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Are tablets huge, or are touchscreens huge? To know, we need some decent laptops with touchscreens. It seems like the best of both worlds will clearly be a ta
by axod 16y ago
Are tablets huge, or are touchscreens huge?
To know, we need some decent laptops with touchscreens.
It seems like the best of both worlds will clearly be a tablet that docks to the bottom half of a laptop - so we get a laptop with a tablet that can be carried around.
I also think it's a fairly good long term bet. At the moment we're in this strange 'appstore' download applications era which is like being back in the 1990s. This current era will end once wifi etc is everywhere and the novelty value of downloading an application has worn off.
Obviously for a hardware heavy device such as a mobile phone, you need some specific OS to be able to interface with all the hardware, take calls, etc. But for a laptop, where the user is mainly just surfing the web, things don't need to be so involved. That's why I think both are necessary.
- redthrowaway 16y ago>It seems like the best of both worlds will clearly be a tablet that docks to the bottom half of a laptop - so we get a laptop with a tablet that can be carried around Seems a little gimmicky to me, and I don't see an OEM putting the kind of effort it would take to make it a seamless experience. Plus, when it's docked, are you going to have a trackpad with cursor? That would require a fairly major customization of Android to support. I don't see it happening.
- AlexMuir 16y agoI think Bluetooth keyboards might take off. What you're describing sounds exactly like the iPad docked with a keyboard. Edit: And to test it out I've just paired a keyboard to the iPad and edited this. It works a treat - I might stop rolling with a laptop when I travel now. I keep reaching for a mouse though!
- axod 16y agoThe hinge is kinda useful to angle the display.
- michael_dorfman 16y agoMicrosoft pushed a similar form factor to what you describe, a few years back. The market rejected it. Personally, I think a keyboard/touchscreen combination sounds great, but apparently we're in the extreme minority on this one.
- DougBTX 16y agoPerhaps they just rejected Windows XP on tablets with keyboards, not tablets with keyboards.
- tofumatt 16y agoA touchscreen that docks to a keyboard eh? Have you seen the iPad keyboard dock? Aside from lack of mouse (which would be marginally useful in iOS, if at all), that's what an iPad + keyboard dock is. Compaq and some others made resistive tablets like you might be getting at a decade ago and one of the biggest problems was that they all ran Windows XP and were underpowered, so you just got a smaller, heavier, less capable Windows box you could draw on.
- axod 16y agoDoes the dock have a hinge, trackpad and speakers? Maybe a large battery as well? The hinge is a deal breaker.