http://news.com.com/2300-1044_3-6046778-1.html
I really could use something to check mail/browse while on the couch, or to use to take notes. This is real close, but it need to have a big enough screen to view most websites and be under $1,000.
My laptop is going on 6-7 years old and barely able to run some of the stuff I need to run. I don’t need a full laptop, and the tablets I’ve looked at are way over priced. I’m hoping this pans out.
Ask Walden to make you one. He’s the Origami King.
Slan,
D. 
How bout half a one then?
A halftop! 
So that’s what it is.
People conjectured it would be an iPod killer, but instead they decided not to compete directly with Apple and fill another market.
The funny thing is that this is precisely what a lot of small companies were working on in the late nineties, before the tech bubble burst. Lots of OS companies were moving into the “appliance” market because they felt Windows couldn’t compete on such tiny devices and with an emphasis on performing some simple tasks with speed and responsiveness.
It’s a shame, because during the late nineties I had an Intel box with BeOS running on it. The thing booted in three frickin’ seconds. I never had to worry about music or video stuttering or hiccupping, no matter what else I was doing. And that was eight years ago!
Nowadays I have one of these fancy Macs. It’s slick, but it skips all the time when I’m browsing the web. If I play a DVD, I have to make sure I don’t have a web browser open to an auto-loading site like GMail. And at all times the rainbow-colored hockey puck watches me. You know of which I speak: a great eye, lidless, with the power to freeze windows, buttons, and the desktop.
Caj
I really wanted to play around with BeOS but didn’t feel like buying a new video card just to try it out. Then Palm bought their assets and hasn’t done anything with it. Oh well.
I did play around with the Be-based appliance software and it was interesting, but I really want is full fledged OS, not something stripped down just for that device.
The stuff coming out this week looks interesting, but I’m not convinced they reached my personal power/batter life/price point yet. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.
I’m on my second tablet computer. My first, which I still have and am about to put on Ebay, was a Compaq TC1000. Slowish processor, but fast enough for Office and Mozilla, which were the two things I used it for. Well, that and Solitaire. Solitaire with a pen is a pleasure. (Wait, that doesn’t sound right.) You wouldn’t want to, say, edit video on it. I now have a Motion Computing M1300, which my wife gave me when she decided she didn’t want a computer in her office (she’s a practicing physician).
The TC1000 is an exceptional piece of ergonomic engineering. 10.4" 1024x768 screen, which sounds small until you realize that 1) the screen is closer to your eyes than with a traditional laptop or desktop and 2) you’re viewing web pages in portrait mode most of the time anyway. The tradeoff is a great battery life.
As a matter of fact, if you want my pretty darn well-equipped TC1000, I’ll give you a good price (well under $1000). PM me.
BeOS was a desktop OS from the start, so it was a full-fledged OS. It just had a tiny footprint, which led them to start selling it as an “appliance” OS.
The problem was that nobody felt like writing drivers for it. There is now an open-source BeOS called “Haiku,” but I won’t install it because it doesn’t support wireless network cards. Or my sound card, I think.
Cool facts about BeOS:
Caj