Dell fans, we've got some juicy meat for you to sink your teeth into. During Michael Dell's keynote address at Oracle OpenWorld today, the company unleashed (or at least demoed) its forthcoming all-in-one PC, creatively named the
XPS One. Of course, we've been hearing rumblings about the One for some time now, but Dell also whipped out its sparkly new Latitude XT tablet, which should please all the Gatesian types out there who think TPCs are the future. But wait -- there's more! The new Latitude isn't just some plain-jane scratchpad. Besides being the thinnest in its 12.1-inch, convertible category, and having a screen which is 25-percent brighter than the competition... it's multi-touch. At the keynote, the Dell folks demonstrated a multiple-finger paint program, which lets you draw five simultaneous lines, and also showcased a Surface-like photo viewer which allows you to scramble, resize, and generally get physical with your fond memories. Check the pictures of the tablet in action after the break and feel its magical vibes.
[Thanks, Tim]
posted November 14th 2007 7:36PM
The other thing it needs, which is often left off all but the nicer business class machines, is a decent docking station.
I have an HP tc4200 right now and it's been fine. One of the best things about it is that they were sold through the business products of hp so it was well spec'd with these kinds of extras. Of course you had to pay extra but that is fine....
So now I get home with my mobile tablet and I plunk it down easily into it's docking station (which hasn't skipped a beat in several years of use) and my batteries get charged and my desktop mouse becomes live on the system and it switches to my decent sized desktop lcd (this lcd part doesn't always work automatically and smoothly... but it often does and is actually better at this with vista than xp was ... and when that fails it's a simple right click on the desktop to select my external monitor configuration from a menu and correct it.)
I mean I drag this thing around a lot... almost daily..... and I don't want to be messing about plugging in charge cables and connecting video cables or even fishing around for the right angle on the usb port every time I want to hook it back up ..... no sir... that sounds a royal pain...
I come in, I plop the laptop down... it takes literally 2 seconds and that's it... I can leave it charge and go do what I want or I can turn it on and enjoy the comfort of my normal mouse and big screen.
Brilliant.....
- Mike
I wish apple would release a docking station already. With all of the macbook sales, and how they try to do away with wires ... it would be nice to not have to pay an arm and a leg for a bookend.
Got people thinking of "oooh a docking station" *checks the price* "fuck all of that, I'll just plug it in."
I've asked this question before, but haven't got an answer. I'm a trooper though ... can anyone provide me with a few real-world scenarios where a multi-touch screen will work better (either quicker or more precisely or ... ?) than a keyboard and a mouse? I use a wacom tablet, by the way and the pen is essential for control ... fingers are too big and too slow. That's why I ask. Thanks in advance.
Well, I think that all will depend on the software written to use it.
I do think it will have uses though and will come to be a common interface.
Now, like all things... even given the proper software... there is the question of what you want to do with it.
You speak of precision and the ungainly finger.... and so I suspect that you use apps which require very high precision... and for that I suspect the mouse or pen will be the tool going forward. That is unless some clever guy comes up with a slick user interface to impart much greater precision to the dumb finger.
However, there are other things.... such as I take a lot of notes on my tablet and while it nice (and something I can't do with a paper and pen system) to be easily able to search for a parituclar file/note by date or whatnot.... sometimes I don't know the date, but I do have in mind a particular image (a graph I drew perhaps or chart or whatnot) which I know is on that note I'm looking for. In that instance it is much faster to look through a regular paper notebood and quickly visually scan for what I want.
Now, there are other interfaces which are coming to the fore now which do this kind of quick visual scanning without multi-touch. But, I've been using multi-touch on real world objects since I was a kid and I can't help but beleive that being able to transfer that experience to my computer, when appropriate, will have a beneficial impact.
And to me, being able to use multiple fingers to flip back and forth through files (while visually seeing what's in them) is a natural extention of using a real paper notebook and I can't wait until I have that capability.
The other big and obvious one is gaming of course.... it will bring whole new worlds to gaming and simulation.
Just some thoughts...
