On Thu, Sep 9, 2010 at 10:34 AM, Lloyd Kvam <lk...@venix.com> wrote: > On Thu, 2010-09-09 at 10:08 -0400, Benjamin Scott wrote: > > On Thu, Sep 9, 2010 at 9:56 AM, Lloyd Kvam <pyt...@venix.com> wrote: > > > We expect to see iPads getting used by patients in hospital settings > > > filling out forms (multiple choice - little or no typing). Earlier > > > attempts with other tablets (running Windows) proved unworkable. > > > > I'm curious; what makes the iPad better for that than the 'doze > > tablet? I would think a form is a form, regardless of platform. > > Essentially the touch features were "bolted on". The issues were dumb > things such as the touch area of a radio button being too small - still > sized for a mouse pointer. It was easy for your finger to miss it. > There was poor alignment between the touch sensitive spot and the screen > image. Screen size handling still depended on the menus or touching the > drag boundaries exactly right. I've heard that Win7 has improved the > touch support, but I have not checked myself. The folks at the medical > school are Apple fans anyway so once the iPad proved to be a nice > device, I don't think they saw any point in checking back on the Windows > tablets. (I have no Droid experience.) >
Microsoft really missed out on the tablet market. OneNote is a fantastic pen enabled, note taking app. But everything else seems like they bolted it on. MS Office had a chance to really integrate Pen, but the director didn't like tablets. You think having your CEO as a big proponent of Pen would've been incentive. Also, Windows TabletPCs seem way too expensive. > > > (I've only used an iPad once briefly, in a store. I thought it > > seemed like a neat toy, but couldn't see myself spending $400 just to > > play an electronic marble maze game.) > > True. > > Still people buy digital picture frames, book readers, and such. The > iPad is great at *all* of those kinds of uses. > > FWIW - I have a SmartQ 7 MID (no keyboard). It runs a customized Ubuntu. I can apt-get debian and Ubuntu for ARM packages. Some dialog boxes run off the screen (800x480). An Xterm goes under the virtual keyboard (matchbox). For the most part, it works decently w/ the pen. Nothing like an iPhone/IPad or Palm. I've heard updates to the OS (firmware) or to Android work better on the SmartQ. I'd imagine stock Ubuntu/Fedora would have issues with dialogs on a screen that isn't 1024x768 (netbooks) too. I mainly wanted a color ebook reader (comics) with some web browsing. The SmartQ was ~$220 and it fits. There will be a number of Android Tablets RSN that will be better and hopefully as cheap.
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