Channel 9 Forums - Coffeehouse - Bill Gates' video - one thing I think he has wrong...

Coffeehouse - Bill Gates' video - one thing I think he has wrong...

MisterDonut — Fri, 09 Sep 2005 13:18:18 GMT

Great video, so far..

One thing, though, I think he's off the mark (and I think others might agree, or Bill needs to elaborate on) is that the vision of Students without textbooks (or better yet, with tablets) that Bill spoke of as a software problem isn't totally a software problem.

I'm of the belief this is as much of a hardware problem as a software one. People can curl up and study a good book. Kind hard to do that with a tablet in it's present form (yes, I own one and love it). Software is great, Microsoft. But hardware can be a limiting factor, as I'm sure you all are aware.

Also, convincing people to use new technology is very difficult as well. Maybe Bill address this, but I haven't gotten to it yet.

Anyone agree? Or Disagree?

Again - a shout out do Bill G - Thanks for making my wife's scholarship a reality! (ok.. I'll be quiet now..)

Coffeehouse - Bill Gates' video - one thing I think he has wrong...

eagle — Fri, 09 Sep 2005 13:29:00 GMT

In ten years time todays Tablets will be artifacts like the 286's are to us today.

Coffeehouse - Bill Gates' video - one thing I think he has wrong...

MisterDonut — Fri, 09 Sep 2005 13:35:34 GMT

eagle wrote:

In ten years time todays Tablets will be artifacts like the 286's are to us today.

I am thinking they'll evolve (with apologies to the Flying Spaghetti Monster) into something else.. Probably might resemble a tablet of today, but they'll be different..

Coffeehouse - Bill Gates' video - one thing I think he has wrong...

NateFurtwangler — Fri, 09 Sep 2005 15:24:17 GMT

MisterDonut wrote:

Great video, so far..

One thing, though, I think he's off the mark (and I think others might agree, or Bill needs to elaborate on) is that the vision of Students without textbooks (or better yet, with tablets) that Bill spoke of as a software problem isn't totally a software problem.

I'm of the belief this is as much of a hardware problem as a software one. People can curl up and study a good book. Kind hard to do that with a tablet in it's present form (yes, I own one and love it). Software is great, Microsoft. But hardware can be a limiting factor, as I'm sure you all are aware.

Also, convincing people to use new technology is very difficult as well. Maybe Bill address this, but I haven't gotten to it yet.

Anyone agree? Or Disagree?

Again - a shout out do Bill G - Thanks for making my wife's scholarship a reality! (ok.. I'll be quiet now..)

I think Bill G was speculating about the future. Of course, Bill's speculations mean quite a bit more than just any old speculations, he's in a position to make things happen.

I agree that the Tablet PC will evolve over the next 5-10 years, especially as voice recognition becomes common place. Right now most TabletPC's are of the convertable type to allow for the use of the keyboard. With near-perfect voice recognition the average user would have no need for a keyboard.

I think the TabletPC will either evolve into or give birth to a new generation of computers similar to the "slates" seen on Star Trek. They would be smaller than a magazine, light, and perfect for electronic media (books included).

As far as curling up with a current tablet to read a book, thats exactly what I do with my textbooks this semester (I scanned them in, since publishers havn't realized a need for electronic versions of their books). But you're right that it's not as natural or comfortable as it could be.

Coffeehouse - Bill Gates' video - one thing I think he has wrong...

William Kempf — Fri, 09 Sep 2005 17:05:29 GMT

NateFurtwangler wrote:

I agree that the Tablet PC will evolve over the next 5-10 years, especially as voice recognition becomes common place. Right now most TabletPC's are of the convertable type to allow for the use of the keyboard. With near-perfect voice recognition the average user would have no need for a keyboard.
be.

Actually, there have been many studies that indicate that audible input is actually a bad form of input for most use cases. Why? Vocal stress. The human vocal organs aren't designed for continuous and lengthy usage. Dictating your term paper, for instance, would probably take longer than typing it and will certainly cause severe vocal distress.

For reading your text book, being able to say "next page" might be easier/more natural than pressing a button... but not enough so to really matter here, I would think.

I've not used a tablet, but I can think of no reason why they'd be less optimal than reading a physical text book. I'd expect the weight and dimensions would be negligably different. Eye strain might be a concern with the tablet? Battery life certainly would be. Beyond those two, though, what are the issues people see or believe to be there?

Coffeehouse - Bill Gates' video - one thing I think he has wrong...

JChung2006 — Sat, 10 Sep 2005 00:57:05 GMT

Tablet displays render text with less dpi (dots per inch) than printed text does. So it's a bit harder to read in general though I am reminded of the printed editions of the Oxford English Dictionary as an amusing counterexample. Those come with magnifying glasses. Ahem.

Coffeehouse - Bill Gates' video - one thing I think he has wrong...

Karim — Sat, 10 Sep 2005 01:49:12 GMT

MisterDonut wrote:

I'm of the belief this is as much of a hardware problem as a software one. People can curl up and study a good book. Kind hard to do that with a tablet in it's present form (yes, I own one and love it). Software is great, Microsoft. But hardware can be a limiting factor, as I'm sure you all are aware.

Uh, you can't curl up and study a book on a Tablet PC? Somebody should have stopped me because I've been doing that for years, with books, newspapers and magazines.

LOL... I just went to that last link, www.zinio.com (I haven't been in a while, my subscriptions download automatically) and it says that Playboy magazine is going to available in electronic format next week.

Uh, ok, so maybe "curling up" was a bad choice of words....

Gartner: "Hmmm, suddenly I'm seeing a upward spike in Tablet sales... what's up with that?"

MisterDonut wrote:

Also, convincing people to use new technology is very difficult as well.

I don't think of it as "convincing" people to use tablets, per se. Partly it's an awareness thing: Tablet PCs have been out for a while now and I still have people asking me, "What IS that thing?" So you have to know the product exists. Partly it's an educational thing: you have to know what it does. I've had people ask me if my Tablet was a Mac, or if it was a PDA. "No, it runs Windows XP," I say, and I do the origami trick on the TC1000 that flips the keyboard out and the screen automatically switches to landscape mode.

That always elicits a Keanuesque "whoa."

You make cool stuff and people go "whoa. I gots to get me one of THOSE." You don't have to "convince" them.

The hardware needs work, yeah. The resolution needs to go up and the weight needs to go down. Bill's a bit more visionary -- that's his job, I think? -- so of course he is thinking about when the Tablet will have a 200, 300 dpi display, maybe an OLED or even e-paper, and the price will come way down. Will it happen? Well, one thing's for sure -- it will NEVER get built if nobody first imagines it getting built....

I think it was William Gibson who said, "The future is already here, it's not just evenly distributed." Bill Gates was ahead of everyone else in 1975, and he's probably still ahead of everyone else today.