Gates Still Roots for Tablet PCs

Spinner

Bill Gates, chairman and chief software architect of Microsoft, said Monday that he still believes in the Tablet PC and repeated a prediction that, with better hardware and software, it could still dominate traditional laptop PCs.

It's now a little over three and a half years into the time period he set, and to date the Tablet PC has managed to do only marginally better than the now defunct Comdex trade show. A handful of vendors market Tablet PCs, but specialized markets such as health care account for a large percentage of sales. Other users, and those in business, have yet to take to the form factor in a big way.

Approximately 640,000 Tablet PCs were shipped in 2004, and this year shipments are expected to hit 1.2 million units, which corresponds to about 2 percent of the global portable PC market, according to a February report from research firm IDC. "IDC continues to believe that tablet PC technology will become an integral part of future portable PC designs, but adoption of the technology will be slower than originally anticipated," the report says.

"We need to keep investing, both in the hardware and software side, before it moves into the mainstream," said Gates at a news conference here on Monday. "It's not yet in the mainstream. I totally believe in the tablet."

Source: PCWorld

shwaip

I don't like them because the keyboard is too small. My hands are fairly large, and even a notebook keyboard tends to feel cramped.

QCH

I just worked on a Gateway M275. It was a pain to setup... ended up using Gateway's original software instead of our volume license. Other than the setup... I like the idea. I can almost see a use to the tablet in my life and with all the scientists where I work... this could really take off....

deicist

I think they'd take off a lot more if they were smaller & lighter... at the moment they're a pain in the arse to carry around and work with, if they were more like (don't laugh) the tablet thingies they use in Star trek next gen. I think they'd be a big hit. Drop some of the functionality, cut the size & weight down and reduce the price and I think you'd have a good format, somewhere in between what a tablet is now and a PDA would be good, a large screen but not a lot of processing power.

Shorty

Bump. Purely because it's interesting how the tablet form factor is indeed dominating the market at present... guess Bill was right after all, shame he never managed to deliver on the promise!

Thrax

deicist wrote:

I think they'd take off a lot more if they were smaller & lighter... at the moment they're a pain in the arse to carry around and work with, if they were more like (don't laugh) the tablet thingies they use in Star trek next gen. I think they'd be a big hit. Drop some of the functionality, cut the size & weight down and reduce the price and I think you'd have a good format, somewhere in between what a tablet is now and a PDA would be good, a large screen but not a lot of processing power.

And this is exactly what came to pass.

Kwitko

And Apple and Android have taken the lead. MS is nowhere to be found, except for a single vendor. Wintel? moar liek armdroid, mirite?

QCH

HP Slate 500... I have one coming in as a demo unit for me to play with for a month. I am excited to see what a Windows 7 Pro, 1.86 GHz Intel Atom Processor Z540, 8.9" 1024 x 768, 64 GB SSD. I will let you know what I think...

Shorty

and HP launching the WebOS based devices and BlackBerry with the Playbook based on QNX and a UI from That Astonishing Tribe (who makes an awesome embedded RTOS and beatiful UI respectively). Tablet market is exploding.

MS had the right idea but tried to do too much with technology that wasn't there. 5 years on, the world has moved on..