Rant: Don’t Blame the Tablet Because You Suck

Posted by | 08/04/2009 | 38 Comments

Rob and Warner have both tip-toed around Jeremy Toeman’s op-ed piece, “The Tablet That Nobody Really Wants “ I prefer a more direct approach. Here’s my take on Toeman’s main points (in bold).

Tablets suck at handwriting recognition. No, you suck at handwriting. Even Windows XP TPC Edition does a solid job of recognizing my finely crafted pen strokes. Don’t blame the tablet because you’ve let your penmanship lapse.

Tablets suck to carry around. No, it’s no worse than carrying around a laptop, but you don’t need to hunt for a flat surface to rest it on once you stop. If there are no seats left at the coffee shop, I can start working on my Tablet PC standing up. I’ve logged on to the hotspot while standing in line and started getting things done before ordering my drink. It’s as cumbersome to carry as a regular laptop, except it’s usable while being carried.

Tablets make you tired. No, you tire easily because you’re a wuss. Carrying a tablet and making use of more of your arms than just your wrists and fingers would help fix that and maybe give you those Tom Cruise biceps you mentioned.

Tablets can’t share nicely with others. Except if you’re using shared notebooks in OneNote or Evernote, jotting notes in a Word document or Excel spreadsheet, shooting inked email in Outlook, annotating in Acrobat Standard, or just using handwriting recognition to enter text the old-fashioned way. Oh, and you can also just draw pictures for people, like directions and technical instructions.

Tablets suck at hiding smudges. You’re the one with poor personal hygiene and bad eating habits. Don’t blame the tablet because you don’t wipe or wash your hands after eating french fries.

Tablets are bad Web browsers. Clearly you’ve never used a Tablet PC with Firefox tricked out with FireGestures and Grab & Drag with ritePen macros for regular bookmarks. Yeah, if I’m writing something like a response to someone with no tablet experience, then typing on a full keyboard wins. However, for straight browsing, I will pit the pen against the mouse any day of the week, and the trackpad isn’t even a contender. I think the highly favorable reaction to web surfing on the iPhone proves a touchscreen can deliver an awesome web browsing experience.

Tablets are priced poorly. Fine, you got me there, but the price premium for a good tablet is worth it to me.

Tablets suck at everything else. IM? Maybe. I don’t IM. Video chat? What, a screen with a camera won’t work well for video chat? Spreadsheets? I’ve actually worked with spreadsheets by pen, and it can be a very good experience. Setting up a spreadsheet with formulas, conditional formatting, etc., does require a good sitdown at the keyboard. But after that, entering data into cells by pen is very simple. Tap cells to select. Usually not a lot of text. Numbers can be quickly tapped out on the TIP keypad. Bonus: the eraser on a Wacom pen can be used to clear cells.

Yes, sadly, I think Toeman has revealed himself as yet another critic who sits at a keyboard typing in English all day, someone who would gain no benefit from a tablet, and lacks the imagination to see beyond his condition. Try working a complex math equation on a keyboard. Let’s see you write kanji with that mouse. Show me some real copy editing annotations. Draw someone a map. Write a loved one a letter. But please, do not blame the tablet because you suck at doing things that don’t involve typing. Thank you.

Tags: ,

Category: Editorials

About the Author (Author Profile)

My name is Mark Sumimoto; I am Sumocat. I dabble in all areas of mobile computing, but my focus is Windows-based Tablet PCs and pen input. They’ve been part of my arsenal since 2004, and I’m proud to have pioneered the field of ink blogging, earning a spot as a Microsoft MVP for Touch and Tablets in the process. My current tools include a Fujitsu Lifebook T900, TEGA v2, and iPhone 4. Email me: sumocat [at] notebooks.com
← Older Comments
  • http://www.livedigitally.com Jeremy Toeman

    The subtle difference between our arguments is as follows (which I am presently blogging about)…

    What I wrote I would say to you, in person. I would have no fear of your response, and it would engage us in debate.

    What you wrote you would probably not say to me in person. You’d only say it with your keyboard or behind my back.

    Thus making your argument personal.

  • http://sumocat.blogspot.com Sumocat

    What? Me not saying it in person makes it personal? Okay, that’s the opposite of what I call personal. And I did direct two comments straight at you with the same message, and now we’re virtually face-to-face with me restating the same thing. That’s not really behind your back.