Mike
My personal obsession is being able to (at least try to) type on a virtual keyboard, holding down multiple keys (shift for caps etc) just like for a physical keyboard. Of course, this scenario is less relevant for a convertible, compared to a keyboardless slate, but I still imagine wanting to input text in tablet mode with my fingers. Unfortunately, I have only seen a tablet in the flesh once, for a few minutes, so don’t know how realistic this is.
Any idea if the tablet has a decent GPU in it?
An NVidia 7xxx series would be great, perfect for some software I'm making that would really benefit from being on a touchscreen machine...
It will supposedly have an ATi Xpress 1250. That's not official though.
You'd be lucky to find dedicated graphics at all with a 12 inch machine, let alone a tablet. I think you're out of luck on this one.
While i highly doubt that apple will ever launch a tablet this year... Why the **** can't they. Bill Gates gotten one thing right since WinXP and that's people will go to tablets; (w/ tech like multi-touch) it's inevitable. *hence iPhone* I definitely dig Latitude XT for being light & bright but wished they went with glass cover for their screens. I see issue coming up w/ that form factor.
The XT has been painfully slow coming. Dell has scattered the internets with promo videos since April or so (taking a saw to a competitor's tablet , etc.). Multitouch had been rumored and it's nice to see it confirmed.
The problem for many that were interested in it is that Dell said it was coming in March, dropped a few hints in the spring and they never mentioned it again. Many users have moved on and bought a Lenovo or Fujitsu, HP, or something they could get now.
The other issue is that now more than ever, there are rumors of an Apple announcement coming at the expo in January. I've been looking for a new tablet was very interested in the XT. Due to Dell's lack of info, my dislike of Vista (and Windows in general these days) I am holding off to see what Apple launches.
The XT when originally announced was not supposed to have multitouch. They were going to implement a new touch technology by an Israeli company called N-Trig which combines an active digitizer for pen and a capacitive digitizer for touch into one surface.
N-trig states on their website that they are working on multitouch versions of this technology. After constant delays of the XT it is now apparent that N-trig and Dell have been working to launch the multitouch technology together and it is almost ready.
If this is correct, N-trig is the only company in the industry with multitouch digitizers on the market. Their solution according to their patents is the most straigt forward I have seen. There are other solutions to multitouch from other companies including shadow dectection via 4 pixel LCDs (Sharp and Samsung), and a matrix of IR cameras behind the display (Microsoft), but these technologies are many years from scaling to the size and thickness of a tablet screen.
While there is a lot chatter on the internet at this time I feel that most if not all of it originates from people who do not understand the dynamics of the tablet industry and the tablet market at this time.
I doubt Apple would design and manufacture their own digitizers (as they currently source their iPhone touch displays) and I doubt they have the same relationship with n-trig that Dell does. Furthermore, OSX leopard lacks the handwriting support and the touch support and extensive ink/touch enabled software library that available for Windows Vista.
From this perspective if Apple were to release a tablet any time soon it will probably be no larger than 10", be touch only, and feature an OS similar to the iPhone and not OSX Leopard.
So yeah, I wouldn't hold my breath.
Video now available: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00mKTEqnzbs
Looks like it's not going to be launched anytime soon.
I'm the MIS director for a manufacturing company in Medford NJ. When I first started here about 9 years ago we bought computers from many different manufacturers (eMachines, M2, HP, Compaq, IBM, & more). I was never really happy with any of them as they all had many quirks and problems. About 5 years ago I tried buying Dell computers. Well, 50 Dell computers later the only problem I've EVER had with a Dell was a single blown power supply.
I'm in an excellent position to know first-hand how good Dell's computers stack up to the competition, and I would never buy anything other than a Dell! I know this sounds like a friggin sales pitch, but they've made a believer out of me. Before I switched to them a HUGE part of my job was fixing computers every single day. Now that we're a mostly-Dell shop, fixing computers is just a distant memory.
So I realize the term "fanboy" is pretty negative, but in my case I guess I am. For good reason though!
Now Dell printers on the other hand, they suck balls. At least their low-end printers anyway. I think they're re-branded Lexmarks or something.
Michael, is that you? Boy, I thought you'd be too busy to hang out here, but I guess not. DELL computers have the lowest reliability rating, next to Apple laptops, in the industry. They are poorly designed and poorly manufactured.
You must be doing something amazing, like never turning them on, to get that kind of reliability.