I just received my Motorola Xoom back from the Mighty M, supercharged with some 4G goodness. It is fast. Way fast. Like 25Mb down fast. Fast enough where you are waiting on servers to deliver content to you. While I am confident others will narrow the speed gap eventually, Verizon has got it going on, especially here in Atlanta. I've been wanting to blog about my real tablet experience, putting it into perspective in addition to knocking down some of the fodder that is floating around the Net about these things.
And the Lord spoke, saying, "First shalt thou take out the Holy Pin. Then, shalt thou count to three. No more. No less. Three shalt be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out. Once at the number three, being the third number to be reached, then, lobbest thou thy Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch towards thy foe, who, being naughty in My sight, shall snuff it." - Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Third Time's A Charm
I am a three-peater when it comes to tablets. I'm not hearkening back to the Newton. I'm talking more current tablet technology. In 2004, I began with a "new" tablet from a company called Motion Computing. It was the first slate style tablet (now referred to as a slab design). It ran Windows XP Tablet Edition, had about an hour and a half battery and an 866MHz processor. My daughter's Leap Frog reader was faster. Hell, I think the CPU in my microwave was faster. Needless to say, it was cutting edge and a glimpse of how things would eventually be. I remember going to meetings and traveling with it, feeling like I was Willy Wonka taking select people on a secret chocolate factory tour, as I wrote and drew on the screen as if it was a piece of paper. Lots of "oooo" and "ahhhh" moments. Very practical and useful...for about an hour. Then you were racing to find an outlet. Most of you who travel know that until recently, finding an outlet in an airport meant bare-knuckle boxing for a spot on a cold concrete floor, usually near or inside of a bathroom, with a power cord stretched like a jump rope. Only thing worse was watching some poor soul picking up the pieces of his smashed ThinkPad as a running traveler, in a OJ Simpson-inspired moment (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W1hnR3kLwo) didn't clear the power cord hurdle and yanked the laptop clear out of his hands and dragged it down to the next gate. I hear most of you laughing right now. A few of you are crying.
Third Time's A Charm
I am a three-peater when it comes to tablets. I'm not hearkening back to the Newton. I'm talking more current tablet technology. In 2004, I began with a "new" tablet from a company called Motion Computing. It was the first slate style tablet (now referred to as a slab design). It ran Windows XP Tablet Edition, had about an hour and a half battery and an 866MHz processor. My daughter's Leap Frog reader was faster. Hell, I think the CPU in my microwave was faster. Needless to say, it was cutting edge and a glimpse of how things would eventually be. I remember going to meetings and traveling with it, feeling like I was Willy Wonka taking select people on a secret chocolate factory tour, as I wrote and drew on the screen as if it was a piece of paper. Lots of "oooo" and "ahhhh" moments. Very practical and useful...for about an hour. Then you were racing to find an outlet. Most of you who travel know that until recently, finding an outlet in an airport meant bare-knuckle boxing for a spot on a cold concrete floor, usually near or inside of a bathroom, with a power cord stretched like a jump rope. Only thing worse was watching some poor soul picking up the pieces of his smashed ThinkPad as a running traveler, in a OJ Simpson-inspired moment (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W1hnR3kLwo) didn't clear the power cord hurdle and yanked the laptop clear out of his hands and dragged it down to the next gate. I hear most of you laughing right now. A few of you are crying.
Number two was a Dell Latitude XT, some time in 2007. This was a convertible laptop. A twist top if you will. Worked like a usual laptop until you twisted the screen and laid it down flat. And it had a touch screen like a smart phone. It started life as an XP laptop and quickly got moved to Windows 7. A much better tablet experience but still saddled with the same weaknesses: short battery life and a PC OS trying to act like a tablet one. And at 5 lbs, it was still a shoulder-breaker, especially when you add a 1 lb extended battery and the power brick. As they say, close but no cigar.
I became an Android guy in the Summer of 2010 when I ditched my Windows Mobile 6.5 phone for a Droid X. The iPhone wasn't available on the Verizon network at the time so I dove straight into the deep end with Android. Being very pleased with that experience, I felt the Xoom held great promise as number three and was the second person in line the day the 3G version was released. To be truthful, I didn't know exactly how I would use it. But like a good tech jock, I would find a way to turn what could be something useless into something quite useful. Who knew that on that faithful February 2011 day that my technical life would be forever altered.
