This Is What Tablets Looked Like in 2001

Heh...;) Tablets have quite an uphill climb before they "rule the computing world"...;)
 
Fujitsu already had some pretty hardcore slates back in 2001..

NbwoaTv.jpg


http://www.pencomputing.com/frames/fujitsu3500.html

Not sure how much Nokia's web tablet cost back then, but tablet PCs were around $4k.
 
Stiletto said:
On what planet do tablets "rule the world"?
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I sure hope not this one.

Being serious here. Tablet has a place for real computing. I know most of you like to hate on Heartlesssun over his defense of Win8, but I need to say that a Tablet PC has never been as good as it is today.

I finally feel that Bill Gate's Tablet PC has arrived. SP2 with Power cover can actually let me use photoshop, Blender and mod skyrim with creation kit on the go... and then to pick the thing up and take notes with onenote.

Tablet PC for those that need the power is here, and I hope that others stay the hell away from it cause the end consumers sure don't need to do much else but consumption with their tablet.
 
celeron300 said:
How much did that thing cost back then?
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A decent one can still run you more than 2 grands when it's all said and done. I remember being seriously tempted by a modbook pro, which was more than 3500 in parts+labor...
 
At least the damn thing had real speakers, and faced front, now blowing out the guy sitting behind or to the side of you.

I just don't understand the whole speaker placement thing. I have to use deflectors on my surface, because it has such good sound, but it goes all over the place.
 
That looks a lot like a bigger uglier n-gage. Nokia was always big on buttons for some reason.
 
dceremuga said:
At least the damn thing had real speakers, and faced front, now blowing out the guy sitting behind or to the side of you.

I just don't understand the whole speaker placement thing. I have to use deflectors on my surface, because it has such good sound, but it goes all over the place.
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I run an external DAC instead. There's only so much you could do when the device's physical dimensions really restrict where you can put the speakers... never mind the audio circuitry.
 
I had an HP 'tablet' back in 2004. It ran Windows XP and was excruciatingly hard to type on the screen and required an external keyboard and mouse to really get anything done. I sold it months later.
 
shade91 said:
I had an HP 'tablet' back in 2004. It ran Windows XP and was excruciatingly hard to type on the screen and required an external keyboard and mouse to really get anything done. I sold it months later.
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I was using one of the last tablet PC, a X220T Lenovo running windows 7 (core i5,) and it's still like that in a way. I was absolutely floored about the virtual keyboard not being some utter POS like it was back in the XP days, and boy, talk about dat handwriting recognition with palm rejection!
 
For all the love that I don't have for Apple and Jobs, what they did for tablets is remarkable, and is another gold star on both their legacies.
 
Reimu said:
I was using one of the last tablet PC, a X220T Lenovo running windows 7 (core i5,) and it's still like that in a way. I was absolutely floored about the virtual keyboard not being some utter POS like it was back in the XP days, and boy, talk about dat handwriting recognition with palm rejection!
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I also have an x220t running 8.1 now. I think the default OSK in 8.1 is pretty good though there are some Windows 7 tablet users that like 7's better. On the desktop, 7 tries to handle auto popup but I never thought it worked well so desktop apps have to program for it otherwise the keyboard has to be activated manually. In modern apps though it works automatically very well. The handwriting recognition is top notch, it does seem to improve ever so slightly in each version of Windows.
 
heatlesssun said:
I also have an x220t running 8.1 now. I think the default OSK in 8.1 is pretty good though there are some Windows 7 tablet users that like 7's better. On the desktop, 7 tries to handle auto popup but I never thought it worked well so desktop apps have to program for it otherwise the keyboard has to be activated manually. In modern apps though it works automatically very well. The handwriting recognition is top notch, it does seem to improve ever so slightly in each version of Windows.
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Although it must be said that the advancements on hardware side is no less important. 4 Pounds worth of tablet PC back then couldn't last me more than 4 hours, toss another 2 for the slate battery and I get 7, but now I can run Blender and Photoshop on something < 4lb for 5 hours... and I can kiss that paper notebook goodbye for good.

Here's to hoping that the next gen of tablet will be even more comfortable to read and use in long stretch, cause we are finally at the point where even SP2 can do 7+ hours without a sweat.
 
Reimu said:
Although it must be said that the advancements on hardware side is no less important. 4 Pounds worth of tablet PC back then couldn't last me more than 4 hours, toss another 2 for the slate battery and I get 7, but now I can run Blender and Photoshop on something < 4lb for 5 hours... and I can kiss that paper notebook goodbye for good.

Here's to hoping that the next gen of tablet will be even more comfortable to read and use in long stretch, cause we are finally at the point where even SP2 can do 7+ hours without a sweat.
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Intel does deserve a lot of credit for improving getting x86 power efficiency and getting that and cost in line with ARM at the low end as well.
 
heatlesssun said:
Agreed. Apple executed marvelously with the iPhone and iPad.
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I hate the fact that Jobs never interpreted tablet as a productivity device. This is something that I truly loathe when it comes to how the tablets have evolved, for his vision became a tunnel vision for sorts during those years that he walked the Earth with his iPads like Moses with the twelve commandments.

Intel finally awakening to the threat of ARM has been long in coming, and I am more than happy that things are evolving this much in mobile computing space. I strongly feel that we need even more computing power in our tablets than what we have now, as the idea of tablet as terminals for a cloud would not be right at all since we have no reliable wireless infrastructure to make something like that happen.

We need more computing power that can scale locally to demands.
 
Reimu said:
I hate the fact that Jobs never interpreted tablet as a productivity device. This is something that I truly loathe when it comes to how the tablets have evolved, for his vision became a tunnel vision for sorts during those years that he walked the Earth with his iPads like Moses with the twelve commandments.
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There are a lot of people that don't think that a tablet is a suitable productivity device. Seeing the resistance that Microsoft has had with a lot of desktop users over Windows 8, I can see why Apple originally wasn't trying to promote the iPad heavily as productivity device. But keyboards are like the top accessories for iPads along with pens. And the MS Office iPad Suite is near the top of the app store. Tablets do have a place for productive purposes and that will increase over time.

Reimu said:
Intel finally awakening to the threat of ARM has been long in coming, and I am more than happy that things are evolving this much in mobile computing space. I strongly feel that we need even more computing power in our tablets than what we have now, as the idea of tablet as terminals for a cloud would not be right at all since we have no reliable wireless infrastructure to make something like that happen.

We need more computing power that can scale locally to demands.
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The computing power of tablets is coming along pretty rapidly. Intel has made a huge leap with Bay Trail Atoms, the next Atoms should provide a big jump as well when they go to 14nm. Even today's Bay Trail devices are a much PC power as a lot of people need. They can run standard desktop applications like Office easily. A lot more GPU would be nice.
 
Reimu said:
I hate the fact that Jobs never interpreted tablet as a productivity device. This is something that I truly loathe when it comes to how the tablets have evolved, for his vision became a tunnel vision for sorts during those years that he walked the Earth with his iPads like Moses with the twelve commandments.
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I upgraded from an iPad to a Win8 tablet. That was the greatest flaw with the iPad. It was great for doing simple things. When it came to doing real work, it struggled. Doable, sure. But, not that efficient. Running multiple apps wasn't fun. With Windows, it is much easier (although still needs some work to be more efficient... not sure where, but it isn't perfect quite yet).

Being able to plug in a keyboard is great. Running 4-5 applications, all visible at once (Word, Movie, chat, internet...) is great. Being able to run full desktop applications is great.

iPad is a great device, and Apple did that right. It was just time to move to something where I can get more work done.
 
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