentle white clouds, birds singing and sunshine filtering down through tree branches soon to be covered in leaves. A gently swinging [hammok] on which to lie back and take it all in on, strategically placed in an outside room so you won't get too cold.
Who needs computers in a moment like this? Sure, I'm using one to write this right now, but it's a Palm and I consider that a completely different matter. Noting things on a Palm is not a computer experience at all. It's not sitting down on a chair in front of a big screen, waiting for things to load and always having the sound of fans in the background.
Granted, using a Mac nowadays also means not having the sound of fans in your ears all the time. That and OSX is so tempting that I'd be more than happy to get a Mac if only I had the money. But right now I don't, so that's about it about that.
Anyway, noting on a Palm in the sunlight is not a computer experience because it blends in. It doesn't require you to move indoors or carry an unwieldy laptop around. It doesn't make the room warmer. It doesn't require you to wait for things to load, to connect to a power source or even sit up properly and use a keyboard. It just comes out of your pocket and accepts input right away, and doesn't rely on the surroundings to do so. Not a sound, and, this being a Palm IIIe, the sunlight even filters in through the lid and case. All computing should be like this ...
By the way, what's so fun about tablet PCs anyway? I completely fail to see the point. It's either a less flexible laptop (lacking a keyboard and probably more to get smaller) or a much less portable PDA. How often do you find yourself thinking "Oh, I wish this laptop didn't have a keyboard" or "gee, I wish this PDA was a whole lot larger but still not a complete laptop".
Maybe I'm just backwards and unimaginative, but I still can't see what need they're meant to fill to the average person. Unless input methods get so good and fast that they can replace keyboard and mouse input completely of course, then we'd be getting somewhere for sure. I have to admit the demos of the handwriting stuff were pretty neat ... Time will tell, and MS marketing too of course (even if that doesn't have the same influence on me) ...