Riding A Bike With No Hands
So yes, this generation of tablets got it right, be it Android or Apple. I won't bore you with a long list of apps and fan-boy BS about Apple vs Android. Both are really, really good and there are plenty of blogs out there on both sides of that little war that will numb your cranium if that is what you desire. You want real life. Ok, here goes. For the record, I have included hyperlinks for the programs I use. I was not compensated or given promotional consideration for mentioning them. I use them. I like them. I am sharing them so that you don't have to roam around trying to find them.
First, know this: a tablet does not replace a laptop or a PC so don't think you will lose a device by getting one. Anyone that tells you otherwise likely thinks Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix are living as roommates in some Tahitian fishing village with Stevie Ray Vaughn cooking chili. My tablet compliments these other devices and actually keeps me from reaching to them as much. Why? Because the tablet is always on. No real boot time. No sleep/hibernation recovery. No hard drive. Like a puppy, it's just there waiting to be picked up and played with. So besides the minutes of time savings in your daily digital life, it becomes something practical to grab and use in any fleeting moment. You see Emeril cooking up some etoufe', you grab the tablet, get the recipe, and print it to your printer in-between the first and second "BAM!" On a laptop, you would go to commercial and come back before it even booted up. Amazing.
Then there are movies. Not streaming movies. I'm talking about that stack of twenty DVDs that you schlep around and play on your laptop or portable DVD player. All the parents in the audience just nodded their heads. No more! Take ten of your kid's favorite movies (after all they want to watch the same ones over and over again), rip them digital, and place them in the tablet. Viola. You just took 8 lbs out of your travel bag (and made the TSA really happy). And here is the cool part: the battery will not die with 5 minutes left in a two hour movie because my tablet battery last around 10-12 hours! That is not a mis-type. I use my tablet for days between charges. Days!
My tablet is the primary device I take to meetings. See I live in two worlds. Creation and presentation. In my creation world, there is no substitute for a desktop or laptop. Take this blog for instance. No, not writing it on the tablet. I have a Samsung Series 9 laptop (http://www.samsung.com/us/computer/laptops/NP900X3A-A03US ). It is a razor thin Windows 7 version of a Macbook Air/Macbook Pro. Blazing fast, 2.8 lbs and 8 hours of battery. One look at it and you will know why Samsung and Apple are not getting along right now. Although it remains to be seen who actually stole the design. Anyway, I need the full capabilities of a machine for the creation work I do in things like Excel, Sharepoint, SQL etc. Presentation is a different story. Used to be I would take my Dell XT with me to appointments and presentations (before I had the Sammy). Always a drudgery as I waited for it to boot and watched the battery like a hawk. My tablet changed all that. I transfer my presentation docs to my tablet with Dropbox (www.dropbox.com) or EverNote (www.evernote.com) via wireless or 4G. I can then share them with customers or pop them up on a conference room LCD TV thanks to a quick, non-proprietary HDMI cable connection. I whiteboard (www.skitch.com) on my tablet. I take notes on my tablet (www.evernote.com). I photograph customer sites and mark them up in real time...with my tablet (built in camera + Skitch). Want a copy? No problem. A quick click sends those items direct to my customers, my engineers, my audience, or my desktop at work. No fussing around with a thumb drive, zipping up the files for email, proprietary sync cables or rapidly dying battery. Elegant. Intuitive. Easy. And the best part? Bringing customers and my audience back into the conversation since I am no longer peering at them from behind a laptop screen; you know, that rather impersonal and borderline rude practice which we have all been forced to accept as SOP in our current laptop world. A practice which cannot leave quick enough.
Then there are movies. Not streaming movies. I'm talking about that stack of twenty DVDs that you schlep around and play on your laptop or portable DVD player. All the parents in the audience just nodded their heads. No more! Take ten of your kid's favorite movies (after all they want to watch the same ones over and over again), rip them digital, and place them in the tablet. Viola. You just took 8 lbs out of your travel bag (and made the TSA really happy). And here is the cool part: the battery will not die with 5 minutes left in a two hour movie because my tablet battery last around 10-12 hours! That is not a mis-type. I use my tablet for days between charges. Days!
