Could the Web tablet replace the notebook?Follow

Thought all of you could appreciate this article the best. I will have to admit, my nokia has definitely replaced my laptop for general use.

Probably by the year 3000.

"Web 2.0" to describe anything = fail.

Short of some groundbreaking hologram-type technology (like this) I think we're more apt to be looking at something similar to a full-fledged PC with keyboard/mouse functionality that could be used anywhere, even while walking.

Granted, my knowledge of technology in regards to hardware is dismal, this is how I imagine it.

A very lightweight (~1 lb) touch sensitive display (maybe about 10x10 in.) is strapped to the (left) wrist. On the bottom of this display screen is the left-hand of a full size keyboard. So if you hold your left hand out in front of you, the screen is supported by your wrist/arm, and your fingers are on home row by default.

It could be cumbersome to have your fingers glued to a monitor all the time, so the screen could be made to fold down against your arm.

The right hand would be used for mouse functionality and right-hand keyboard. Since it's a touch display, to use mouse functions you just use your finger as a mouse. The keyboard in this area is a slight bit trickier, and possibly the reason why we don't already have something similar to this. The right hand of the keyboard is attached to the left wrist, so to type, you cross your right hand over your left wrist. (There are other ways to do this, this just seemed the best way to me.)

So let hand out in front of you with the screen and left keyboard, right hand across your left wrist for right keyboard or out to the screen for mouse. Voile, a full function portable PC you can easily use while walking around.

I don't know if we're quite to the point where we can incorporate this technology in a lightweight form yet (definitely not very affordably) but in the near future, it would be doable if something else doesn't come along to make it obsolete.

10 inches was really just a ballpark guess at the biggest functional and practical screen, but for a full-sized lefthand keyboard it would only need to be 5-6 inches by however much more screen you want. I also considered that as most technology, it would probably begin larger and eventually become smaller as it was popularized. In general though, it's not going to be pocket-size technology (unless we get tiny fingers and magnifying eyeballs) and in light of that I think most people would rather have a larger screen.




At 3 inches I have to assume you're still hunt&pecking, or at least pecking. Fine if you're text messaging your friend about where u r, but let's say I'm standing in line at the movies and I want to reply to your post like this, or email my boss.

I mean, if we're talking about replacing a laptop or a desktop PC entirely with something portable, I don't think it will be desirable to make the keyboard or monitor too small, but I'm sure when/if it comes out, there would be a variety of sizes. I'm really not sure how feasible it is to make a fully functional laptop at 50% of the size of even some of the highest end models, while adding touch screen technology. At the very least, if it's doable (probably) it would be prohibitively expensive.

Apparently the rate button bug is back. Or did it just never go away? I think I know how Marc Summers must have felt on Double Dare now.

And you would be the only one.

We should also make cell phones go back to this size as well, right?

Give it a few years and keyboards/mice won't be necessary due to the improvement of speech recognition. The only reason to have a keyboard and mouse if for input, if you can just tell the thing what to do you no longer need those input devices.

I fully believe that laptops will be replaced with much much smaller devices, but I'm leaning more towards a headset than a web tablet, and I think it will start in the next 5-10 years.

The article has the technology right, but totally misses how it's being used, and how it will likely be used going forward.

Mobile PCs have not gotten more expensive to operate. Exactly the opposite, they have consistently gotten smaller and cheaper and more powerful. The progression of the mobile is quite good and there's no reason to expect it to die out, nor is there a need to replace it with something else with more limited features. We can simply expect them to get lighter, smaller, and more useful over time.

Now, there is a big push for thin clients, but not in the same space occupied by mobiles, but rather that occupied by desktop workstations. There is a huge push for virtualization right now. The model everyone is moving for is a "virtual desktop". You run some sort of VMware type software (vm, zen, etc...) on a farm of servers with a largish SAN. You have a standard image that each user gets, and when they log in, they get a virtual machine just for them with exactly the resources they need. The user connects to this virtual machine via a thin client (WYSE is coming back, go figure!). There are several in production right now, but most are platform specific. Some newer methods (designed specifically to work with virtualization) are platform agnostic (which is a really good thing).

The point is that the thin client isn't "mobile". They're just incredibly cheap. Cheap enough that you have one on your desk. One or two in every conference room. One on every lab bench. And hey. Take one home as well...


The advantage is that from any of these thin terminals, you can simply log in and magically your desktop appears before you. Disconnect from that terminal, walk to another one, log in, and the same desktop appears again (including whatever applications you were running last time). Go home. Log in to the terminal there, and same deal. Incredibly useful for large work network environments.

