Here’s what I had to day about mobile computing in 2002.
“This *IS* the future of computing devices! Oh just you wait. Yessir, just you wait. Some day you’ll be carrying one of these little gems around wondering how you ever got along without it. It’ll be just like your first cell phone. One day you were doing fine without one, the next day you’re lost without it. Can you imagine carrying your computer around, doing your work, blogging from the coffee shop (I know people already do this!), walking back to your desktop and docking this baby so you can use the full size keyboard and mouse?”
I’d imagine I was talking about the Tablet PC at the time, the link to the Microsoft page is 404.
The iPad may eventually deliver on the promise.
It’s close. The biggest impediment for me right now is the cost of 3G when traveling (no way I’m turning that on for both the iPhone and the iPad in London
), and the difficulty in finding open WiFi outside the US.
Then, there’s the single tasking nature of the iPad, which makes things like copy/paste of links and blocks of quoted text painful….
looking at other articles about that year’s Fall Comdex (does Comdex even run any more?), I’d say you’re on topic (http://www.winsupersite.com/reviews/fallcomdex01.asp). I was with Compaq at the time, and we thought the tablets would change computing overnight.
I think I know a grand total of one person who ever bought one of them.
I sure hope that the time ’round goes better for the Windows Slate, or whatever people end up calling it.
@James – That’s why I said it “may eventually deliver on the promise.” It has a ways to go.
@Steven – My brother is a HUGE fan of the tablet, and back when I wrote that we had high hopes that Visio would become “the” application for the tablet. Believe it or not Steven Sinofsky killed those ambitions. He didn’t care for the tablet.