My tablet is the primary device I take to meetings. See I live in two worlds. Creation and presentation. In my creation world, there is no substitute for a desktop or laptop. Take this blog for instance. No, not writing it on the tablet. I have a Samsung Series 9 laptop (http://www.samsung.com/us/computer/laptops/NP900X3A-A03US ). It is a razor thin Windows 7 version of a Macbook Air/Macbook Pro. Blazing fast, 2.8 lbs and 8 hours of battery. One look at it and you will know why Samsung and Apple are not getting along right now. Although it remains to be seen who actually stole the design. Anyway, I need the full capabilities of a machine for the creation work I do in things like Excel, Sharepoint, SQL etc. Presentation is a different story. Used to be I would take my Dell XT with me to appointments and presentations (before I had the Sammy). Always a drudgery as I waited for it to boot and watched the battery like a hawk. My tablet changed all that. I transfer my presentation docs to my tablet with Dropbox (www.dropbox.com) or EverNote (www.evernote.com) via wireless or 4G. I can then share them with customers or pop them up on a conference room LCD TV thanks to a quick, non-proprietary HDMI cable connection. I whiteboard (www.skitch.com) on my tablet. I take notes on my tablet (www.evernote.com). I photograph customer sites and mark them up in real time...with my tablet (built in camera + Skitch). Want a copy? No problem. A quick click sends those items direct to my customers, my engineers, my audience, or my desktop at work. No fussing around with a thumb drive, zipping up the files for email, proprietary sync cables or rapidly dying battery. Elegant. Intuitive. Easy. And the best part? Bringing customers and my audience back into the conversation since I am no longer peering at them from behind a laptop screen; you know, that rather impersonal and borderline rude practice which we have all been forced to accept as SOP in our current laptop world. A practice which cannot leave quick enough.
What else do I do? I view my calendar and emails. I take remote control of Windows PCs using RDPLite (http://www.remotespark.com/). I use Pulse Reader (http://www.pulse.me/) for collecting news from a bevy of different sites and giving it to me in one scrollable view. I edit pictures, create quick videos, and Skype with my tablet thanks to two built in cameras (front and back). I program my DVR with my tablet (www.directv.com). I even have a DirecTV remote on my tablet (http://www.facebook.com/WiredDFWSoftware). Really, DirecTV remote? Absolutely. View the guide, select programs to record, watch recorded programs...all without interrupting my wife as she watches "Dancing With The Stars." I must confess it is also fun to play and pause Peppa Pig, from another room, as my daughter stares at the remote control and doesn't seem to understand ;)
Being a music guy, I constantly find the need for a good tune or two. Over the years I have amassed a serious digital music collection. But I don't have everything. And sometimes I just don't want to think about pulling together a playlist. On the tablet, I use Audio Galaxy (www.audiogalaxy.com) to listen to my personal music collection anywhere I go. But I am also a hopeless addict to Pandora (www.pandora.com). Both have native tablet apps that work amazingly well over WiFi and 4G. They even work well when I fly. Nothing like "Comfortably Numb" at 35,000 feet.
Now that so much content is digital, you feel compelled to read on the tablet. And unlike a laptop, it becomes personal again. Years from now, I fully expect that a study will be released that speaks to an increase in reading thanks to tablets and other readers. Personally, I find myself immersed in articles and e-zines (no surprise here). But what I have picked up on recently are these enhanced websites that go along with the different television series I choose to watch. It offers me a deeper appreciation for the show since the tablet gives me extra content that both answer questions and fill in the blanks about the series episode. After all, there is only so much you can cram into :47 minutes of airtime. Don't understand what I mean? Go and watch an enhanced episodes of "Lost" or "Boardwalk Empire," using your tablet and you will get it.
My Crystal Ball
If you have been around me the last year or so, be it at a conference or onsite, you know that I have maintained a very clear and certain level of thinking when it comes to tablets: You won't have one of these things; you will have two or three of them. And in a very short time (likely within the year), the average price for a 10" tablet (not a 7") will be less than $300. I believe the "magic" price to be around $200. At that level, they will be all over your house and everywhere you go. Device controls (think TV remotes, whole house AV, and thermostats) have already began the transition to tablets (http://www.nest.com). And Microsoft isn't even in the game yet. Their turn will begin this time next year with Windows 8. While you may be incline to think that the Apple iPAD or the Amazon Kindle Fire are behind the revolution, you should really be thanking HP. You know, the company that recent bailed on the tablet business after six months and $12 billion dollars spent. Next blog I will tell you how the demise of HP led to the real tablet revolution, enabled Amazon to become Apple's biggest competitor, and forced Apple to do something it has never done before. Man I love a good story.
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P.S. Even in these uncertain times, I find many things for which I am thankful. I certainly hope you do too. Happy Thanksgiving.