Not so much for mobiles though. You need to have access to a specific network already configured for this. I suppose someday maybe you'll buy virtualized space from a provider and connect via a mobile thin client device, but that's certainly not going to be happening any time "soon"...

Starting, I will say I agree with your view from a corporate stand point. I don't think something like a web tablet is anywhere near versatile enough to hold any ground on a large scale level like that.

However, I do think the article is right if you're looking from a personal device. It's not, nor will it ever be robust enough to handle large computing needs. At least no where in the near future. Where I see it taking off is in the consumer market. People who just check their email, stocks, whatever. With HCSD cards, you also get the luxury of your music and videos on hand.

Also, the interface is a lot harder to ***** up than an full system. With baby-boomers getting older, and only half of them really understanding technology, they will still want a way to keep in touch without the trouble of a full system. This seems like an option for that.

They still need wordprocessing and database features. They're going to have to have some kind of keyboarding input. That's not going to be changing anytime soon. Voice and handwriting recognition are still a long ways from replacing the keyboard and mouse in the workplace. Handwriting recognition will always be slower than keyboarding. Voice recognition will always create more noise pollution. These technologies will have their place, but until a computer can transfer our thoughts into processes (already in the very early stages of development) we're not going to see the keyboard go anywhere, and the mouse will probably be around for a good while yet too.

Um... While that may be true of those working in business departments in a corporate environment, and while that may be the common outward perception in terms of the "typical" corporate employee, the reality is that most people working at corporations do a lot more then just check their email and diddle with spreadsheets.

Someone designs the products they sell. Someone manages the shipping of said products. Someone maintains the systems used for those things. What you see of corporations (white shirted folks diddling with their email) is the tip of the iceberg really. Those guys don't have jobs if their companies don't make some sort of product that someone's willing to pay money for. And that requires compute software that goes well beyond simple end user apps.


I think you and Melody both got what I was trying to say backwards. I wasn't talking about the applications run on the laptop, but what they access with their laptop. Large Corps use thin clients, not because they use minor apps that a thin client can manage, but for exactly the opposite reason. Their userbase needs to be able to access and run large computing jobs running on specialized systems that you simply can't carry around with you. A thin client connected to a network allows them a front end to access those much more powerful systems on the backend. A laptop works as well, but the OS installed on those systems actually gets in the way rather then help.


The reason why such thin clients (web tablets, although I think that's a simplification) are so useful is because the corp spends significant resources setting up a distributed network environment, complete with vlan configurations designed to route said thin clients to racks of login servers, which in turn allow the users a "native" environment within which to work. The objective is to be able to simply plug a "dumb box" into a network and get a "smart environment" that allows the user all the access to software that he needs. More importantly, that environment is portable (at least wherever he can access the network in some sort of authenticated mode).


The reason this replaces the laptop in a corporate environment is because once you've expended the resources to build this sort of environment, the laptop becomes superfluous. Why spend a couple grand on a portable computer with an OS on it, when I can instead use a thin client that costs a couple hundred bucks, connect to a pre-built server and run any OS I want? If I want to log into a windows environment, I simply select that and I'm presented with a windows login. If I want linux, same deal.


The reason this *doesn't* work for the average traveling person is that they don't have the benefits of a large and expensive backend ready for them to connect to. It's hard enough to find usable wireless networking access points, much less ones that will connect you directly to a service that's setup for you to use. Sure. It's possible, but it would require a much greater expense and overhead by ISPs to do, since they'd have to manage actual login services and run the cpu and spinning disk that all these wireless thin client customers are using. You can't get something from nothing. If you take the cpu away from the portable device, you have to put it somewhere else. That means that the other end of the network cable (or wireless network) has to have that infrastructure available for you to run.


That's just a *huge* expense. For the time being, ISPs are comfortable with just being network portals intended to be accessed by fully functional computers. Someday, this sort of thing may happen, but not anytime soon. It's really not just a matter of the technology, it's a matter of a hundred and one legal and economic problems in the way. No one's going to spend millions of dollars on that backend system and then charge folks 10 bucks a month to use it. And you have to manage the whole "roaming" issue as well. How does my thin client, configured to connect to ISP A's servers work if I'm plugged into a network owned by ISP B? These are solvable problems of course, but currently the solutions only exist on networks controlled by a single entity with a body of customers that are known to use primarily that network (ie: a large scale work environment). Trying to do that on a large scale "in the wild" is incredibly hard...

Ah! I see my mistake! I didn't realize that when people spoke about the importance of a "free internet", they actually meant "paid for and controlled by government".


got it...