    As for me only saying it with my keyboard, well, that’s about as hilarious as claiming I wouldn’t say any of that to your face. The difference between me on the web and me in real life is that I control my language on the web. This is me restrained. However, since you are taking this personally and leaving a tech discussion, I will end my part of the discussion here and “take it outside”. Please do me a favor and direct people to Sumocat’s Scribbles to hit me in person.

  • http://www.livedigitally.com Jeremy Toeman
  • Wevenhuis

    I disagree on the issue of handwriting recognition. It has come quite far over the years and windows 7 handwriting to text recogntion has improved greatly, but recogntion are still present too much. Also the computer has a hard time to recognize whole blogs of text. You end up writing sentence by sentence, greatly decreasing the flow of writing and thus decreasing freedom of movement and efficiency. Also language support in other languages has much to be desired, much to my own frustration. Also microsoft has finally added a math input panel for recognizing math formula’s. Unfortunately still inadequate chemical formula ink support and yet again poor recogntion, even when you write neatly! Above all it is not integrated with the microsoft TIP, but separte, much to my frustration.

  • http://twitter.com/nielsandersen Niels

    It’s quite interesting following this discussion. It remind me in many ways of the whole “XXXX is the year of Linux on the desktop” discussion. X% of faithful believers love a certain technology very much and when it’s not adopted by the mainstream it’s easier to blame Regular Joe for sucking than it is to admit that the technology still needs work or might not have much to offer for the vast majority of the market.

    I think this quote from Sumocat’s article beautifully shows the divide between tablet geeks and mainstream:
    “Clearly you’ve never used a Tablet PC with Firefox tricked out with FireGestures and Grab & Drag with ritePen macros for regular bookmarks.”

    If a given piece of software requires you to install extensions and macros to provide a good user experience it’s not going to make it big. Most people are still just learning that “the internets” doesn’t equate to IE – all this stuff is way over their heads.

    I’m not trying to demean tablets. A lot of people here love them and good for you guys. It’s just not really helping the Tablet Cause to beat up on people who are merely expressing the voice of 99% of consumers out there.

  • http://www.tabletpc.com.au Brett G

    With you 100% Sumocat… Still love a keyboard and use one regularly but I could never live without a pen now! Why should I not have both!

    @Niels: There no evidence at all to suggest that 99% of consumers think tablet pcs suck. My experience is that they are very accepted by consumers. What holds them back from purchasing is simply the price difference over a laptop or netbook.

    That could change in a big way in the near future…

  • Maxim

    I totally agree with everything here, but I should add that even if your handwriting sucks Vista handwriting recognition still does a great job. One of my friends was very sceptical about Onenote recognition capabilities, especially since noone can make much sense of his scribbles. Yet he was really surprised how precise it turned out to be when he tried it.

  • Nameless

    My experiences with this old HP TC1100 is that Tablet PCs just work well for me, especially with OneNote and SketchBook Pro. Those who say that tablets are hard to take notes on clearly aren’t taking math notes or other subject matter that requires more than plain text (formulas and diagrams in particular), and as for drawing, I’ve found that putting the pen directly to the screen works a lot better for me than a typical Wacom tablet decoupled from the screen. The main appeal is that, as a person who HATES juggling pen and paper, the Tablet PC allows me to have an entirely digital workflow, where I’m just far more comfortable. (Now, if the schools would just give me e-books so that I don’t have to lug around so many extra books in addition to all the handouts I can’t keep track of…)

    At 4 pounds with the keyboard attached, it does have some heft, but not enough to make me exhausted over long periods of cradling it in my arm. I could shave it down to 3.1 pounds by taking off the keyboard, but I leave it on because the extra weight doesn’t bother me and I still often finding myself needing the keyboard. There are probably lighter models out now, perhaps some closer to or even UNDER the 3-pound mark WITH a keyboard.

    Also, I’ve impressed quite a few people with this TC1100. I showed them things like OneNote and Windows 7′s Tablet Input Panel, and also highlighted the detachable keyboard. (Who says tablets can’t have physical keyboards too?) They were soon asking me how much it costs so they could go out and buy one, to which I reply “250 US$ will generally be enough for a TC1100, though you may want to have a bit more for accessories”.

    My guess is that they’re largely not being adopted because people don’t know they exist, and when they find out, all the new ones are expensive. There are affordable tablets, but they’re all used/refurbished on eBay and the like. It’s not like there’s a big public aversion to Tablet PCs from my experience, though there are people out there who DO know what they are, don’t like them, and explain why. (Those people tend to prefer pen and paper, whereas tablet advocates like myself want as little to do with pen and paper as possible.)

← Older Comments
«
»