Peter spotted a couple great new Tablet concepts. One from NEC and one from Sony.
Smaller, cheaper, lighter. Very cool.
I particularly like the keyboard built into the base of the Sony unit. There are many times I wish my slate had a built in keyboard or at least one I could snap onto it.
It appears that Tablets are challenging concepts of modularity and integration. What should be built in? What should be snap in?
Snap in components have been the trend with notebooks. But Tablets tend to be more mobile and used in more places than a typical notebook, so anything protruding from the Tablet becomes a new catch point. And then there is the power issue.
Having a bunch of individual devices that link together wirelessly is one solution, but then this becomes awkward when you have to pick up the pieces and move around or challenging to use when standing up.
For instance, should my PDA or Smart Phone dock or snap onto the Tablet so I could use it’s wireless connection and/or camera and/or screen real-estate? Or what about my digital camera, MP3, or who knows maybe someday a portable XBox? Is there some fixturing or docking technique that would make it easier for these devices to work together? Hmm. There’s probably no single solution. If price and performance weren’t an issue I guess the simple solution would be to duplicate the hardware in all the devices. Till then we can all practice juggling.