Blog:: Craig Pringle

I love the potential of the RollTop concept PC from Orkin Design.  Out of the box thinking like this opens the door for some really great new ways to work.

This just cropped up in one of my Twitter searches and it really caught my eye. 

A 9” netbook with a touchscreen and a removable keyboard?  Could it be that someone has finally caught on to the fact that the HP TC1100 was a really good idea and would be excellent if refreshed with current technology?

Weighing less than 2 pounds and sporting a [8.9] inch screen, the Touch Book has moved away from the world of the Intel Atom CPU and delved into the mobile power of the ARM processor from Texas Instruments, and with its custom designed battery, the Touch Book runs for up to 15 hours unplugged.

The key design feature of the Touch Book is its ability to completely separate the screen from the keyboard, allowing the screen to be used as a standalone tablet. Furthermore, the screen is magnetic and can easily be mounted on any metal surfaces.

How cool is that – 15 hours battery life and you can stick it to the fridge!  The bad news is that it is not shipping yet but pre-orders are being taken.

Well the touch book certainly looks like an interesting device and I would love to get my hands on one to see how well the concept is implemented.  It looks like it is running its own OS and the ARM processor is usually associated with phones and PDAs but it could be a good step in the right direction.

Vital statistics from the website:

Key Specifications

• 9.4″ x 7″ x 1.4″ for 2 lbs (with keyboard)
• ARM Texas Instruments OMAP3 chip
• 1024×600 8.9” screen
• Storage: 8GB micro SD card
• Wifi 802.11b/g/n and Bluetooth
• 3-dimensional accelerometer
• Speakers, micro and headphone
• 6 USB 2.0 (3 internal, 2 external, 1 mini)
• 10h to 15 hours of battery life

A couple weeks ago the OS informed me that the extended battery for my Motion LS800 had issues and should be replaced.  Not really surprising as the battery is 3 or 4 years old and has been heavily used. 

I swapped back to the standard battery and now woe is me – it too tells me that it needs to be replaced.  This battery is actually even older than the Extended battery.

This could spell the end for my much loved Motion LS800, which is a real shame.  Worse than that it is my only tablet that is a slate.  And if I were to replace it – what would I replace it with?

Motion seem to have focused on vertical markets and as such all the new devices they are releasing are ruggudised, specialised or both.  Who makes a nice corporate Slate these days? 

Electrovaya and the Scribbler SC 4000 still seem to be around, but they have never made it downunder AFAIK.

The Tablet Kiosk Sahara range is probably the most comprehensive, but there has been little development in the year or so since I looked at it last.

Fujitsu have had an on again, off again affair with the slate form factor.

Why isn’t anyone building cool new slates these days?  Do you think we’ll see any new slates hitting the market when Windows 7 ships?

Following on from my previous post speculating that the netbook wave could lead to renewed interest in slates, there are a couple of discontinued devices I would really like to see revisited.

HP – word to the wise. 

• Take the TC1100 form factor.
• Put in an Atom processor.
• Add Capacitive Touch to the active digitize.

Instant success.

Another vendor that – I think – could do something similar is Motion.  You have the LS800 design, and it was a great design.  But it suffered heat problems.  Refreshing the LS range with an Atom powered machine would be great.

There is no doubt in my mind that the building wave that is the netbook craze is going to renew interest in tablet an touch technology.  Windows 7 provides a really nice tablet experience and is much more touch aware than Vista was.

We are also seeing something in the netbook craze that I think a great thing for all mobile PCs.  Lots of competition.

The Atom processors provide excellent performance and battery life, but they don’t seem to suffer the same heat problems.

Could it be that the planets are aligning for not only more tablets, but perhaps even more slates?  I think maybe the answer is yes.  The critical question is one of demand.  Is there demand for slate devices, particularly in the consumer space?

There is certainly interest – remember the interest sparked last year when it was revealed that an enterprising user was making a tablet out of an eee PC? 

And there is interest on the manufacturer side as well.  In December Fujitsu announced its first new slate in quite some time.

I hope we will see a revival of the slate form factor.