14 DAY TRIAL // Tablets have generally been on the mind of many companies recently, and this goes for more than just the Apple tablet, which is, once again, rumored to be on the verge of launching. Most recently. HP released a video where it showed a small portion of its upcoming tablet's functionality. Also, quite a number of slate PCs were demonstrated at the Consumer Electronics Show. However, despite the interest in the concept, tablets are still not guaranteed to appeal to end-users, even though companies like NVIDIA are quite optimistic.
“2010 is the year of the tablet, this is a category that’s got our [Tegra] name on it. We have been weaned on the iPhone with this idea of touch and tablets, all of these kinds of behaviors have been taught to us now and consumers are comfortable with them,” NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang said.
The general concept is that tablets will be devices smaller than netbooks or notebooks, especially through their lack of the keyboard. The advantages of such devices would include an intuitive, touch-based interface, a good performance when running media files and a much wider support for various games and entertainment software, at least compared with the smartphones, players or e-book readers. Still, the new PCs also have some disadvantages of their own.
They will not be the most suited for Internet browsing and type-intensive tasks, such as e-mail or blogging, as they have no keyboard and the touch interface will likely have limitations as far as typing is concerned. A high number of casual video games also depend on the keyboard. Furthermore, the actual performance capabilities of tablets are expected to be lower than those of netbooks or smartbooks, as is the battery life.
Hardware makers have generally focused on the physical side of the new devices. Even at the 2010 International Consumer Electronics Show, they were more concerned with the slate's hardware capabilities. The more pressing matter, however, is the fact that there is not a large-enough collection of online content for tablets to take advantage of. Among the skeptics is Asustek Chairman Jonney Shih.
“Content is still not attractive enough today to the customer. We have those kind of devices in our labs, but we are watching to see when this is enabled,” Mr. Shih said in a recent interview.
All things considered, tablet PCs will likely not see any kind of massive popularity during 2010, although they will probably take off once sufficient tablet-supported electronic content is made available for purchase online.