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Sunday, May 13, 2007
Coffee with ThoughtFix Volume 2: Portability vs. Power
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- thoughtfix
- ThoughtFix LLC is dedicated to providing news, tips, tricks, hacks, editorials, and reviews on the latest in small tablet computers and related technology.
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12 comments:
Intresting video, personally i would prefer that alot more moved onto the web. The main advantages for me is that i dont have to sync my N800/laptop/phone and i dont have to care about backups.
Well I think this basically depends how mobile you are and what you need when you are mobile.
I for example do have my PC at home, a PC at University, a Laptop if I go on a trip und just bought a N800 for my every day life. My mobile concerns are simple web applications for the time I need to travel between my PCs, so I don't need big spreadsheet stuff or youtube, while I'm mobile. Surfing, emailing and reading eBooks are enought for the time when I can't reach my big machines. I want my device small, light and cheap.
As you pointed, Internet is becoming more demanding. I really do not think that current ARM devices are powerful enough to work with an Online Office kind of application.
Personally I want:
- portability
- handwriting and touch experience
- Complete desktop-like internet experience
- Media player (absolutely everything!)
- some memory to keep local files (yes I am old fashioned and dislike the online apps)
I want both portability and power. I want a computer I can tuck into a large jacket pocket, with a battery or two to last all day, and I want the same computer to dock to use a large screen, keyboard, mouse and so forth.
I can sort of do this already with a Motion Computing LS800, but it would be better to have a faster processor. If it is necessary to crank down the faster processor while mobile to save batteries, that is OK for now, but I want the processor to crank back up when docked.
As the electronics are miniaturized even more, as the prices come down and as wide-area broadband becomes common, this combination of mobility and power will become the standard.
Thanks for the thoughtful video. I think inevitably, more computing power will arrive in smaller packages, mooting the question. I was using my kid's Motorola Q last night, streaming our cable via Slingbox. Clear, full-motion picture, perfectly satisfactory. Too bad Golden State lost. 100 acceptable channels plus our Tivo recorded programs. That would have been unthinkable 5 years ago when we were struggling up out of text mode on handhelds.
A similar question could have been asked back then. Are you willing to put up with rudimentary text-based delivery in return for portability?
In fact, it is a continuum, and we will have BOTH, more and more, as time goes on.
The other thing is: fulltime, use-it anywhere highspeed internet. I love using my 800, but I despair when it ends where the wifi ends. The Q, and my Treo are slower, but being able to use them everywhere is all-important. Again, time will cure all. If we can build an almost nationwide cellphone network, it's just a matter of time until we have it all.
I mean...if Slingbox can let me watch the Warriors game anywhere, we are getting there.
THANKS for your excellent blog and good thoughts.
Al
Santa Monica
Just a minor point - Pandora runs fine the Nokia N800, I use it a least a couple of times a week.
Michael
I think devices like the Internet Tablets should be more than capable to handle a lot more Internet applications than they do currently. I also believe a company like Nokia has the resources to achieve this while keeping the price under $500, the device size and form factor the same, and the battery life at an acceptable level.
Flash, Java, AJAX, etc. are essential elements that power the modern day Internet. Without the full accessibility of these elements, you miss out on a very large chunk of information, services, and communication modes that have been available on PCs and notebooks for some time now.
Sure, it may take a little bit more advanced and expensive hardware to achieve this in a mobile device, but I doubt it will take so much that the price and power performance are significantly affected by it.
Good video. I would want a small mobile product that I can easily fit in my pocket, I don't need it to do everything my computer can do, becuase that's what a computer is for, although it'd be nice. I want a pocket sized touch screen high battery life go anywhere product with wifi, bluetooth, and good internet browsing.
There are several partial fixes to the problem.
We need intensive web apps to be able to optimize for different platforms on the server side.
The original Macintosh, was a wonder in terms of hand optimized code. and that's okay for something that has a strong developer base, but coders need to remember to cut the fat for all the little guys that are accessing their content online.
Preprocessing Applications are another web2.0 solution that could help content delivery, for media, such as 3D and graphics editing.
Last, Specialized hardware could be a big help. Think of the old Wifi CF cards and Graphics PCMCIA cards.
If you only payed for the hardware you needed then you could theoretically pay less and/or save on battery life.
Great video ThoughtFix. And it's a good question you pose because the choice that UMPC manufacturers make about what configuration and feature set to present to the user base or potential user base is a big determinant of the product category's success. And so we should consider and speak up about what we want because we're the early adopters who have a level of interest high enough such that we will actually read about and discuss these machines while the rest of the population is focusing on ten million other things. In other words, we're the only ones that will provide any feedback to producers and are those companies' only source of marketing research other than their internal marketing teams. We should also speak up because we all clearly want this product category to succeed.
Here's another thought to explore. Do we expect these machines to only serve the power user like many of us clamoring about UMPCs in the enthusiast community? Or do we expect that this type of machine will indeed be an additionally owned and utilized unit in the commoner's life? If the latter is our expectation, and is also the only way that the production and sales levels will hit the required critical mass for them to remain a viable product offering, then our answer may need to include what we believe the commoners' desires are.
The commoners won't likely be in the market for a device like these UMPCs for quite a while in my estimate, so we're really the only potential customers right now. Plus, without us being satisfied and actually purchasing these things for a few years they'll never even get out of the gate. So we should probably answer in accordance with what needs we want UMPCs to fulfill.
There are really a number of issues in this question to be explored before we can have a really organized answer or response to UMPC manufacturers' offerings.
One important piece of information would probably be the percentage of early adopters who are PC gamers. They would probably have very high processing and battery performance expectations while being somewhat inflexible in form factor. If form factor weren't critical they probably would just stick with laptops. Ultimately this group would probably be willing to pay a pretty high price. I say this because a WoW player probably would either pay a high price for a UMPC that could run the game, or would hold off on purchasing until the release of a capable machine. It would be interesting to hear what PC gamers have to say about it. I'm just guessing as I'm almost exclusively a console gamer.
I can't think of any other user characteristics that would be important for UMPC makers to measure. I'm out of juice for now.
I'll just end by saying that personally, it looks to me like the Q1 Ultra will just about do it for me in terms of horsepower. Battery power could be better and I'm pretty sure I'd prefer XP rather than Vista given what I've heard and experienced very briefly from Vista on a very nice new laptop at a friend's house.
I do happen to dig the split thumb keyboard due to its blazing fast accessibility. That's very important to me in one of these units. I pay attention to processes - business processes, cleaning processes, productivity processes, all of 'em. And having to reconfigure hardware, even if it's just the simple slide-down of an underside keyboard, is an extra step in the process. But I'm not resigned to this choice. There certainly do appear to be some nice benefits to that larger and more fully featured key set on the underside slide-out keyboards like that of the OQO and other models.
Ok, that's it I'm done. Thanks for listening.
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