For the past 5 years I have been wanting a tablet computer, the thought of an always on PC that fits in your hand has had me mesmorized forever. What I proposed about 10 years ago was a portable hard drive that had a docking station, you grab your hard drive, and it automatically saves what you were doing and shuts down. Walk to work, slap it into the docking station, back up you come…. Going to a meeting, grab the hard drive, walk to the meeting, slap it into the docking station and so on… It was a little more than a hard drive, but you get the idea…
So when the Ipad came out I was intrigued… if you read my blog you know that I was looking at the archos for awhile, but all of the reviews I have seen say that the archos is slow, doesn't work very well etc… This is the problem with taking a computer based operating system, and trying to dumb it down to fit it into a less powerful device… Apple did the reverse. They took their admittedly amazing iphone OS and gave it more processing power. It can't help but fly…. Now before you poo poo it, yes its not a computer. Yes it won't do everything a computer can do… but other than surf, and write emails and the occasional note while in a meeting, I don't need it to do anything else… If someone comes up with a remote desktop app for the ipad, you'll never hear anyone wish for a computer again….:)
To be fully effective at work I would need:
1. Ideally, remote access… failing that.
2. Emails
3. Oracle client
4. Putty
5. Winscp
6. Office type suite.
So lets see, I can winscp and putty from my blackberry, office type suite is out of the way, so really all I need is a light oracle client and I haven't checked the app store yet to see if one exists….:)
This won't be a device for all, and when I get it, I'll blog all about it, from it…:) So if you're unsure of its usefulness for you, wait it out… if you're a fan boy, buy one, if you’re a Mac hater don't…. I'll post unbiased first hand accounts of what the thing is like. I own an iphone, I really don't like Mac PC's, not my comfort zone… So decide if you want to take what I am saying as fanboy praise or honest to goodness review of a new type of device.
The makers of the ARM processor that runs most of our phones and all of the tablets on the market have said that they are expecting 50 different tablet devices to come out over the next 18 months, could be their own marketing people trying to sell more processors and make computer manufacturers panic, but hey…
